"How many reviews should my business have online?" "How can I encourage more good reviews?" "Yelp for Business Owners."
It's likely that you've tried to search online for answers to questions like these. The answer to the first question will always be: "never enough." The answers to the second and third are much more complicated.
You might be frantically looking for quick ways to give your small business a boost online. Once you learned that Yelp was one of the most important review sites to be listed on, you narrowed your search. You might have even heard of the option to buy Yelp reviews to boost your rating.
A few clicks through your search for "Yelp for Business Owners" thankfully brought you here. Many other companies offer services for fake reviews, but it's important to learn what this really means before you move forward. Below is a guide for small business owners that you can use to optimize your business listing.
Read further to learn about how Yelp works, the art of review manipulation, and better options for improving your online rating!
A Harvard Business Review study showed that small businesses can increase their revenue by raising their star rating online. Having a lot of great reviews could drive more traffic to your business and persuade customers to pick you over a competitor. Bad reviews, or not enough reviews, can make your business look less credible.
Yelp reviews of your business can potentially get the attention of 170 million customers who browse the website. This means that Yelp holds the power to make or break your business.
It's right to be concerned as a small business owner, but you can use your knowledge about Yelp to your advantage.
Your customers can go on Yelp to rate your business from 1 to 5 stars and leave a comment about their experience. Without a doubt, the best Yelp reviews will be from customers who visit Yelp to enthusiastically leave a 5-star review. This means that your customer service and the quality of your product were so great that they were compelled to tell everyone.
On the other hand, customers can also be highly motivated to review your business online by a terrible experience. It's likely that this could be the result of a misunderstanding, but it's often hard to handle this once it is public. When you are a small business just starting out, the reality of this online rating system can be horrifying.
There is an abundance of online services and companies that offer fake reviews for a price. Small business owners are likely to be tempted by these services, but it's important to learn more about these reviews.
Many business owners are worried about their competition and falling behind. Buying fake Yelp reviews to boost their business's ratings while they try to build their brand and customer base can seem like a great idea. Some benefits to buying Yelp reviews include:
Many businesses have learned the power of online reviews and decided to employ fake review services. Types of review manipulation include:
Consumers are aware of the power of reviews as well. Many consumers take advantage of negative reviews to score discounts. More malicious people will leave bad reviews to ruin businesses in their free time.
Yelp has even gotten into trouble in the past for allowing businesses to pay for better placements in search results. While this isn't quite the same as buying fake reviews, both tactics undermine the consumer's trust.
"What could happen if I buy my way into great ratings?" you ask. "If everyone is manipulating reviews, why shouldn't I?"
Manipulating reviews may be popular, but the consequences are severe if you are caught. Both Yelp and the government can take action against you that will drastically hurt you and your business.
Once Yelp notices that your business is building up fake reviews, the website will remove Yelp reviews from your account. If Yelp feels that further action must be taken, they can post a consumer alert on your listing so that any customers visiting your page will learn about your tactics. This consumer alert will be on your listing for 90 days, effectively ruining consumer trust in your business.
Buying Yelp reviews is also illegal. The Federal Trade Commission can impose huge fines and take legal action against you. Your business could even be shut down.
Any reviews that could be marked as "false or unsubstantiated," "deceptive," or having "undisclosed connections" to your business could result in serious consequences.
These punishments will hurt your business far worse than bad reviews. Hopefully, these consequences will deter you from buying Yelp reviews. What can you do instead?
While getting Yelp reviews is very important for your business, let's not forget about Google reviews.
Having your Google My Business account set up on Google and keeping a close eye on your online reputation is critical as that's the first thing people see in search results when Googling your business.
Just like Yelp, or any other review platform for that matter, you shouldn't buy Google reviews either. Instead, there are ways to grow your business and online presence organically so you don't have to pay for Yelp reviews. Once you lay out a plan for encouraging good reviews, you will see your Yelp listing improve greatly and drive traffic to your store.
To begin, Yelp allows you to ask customers for positive reviews. This could encourage happy customers to put in the extra effort for you. Customers that enjoyed your service, but don't take the extra step to leave a review, would be more likely to do so if you ask.
Some other ways to get good reviews are:
Yelp also has a feature that allows you to review ratings. This will flag reviews that seem fake or like spam so that they do not affect your rating. However, Yelp does not always accurately identify these reviews.
Sometimes authentic reviews get caught in this review filter. Unfortunately, this means you lose those reviews, and your rating won't be calculated. This often happens to reviews left by customers that are new on Yelp, don't have a profile picture, or constantly leave 5-star reviews.
In order to remedy this, you can try to reach out to the reviewer to let them know their reviews are being flagged. You can encourage them to become more active on Yelp or update their profile. Hopefully, this will help their next review count.
By incorporating all of these tactics into your marketing strategy, you can be sure your business profile will improve with a higher rating.
While there are many companies that offer the dubious service of fake reviews, there are also companies that can help you manage your online reputation and monitor your reviews the right way. If you don't want to participate in the risky and deceptive business of fake reviews, you can employ more trustworthy services to help improve Yelp reviews.
A good reputation management service can help build your brand and take care of your online presence. Small business owners can take advantage of services like cleaning up negative search results and monitoring the way people talk about their businesses online.
The faster you are aware of negative reviews, the faster you can respond to them accordingly. You can request that fake reviews are flagged so they do not affect your rating. If the review is from a verified customer, you can respond to the review to show the customer and the world that your customer service is excellent.
You can also utilize services that help encourage good reviews. TrueReview can help you to secure genuine reviews of your services and products from real customers. This will help you build up the number of quality reviews with high ratings so that your business can shine.
Secure Top Ratings for Your Business
Now that you know the basics of Yelp for business owners, you have the power to take charge of your business's ratings. Encouraging genuinely high ratings from verified customers is the best way to boost your business.
As a small business owner, you are brave and capable, but you're also very busy! If you choose to add honest Yelp tactics to your marketing plan but don't have the time, you can rely on TrueReview to help monitor your business's reviews wherever they're listed.
Contact us to get started with boosting your business's online reputation today!
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