In wednesdays post we discussed the problem of negative comments and feedback featuring in the Search Engine Results page when people search for your company or website. Today we’ll show you how control the SERP so these comments are pushed to the bottom of the page, or even onto page 2.

You would expect your website to show up in the top position when people search for it. But what about the other 9 positions on the page, the ones where negative reviews or forum comments might show up? You can’t control them can you? Well actually you can.

Social Media pages

To start with, your social media pages have a good chance of being in the top positions. A search for WebEden will show our Twitter, Facebook and Youtube pages within these results. This means that not only can you have control of the top position, but you can probably show position 2 and 3 and maybe even 4. And since your social media pages should be full of the good will of your social networks, they show off your website in the best light possible.

Get good Reviews

As we’ve mentioned previously, It’s important for every small business to make sure they get good reviews, and to have a social media strategy. You first need to find the websites where reviews of your website are relevant. You can usually do this with a quick search in google for ‘your market + reviews’. Once you’ve compiled a list of websites where reviews could be posted, you need to start getting them! The easiest way to do this is when your website visitors or customers give you positive feedback, ask them to leave a review on one of the reviews website on your list.

Here’s a list of good, general reviews websites.

pricegrabber.co.uk
reviewcentre.com
shopzilla.co.uk
ciao.co.uk
dealtime.co.uk
truste-marketing.co.uk
webuser.co.uk
maxxsave.co.uk
dooyoo.co.uk
resellerratings.com

Respond to bad comments on Forums

OK, this won’t actually stop the bad comments show up in the Search Engine Results page. But if you take time to get involved in a forum where someone is moaning about you, it means that you are addressing their problems in a very public way. This shows great customer service, and anyone taking the time to read beyond the initial gripe will be impressed at your desire to solve problems. Other people on the forum might also give you respect, and let the original complainer know that they have been won over, It might well turn a bad situation into a good one.

Take control of your Google Local Business listing

As we’ve discussed before, a Google local business listing provides a great opportunity to be found for searches relevant to your business on Google maps. Google local business listings can also show up in the SERPs, particularly where a place name is specified. So this is another opportunity to control the SERPs.

Take control of your website profile pages

There are lots of websites out there that automatically create a static page that claims to ‘analyse’ your website. The page contains a small amount of information, usually obtained from the domain whois record, all about your website. This usually includes the website name, a small screen grab, the name on the whois register, and an assessment of the amount of traffic your website has.

These pages are usually created to attract traffic from search engines, since they are usually covered with Google ads. But they also give you the opportunity to take control and edit the information they hold about you, to keep it up to date. Due to the structure of these websites, they often appear in the SERPs for your brand searches. By taking control and editing yours, you are again controlling another result in the SERP.

Here are the best known of these directory pages

aboutus.org
valuatemysite.com
quantcast.com
websiteoutlook.com
weeviews.com
statbrain.com

Could you get a Wikipedia page?

Due to the power of the Wikipedia website, a Wikipedia page all about your business might be an option. This isn’t an easy one though. To start with, in order to qualify your business needs to pass the notability guidelines

And since a Wikipedia article can be edited by anyone, the page needs constant monitoring  to check that no-one as added anything negative.

So a Wikipedia page might be an option for some but not all.

Finally

The worst thing that can happen when people search for you is for them to read a bad review, before they’ve even visited your website. By taking control of the whole SERPs for your brand you can push these reviews to the bottom of the page, or even page 2, where no-one is going to see them.

Of course there’s a positive side too. By controlling lots of the SERPs for your brand searches, you have a real opportunity to show your website and company off in the best light possible.

Try setting up a few of these options and see how they get into the SERP. And then leave us a comment below.

We’ve talked quite a lot on this blog about Online Reputation Management. Before the Internet and Social media, if someone had a bad experience with your company then they would have few avenues to pursue.

To start with, they’d probably moan about how awful you were to their friends. This would probably mean that their friends would never buy from you. Unless you run a local business, shop or restaurant, this probably wouldn’t affect you too much.

If you were lucky, they’d call you up and tell you about why they were unhappy. This would at least give you the opportunity to respond to them, and you could change your service to take on board what they said.

Thanks to the Internet, however, a complainer has an array of tools to make their complaints heard.

To start with, they can tell everyone in the social networks about you. The average Facebook user has over 50 friends, so this means their gripes are heard by a lot more people.

Second, they can start giving feedback about you on reviews websites. Anyone going directly to a read a review about your product tend to gravitate towards the negative ones. Even if you’ve got 10 good reviews and just 1 bad one, it’s the latter that will be read the most, and is most likely to stick in the mind.

The third weapon at their disposal is a forum. It’s relatively easy to find a forum relevant to your product and service, and get in there with a few moans. Forums are incredibly popular places for people to hang out online, and posts can be read by thousands. Once again, it’s the negative ones that stand out.

The Power of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

Anyone browsing their social network, looking on a review site, or spending time in a forum, will be directly affected by these negative comments. But there is a secondary effect, and a much more important one.

This secondary effect has to do with the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).The big downside of all these avenues of complaints is that they will show up in the search engine results page when people search for your company or website. As we stated recently, thanks to the ‘Real Time’ arms race the search engines are currently engaged in, comments on social networks are getting indexed by Google to an increasing extent. And as we stated in our Google the innovator series, Google is also giving increased prominence to reviews in their index, Lastly, Google announced just recently that they are giving increased prominence to forum postings in the SERPs.

All these factors are combining with the result that a poor review, comment or negative post has a significant chance of showing up in the SERPs when people look for your company.

If someone is searching on Google for your company name or your website, the worst possible thing for them to see is a page full of results that show your company or website in a bad light. People who are searching for your company have already made a positive decision to buy from you – they are the people that you should find it easiest to sell to. It’s almost as though they are at the check out of your shop. And when they see a bad review, its like someone else in the shop tapping them on the shoulder and saying ‘Excuse me, I wouldn’t buy from these people, they’re terrible!’

The ideal scenario when someone searches for your company or business or website, is the information that they find on the SERP is positive, and will encourage them to trust you.

Having let you know about all the downsides of getting negative feedback, comments and reviews in the SERPs, tomorrow we’ll show you how you can take control the Search Engine Results Page to make sure that those negative comments are pushed to the bottom of the page, and don’t stop people visiting your website.