Most small businesses and companies don’t think about online reviews and the impact they can have both positively and negatively on your business.

Some business owners are afraid to find no reviews, and some are afraid of finding bad reviews. These are definitely not reasons to ignore the power of review sites.

Business reviews are more important now than ever for several reasons. It might come as a surprise to find out that business reviews for some sites now show up in the top search engine results for that company.

For example, try doing a search such as reviews for ‘company name’ and look at the results. Review sites such Angie’s List, Google My Business, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, and Better Business Bureau are going to show up at the top of the list due to the ranking power of a website that gets thousands of visitors leaving comments about ‘x-brand’ company.

Moreover, it’s clear that business reviews aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they are becoming more and more popular.

That is why it’s more important now than ever to get involved and build a presence in the online review community. These types of reviews are invaluable to any business for many different reasons. If you get good reviews, then you can look at those and see what you are doing right that makes your customers happy.

On the other hand, negative reviews can show you where you need to improve, and you can either defend yourself online if you’ve done nothing wrong, or you can make things right with an unhappy customer — which shows that you are accountable and genuine.

This builds trust and authority for your small business and also confidence in any future customers that might be looking at how you handle complaints.

The one thing that you don’t want is to have unmanaged online negative reviews without taking the necessary action. This will hurt your business.

Anyone knows that having a good reputation can drive conversions. And with so many businesses out there competing for business, it’s a good idea to manage your online reviews.

If you would like to know how to take control of your online reviews, and how to get started building your businesses trust and authority, then contact us and we’ll help get you started.

cnelson@championonlinemarketing.com
Chad Nelson