Category: Google

Posted on

Google Gets Serious About Building Business Reviews for the Web

Two women
Google is going after building local business reviews by real people.

Just this last week I joined the ranks of Google’s local reviewers. Google has quietly put the word out that it wants to enlist its own approved writers to start building reviews on local businesses. Google calls their program “Local Guides”.

You too can apply to be a writer. I am not sure what their criteria is to be approved, but as I am already reviewing local businesses and write regularly for many venues, I was approved the same day.

Here are the perks you’ll get based on the amount of reviews you write.  There is no money involved, just bragging rights, really.

That being said, what is interesting is to identify is that Google considers reviews done by real people to be important. So important that it is enticing a wide variety of individuals to beef up the number of business reviews in the Google Places arena by creating a special program complete with enticements for 5, 50, and 200 review levels.

If you need help with reviews for your own business and you are not getting the action you need from Google’s Local Guides I invite you to review our Brand Booster program to help build online reviews and web visibility.

 

Posted on

Google Starts to Warn Website Owners on Mobile Viewing Issues

Google Notice on Mobile
You do not want to get this email from Google!

You do not want to get email from Google – really!  Just this week Google started posting in the Webmaster Control Panel and emailing website owners notifications like this one.

“Google systems have tested 25 pages from your site and found that 96% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 24 pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.”

Seeing as this site has only 25 pages, that means that Google is in essence saying “you’ve got big problems!”

Earlier in the year, Google warned that they would be evaluating websites for mobile friendliness and they also stated that this notification such as this one in this blog post would be the first step. The second step, Google stated,  would be to mark the site in the Google mobile search index as not viewable on a mobile phone.  Yikes, that sounds like a soft penalty.

Google also alluded to a third step which to many webmasters such as myself appears to be a organic penalty. Although Google may be slow to take this last action, they are clearly working their plan starting just this past week.

Many legacy websites are simply not responsive designed and are not mobile friendly. The site that received this notification is over 8 years old. If your site was not built in the last two years, expect to be getting notification of problems too.

I invite you to review our prices and programs to help you move your legacy website to a responsive site that Google will love. Find out more today.

Posted on

Your Online Reviews Really Matter

Ostrich
Don’t Stick Your Head in the Sand When You Get a Bad Review

This is the struggle for businesses and it is real – get a bad online review and how do you deal with it and move beyond it. First you should not ignore a bad online review. That does not mean that you have to respond to one, but you definitely want to think about your strategy when you get one.

1. Review the legitimacy. Should you change something you are doing?

2. Decide if and should you respond. Not every comment about your business deserves and needs a response.

3. If you do respond, don’t respond in anger. Craft your response and sit on it for several days, read and re-read your response. Make sure you are not venting.

4. If you know who left the review, try to fix the problem and then ask for an update to the review.

Negative reviews can be very damaging to your business but sometimes your own response can make it even worse. You should be regularly monitoring your business reputation online and looking at what others are saying about you. Especially as Google and Bing are now highlighting reviews that they find around the web and meshing them with location specific results in the Knowledge Graph side bar on their search pages.

Posted on

Ready to Connect on Google+ Here’s How

Man having an idea!
A Bright Idea!

I consider activity on Google+ important for business owners. The real SEO and search benefits are however not achieved by updating your Google+ Business page, but rather your Google+ personal page.

So, how can you connect with others to start building your Google+ empire and improved rankings for your company website in the organic listings? Start by making sure the content you write is on target, on topic, and engaging. I use my Google+ page for business and not personal use. Consider doing the same for now.

Work to actively add users to circles and respond when someone adds you to one of their circles. Click +1 and leave comments on posts you find interesting. You’ve simply got to spend some time.

Consider starting a hangout. Well I am still thinking about that one, but have participated in several others and they can be fun. I have just not initiated one.

I personally find that for placement Google+ should be considered important. As Google does not allow any automated or scheduled updates to be passed to your Google+ personal page (Google does to your business page), you will find the community of business people,legitimate, real and engaging.

Personally, I use Facebook for personal interaction on my locked down private page and Google+ as my face on social networks for business.