It happens, you Google your company's name and BAM, some customer or previous employee has badmouthed your company or your company's product. What do you do? Don't worry. There are steps that you can take to get some of the heat off of you. In fact, there is a step-by-step process that you can follow to either get the negative online review removed, or pushed down in the search engine results pages (SERPS).
Negative company reviews can be found on review sites, scam blogs, Google places, Glassdoor, Ripoff Report, etc. Some of these negative review sites can be pretty nasty. If you have a negative review about your company or your product on the first page of the search results, you should be worried. You should be so worried that you actually do something about it. If the negative review is on the second page of Google, just keep an eye on it and make sure that it doesn't make its way to page one.
People don't really click through to page two of search results. Some do, but the first page of results gets enough clicks to keep those on page two at bay. If the negative review is on page one, the trouble it makes with your business is directly proportionate to its search rank. If it is ranked fifth or better, you better get busy. If it is ranked sixth or lower on Google, you can do some SEO yourself as a novice and get it pushed down to page two. It takes some work, but it's definitely do-able. Most people only click on the first two or three results for a search anyway, so if you control that real estate, you're in better shape than you think.
How do you fix a bad business review? Three ways are tried and true to removing negative reviews.
Send an email to the site administrator or website owner FIRST. Sometimes this alone can get a poor review about your company or product removed. Just be sure that you have a viable reason for the site owner to remove the review. Possible reasons could be that the information is false (and you can prove it), it violated a confidentiality agreement between you and a past employee, etc.
If the site owner doesn't respond to the email, send several more emails. If those don't work, you should respond to the poster's complaint. Apologize for any miscommunications or errors on your part and make sure that you state what procedures have been implemented to keep situations like his/hers from happening ever again. In reality, you are letting your potential customers know that the complaint should be dismissed.
Responding to the negative online review isn't enough, though. You must now bury it to page two of the search results. I have done this and have seen this done. It takes a ton of time and effort, so be prepared. If you don't have the time, you should probably just hire a reputation management company to do it for you. You can also outsource the work to multiple parties. Some negative review sites are stickier than others, so you may spend months, if not longer, putting some positive content out there to see a positive result. But there is hope!
It takes time to fix negative online reviews. Be patient, do the work, and the results will come.
Negative company reviews can be found on review sites, scam blogs, Google places, Glassdoor, Ripoff Report, etc. Some of these negative review sites can be pretty nasty. If you have a negative review about your company or your product on the first page of the search results, you should be worried. You should be so worried that you actually do something about it. If the negative review is on the second page of Google, just keep an eye on it and make sure that it doesn't make its way to page one.
People don't really click through to page two of search results. Some do, but the first page of results gets enough clicks to keep those on page two at bay. If the negative review is on page one, the trouble it makes with your business is directly proportionate to its search rank. If it is ranked fifth or better, you better get busy. If it is ranked sixth or lower on Google, you can do some SEO yourself as a novice and get it pushed down to page two. It takes some work, but it's definitely do-able. Most people only click on the first two or three results for a search anyway, so if you control that real estate, you're in better shape than you think.
How do you fix a bad business review? Three ways are tried and true to removing negative reviews.
Send an email to the site administrator or website owner FIRST. Sometimes this alone can get a poor review about your company or product removed. Just be sure that you have a viable reason for the site owner to remove the review. Possible reasons could be that the information is false (and you can prove it), it violated a confidentiality agreement between you and a past employee, etc.
If the site owner doesn't respond to the email, send several more emails. If those don't work, you should respond to the poster's complaint. Apologize for any miscommunications or errors on your part and make sure that you state what procedures have been implemented to keep situations like his/hers from happening ever again. In reality, you are letting your potential customers know that the complaint should be dismissed.
Responding to the negative online review isn't enough, though. You must now bury it to page two of the search results. I have done this and have seen this done. It takes a ton of time and effort, so be prepared. If you don't have the time, you should probably just hire a reputation management company to do it for you. You can also outsource the work to multiple parties. Some negative review sites are stickier than others, so you may spend months, if not longer, putting some positive content out there to see a positive result. But there is hope!
It takes time to fix negative online reviews. Be patient, do the work, and the results will come.
About the Author:
Be sure to visit a great example of a optimized blog post for burying scam claims and bad reviews here: http://increviews.bravesites.com/entries/general/blitz-inc-bellevue-review
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