Monthly Archives: August 2016

Getting rated – and staying well-rated – on Google is not quite as simple as it seems – if you don’t want to harm your business’s reputation in the attempt.

Like a lot of decisions in business it boils down to ‘Do we do it ourselves or do we retain professional help?’


So here we examine the alternatives – and their pros and cons:

Doing it yourselves

In the same way that some businesses do their own accounts or manage their own legal issues, it is possible to do your own review management. Here’s how:

Strategy: Invite all your customers to write a review on Google 


Pros: by inviting all of your customers to write a review you will avoid accusations of cherry-picking. 


Cons: human nature being what it is, your dissatisfied customers are much more likely to write a review than your happy customers. If you hand-pick happy customers to write reviews it won’t be long before you find your competitors are pointing that out.

We have seen refinements of this approach. Some businesses have worked out that they can invite customers to write reviews to an independent review site and then invite those who have written positive reviews to copy them to Google. This strategy is simply a refinement of cherry-picking (and, as such, just as vulnerable to criticism).

Remember: it is your business’s reputation that is a stake. Be very wary of adopting any short-term strategy that may backfire in the medium to long term. 




Adopting professional review management


Strategy: Invite all your customers to write a review to your own website. Then invite them to copy that review to Google.


Pros: you get independently verified reviews – as opposed to testimonials – to show on your own website; you get an opportunity to engage with reviewers who have posted inaccurate or misleading reviews pre-publication (although the reviewer must always retain the right to publish) and you get credible reviews on Google.


Cons: if you don’t look after your customers properly this strategy will backfire – you will get negative reviews. 


Remember: You need to be sure your own customer relationship management is in good shape before you embark on this strategy. Not perfect – no business is, and professional review management allows for this, but as good as you can make it.


What else will a review management consultancy do?


Like any other professional service, they make it their business to understand, and be up-to-date with, all areas of their expertise:

• understanding Google, G+, Google for Business and how they all relate to reviews
• knowing how all the independent reviews sites operate – from massive sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor to specialist sites focusing on specific business niches
• knowing response and appeals mechanisms inside-out
• being constantly aware of the strengths and weaknesses of all the alternative solutions
• being ahead of the curve with new techniques and solutions

Ultimately, it is very simple:

We need to be able to reassure our clients that, month by month, year-on-year, that they are far better off employing a professional review management service. Our review management service.


We want you to feel like Paul Grover at Winkworth:

As regular readers will know – we have a long-standing habit of making predictions about where Google will go next.  They are based on logic (and lots of research – reading Google blog posts and other sources). Now, at long-last, as we say in the headline, Google have fulfilled our most ambitious predictions. How?

Last week they expanded their Filter beyond hospitality for the first time – allowing users to choose a minimum rating...

Now they have introduced ‘Top Rated’:

Why is this such big news?

Because businesses that have happily appeared in search without any reviews – or with less than five – or with poor review scores (less than 4.0) – will now be subject to the filter and the best businesses – in the opinion of their customers –  will, for the first time, be shown above those with no reviews or low (less than 4.0) Google scores.


Our predictions (again!):

• that Google will begin to show businesses in order of their Google score – the business that scores 4.9 above the business that scores 4.6 and that business above the one that scores 4.3 
• that Google will then delete the option to select reviews by star rating, leaving Top Rated as the default filter

Implications for businesses:

This is a fundamental shift for Google – away from purely location-based search towards what their users have always wanted: the best hotel, the best plumber, the best accountant – the best business for any given search.

And it has massive implications for businesses that have yet to engage in proactive review management:

• No reviews? Your business will be filtered for the overwhelming majority of searches. 
• Score less than 4.0? The same
• Score between 4.0 and 4.3? Your business is on the edge of the filter
• Score less than your competitors? You are likely to rank below them in the very near future
• Score less than 4 of your competitors in mobile search?: you will be relying on your potential customers to scroll down to see you

Don’t panic!

Don’t immediately embark on a campaign to get Google reviews. This will almost certainly backfire in ways that you will currently be unable to imagine, and harm done now has the potential to haunt your business for years to come.

We strongly suggest you speak to us: our initial advice is free and we have seen all the mistakes before.

And one final note:

We occasionally meet potential clients who feel that they don’t need to look great in Google search – only occasionally, but we do. Our message to those who do not rely on the web or their website to generate business is:

• No matter how insignificant the amount of your business directly generated by search or visits to your website your potential clients are influenced by how your business looks there, even if they have only visited to check your telephone number or email address. A business that takes the trouble to invite and display verified reviews will, all other factors being equal, impress.

Here are four complete screenshots of the filtering process – which we estimate will take anyone under the age of 50 less than two seconds to complete! – so you can see the filter in action in all its glory:

Note that in this example two agents are filtered – even one that is advertising.

To read the main article about the Google Filter click here.

What is HelpHound?

HelpHound are review management consultants. That means we are experts on everything review-related and we provide a service to our clients that covers the whole spectrum:

•  software to gather reviews and display them on your own website (Dialogue™)
•  a mechanism to allow you to manage negative or misleading reviews in private (Resolution™), deflecting them away from public sites
• an automated invitation to enable your customers to get their reviews copied to Google (or other sites that matter to your business)
• advice on how best to invite reviews
• advice on how to respond to reviews – on your own site, on Google and on any other review site 
• advice on appealing negative reviews on Google and other review sites
• advice on how to train and motivate staff to embed reviews into their daily contact with their customers

If you would like to see what happens when a business joins HelpHound, just read this article.

Here’s a memo we would hand you if we met in person, it describes various ‘before and after’ scenarios – all of which will apply to your business:

What is HelpHound not? 

Helphound is emphatically not a review website. We believe that your customers opinions should belong to you, not an independent review site. We also firmly believe that the place your reviews need to be seen is on your own website and on Google – and once you have established a presence in those two places: on Facebook.

If I were to read three articles out of the hundreds on this blog, which ones would you recommend?

These will tell you most of what you need to know before you meet – or speak to – someone at HelpHound:

• The World of Reviews and Review Management – a good all-round primer
• Google review 3 years on – Google is so fundamentally important now – it has forced all the independent review sites into the darker recesses or off page 1 completely
• The Google Filter – this has been applied to hotels and restaurants since January 2016 and the roll-out across estate agents began this week. Essential reading if your business has less than 5 reviews on Google or scores less than 4.0

Oh – and for those of you who are considering linking to one of the independent sites – just one more: Independent Review Sites: Yesterday’s answer to today’s question – we have always had issues with sites that invite your customers to post reviews and then sell them back to the business – we coined the expression ‘hostage site’ – but we monitor them and report on them and have, on occasion, advised clients to use them (a good example of this is TripAdvisor – and why-oh-why won’t they do more to cut down on fake reviews?).

How does HelpHound charge?

We make a one-off charge to design and implement your module into your own website. This varies from less than £100 for a standard ‘off-the-shelf’ module to more for special designs. We will always provide an accurate estimate before starting work on your own module.


After that we make a monthly charge for operating our software and moderating your reviews. This will usually be about £50 per month per location, often less – depending on review flows. This fee covers all our normal advice. For specialist advice and extra work we charge, like other professionals, an hourly fee. Again, we will always provide an estimate for such work in advance.


How should we judge the success of our HelpHound membership?


Professional review management should drive business to and through your door whilst enabling you to resolve consumer issues in private.

It’s not such a bad place to start, some businesses first contact us because they only have a negative review – on Google or some other review site that matters to them. In this article we will describe what HelpHound does for new clients with no reviews anywhere on the web.


So – what will HelpHound do?

The first thing we do is design a module for your website: 

Prospective customers will be able to see all of your reviews:

It will fit in with your branding – using your own colourways. 

The module will contain questions – a maximum of seven (although we usually recommend five to start with). We will advise on these, but the final decision on wording rests with you:

We will then give you an email to send to your customers. Embedded in this email will be a link that goes straight to your HelpHound module on your website, so they can write their review.


When the review is written we will automatically send them a second email – from you – asking them to copy their review to Google.

Results

You should expect roughly 50% of the customers you invite to write a review to your website:

 And about 50% of those to go on and copy their review to Google:

This will give you a Google score (once you have 5 reviews):

And a star rating – based on your HelpHound score – in natural search:

    
   Not so hard, was it?