Positive reviews will help your website rankings and more often than not potential customers will call a company with some postive reviews before they will call a company with no reviews.

There are a hundreds of customer review websites on the web for all types of products and services. Customers can write a review on your Google Local, Bing, Yahoo business sites that we created. There plenty of others like Yelp and the BBB.

People ofen rely on the reviews to determine if they want to use the product or service and unfortunatly if left to chance, only disatisfied customers will write a review and it’s usually negative.

The best way to build a great set of reviews is to ask your customers for them. If you do a great job, most likely you’ll receive positive reviews.

If you want to look for more industry specific review sites that you may want to be concered with, search google for the following:

1) Search for your company and/or it’s product names add “reviews” to the search phrase.

2) Do the same for your competitors

3) Search for generic product and services with the word “reviews”

How to get your customers or clients to create a review:

1) Send a message out to your recent customers asking for them to post a review. If they were not happy with your product or service, provide your phone number so you can correct the problem (try to avoid negative reviews).

2) Create and automated message for new customers that goes out a week or two after they received your product or service.

3) Offer them a discount on their next purchase if they bring in proof of a review. It will probably be a positive one since they won’t want to show you a negative review. Make sure it doesn’t cross the ethical line of paying for reviews.

4) Include a list of the sites where you would like the review posted with simple step by step instructions on how to post the review.

Social media sites like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter are a big part of the marketing world these days.  If you’re like me, it’s hard to find the time to keep them all updated.  In a previous post, I discussed hot to automate posts to facebook and tweets to twitter from your blog.

Automatic Blog Posts in Facebook and Twitter

You can now automatically post email broadcast messages on facebook and twitter just like your posts.   You can get this service through Aweber Email Marketing, which is who I use for my email marketing.

Expand your online marketing into the social media domain with very little extra work from you.  Not sure, give me a call and I’ll show you how.

If you need help, let me know!

Your website and content need to look great.

Competitive Assessment

Compare your website to your competitions.  Search Google for your product and service.  Find your local and or national competitors sites.  What kind of content do they have on their site, how is it organized, what kind of pictures are they using.  Could your website be improved to have similar information about your business?

Friend Critique

Have your family, friends and or close business contacts review and critique your website from a potential customer’s perspective.  Listen to their comments and update your site accordingly.

Customers appreciate people they can trust.  With people you trust you’re more likely to give them your time… and your business.

You obviously want customers to trust you with their time and their business, but they may not no they can.  So how will you  assure them your OK and can be trusted?

So How Do You Build Their Trust

Make a Great First Impression and be Transparent (Open and Honest) in everything you do.  From your very first email, phone call or when they visit your website, you need to make a great first impression.

Be honest, up-front and approachable.  In our world of the anonymous internet, text, avatars… be someone real and tangible.

Build trust every day with your customers with by using the following tips:

Deliver want you promise, guarantees, deadlines and quantities on specials must be upheld.   Be careful of limitations on your offers and service.  If you offer a 10% discount in an email, you need to give the 10% discount, no exceptions and don’t raise your price to cover the discount.

Privacy Policy, make sure you privacy is posted on your website and that it’s easily available, create a link to it from you web form pages and maybe even include it in emails.

Transparency, be open and honest do mislead customers with information in your email or on your website.  I’ve seen desperation make people do some strange things.

Business Name and Address, include a valid business name, address and phone number on your website.  This should be the same for all your customer communications, letters and emails.  If you’re a local business include it on the bottom of every page.

Phone Number, include your phone number on your website and in your emails.  Don’t hide behind the anonymous web with only a website form.

Picture of Your, how about a picture of you, yes you, not a model but the real person who owns the business.  You may also want to include this picture in the emails that you send, it makes them and you more personable and real.  Make the photo friendly with a smile.

FAQs on your website, make your answers straightforward, direct, helpful and complete.  If they are evasive or vague, alarm bells might go off with your customers.

Follow through, follow up with each and every customer to ensure their trust and confidence is being met.

Remove the barriers, do you send emails with a “Do Not Reply”?  If so this is sending the wrong message to your customers, you want them to reply, solicit their feedback, understand their needs.  If you don’t want feedback are you hiding something?

Trust and honesty should be at the core of your business values.

Yes SEO and Local SEO will exist in five years.  Google tries to make it so you don’t need to be an SEO expert but in the end using white hat SEO best practice is like polishing your website’s resume.  As tools and search technology changes, so will the content and what’s needed to continue to give you a top listing in the search engines.

Use SEO to continually update and make sure your website well represented.  You want to make the right impressions for site visitors and the search engines.  As you add content, use white hat versus black hat SEO strategies, follow content best practices, make sure it’s correct canonically and above all else stay away from black hat SEO practices.  Black hat SEO will become less and less productive over time and your energy will become wasted.

Even Google supports SEO, they have their webmaster tools to help you understand and improve your website as well as published SEO Starter Guidelines.  Matt Cutts even has his own blog where he continues address SEO and Google.

Do it right and SEO will pay dividends in organic search results.

Google reserves the right to modify and or create the search results snippet that they show in their search results.  While they may use the meta tag description if it accurately reflects the content on your page, they most likely will use a snippet or modified description.

<!–adsense–>

So why don’t they use your Meta Description Tag if it’s what you want?

As you can imagine, not every webmaster is as honest or trustworthy as you might be.  They may include a Meta Tag Description about the cartoon network and when you click on the link in the search results it would actually take your kids to a porn site.  So it’s not that Google thinks they know more than you do about your website, unfortunately due to the integrity of the unscrupulous few, they have to put these rules in place.

You should still create the best meta description tag for each of your pages.  Google will consider it and other search engines may use it.  Do it with integrity and have it reflect the content of your web page.

The following shows and example of how the appearance of your Craigslist ad can be changed with the <TABLE>, <FONT> and <IMG SRC> HTML Tags.

The pictures in your ad just need to be stored on a website somewhere like your website, picassa or flickr.  Using tables you can center your ad in the craigslist page and strategically locate pictures where you want them.

I show you the details on how to do this in my Craigslist Marketing Course

Returned to Craigslist formatting

Here are some formatting ideas that will improve the look of your Craigslist Ad.  You should think about adding pictures, tables, changing the font and maybe even a little bit of color.  With a little formatting and some graphics, you can make your Craigslist ad look like a squeeze website page.

The first thing you should do is write your Craigslist Ad in a word processor or Google Apps Documents.  When you need to post your ad, simply copy the text with coding and paste it into craigslist.  This will save all kinds of retyping and will the easy placement of images in your ad.

You may want to reference these resources for which HTML Tags Craigslist allows for formatting:

Craigslist Training Program

Craigslist formatting example

Craigslist HTML Reference Page

In my Craigslist training program, it shows detailed videos with examples on how to format Craigslist ads with pictures, tables and fonts.

Here are some thought starters for Craigslist Ad formatting:

• Use HTML tables to organize the text and pictures on your page
• Link to pictures on your website, Picassa or Flickr using IMG SRC HTML.
• Use the <HR>, horizontal rule to add a line to help breakup your information.
• Use the <FONT> tag to change the size and color of some of your text.  Don’t overdo it, just enough to emphasize the key points.

Return to Craigslist Ad Content and Formatting

The following ideas can work for any type of business and you can use them for Twitter, Facebook, Email Campaigns or even website blog posts.

Post or Tweet:

• Menu Changes
• Recipes
• Diet Ideas
• Special Events
• Specials for your twitter or facebook customers
• Specials on Gift Cards for Holidays or Birthdays
• Coupons
• New Reviews on your restaurant
• Customer Comments, of course the positive ones.
• Tips from your chef
• What else might impress your customers?
• What should you do next to fill your tables?

Of course if you don’t have a Website, you can use a Facebook page or create one using these ideas.  I can create a free site on Google Apps.

See our Restaurant Website Ideas Using Google Apps.

Return to Google Apps

I guarantee your business will be found on the front (first) page local search results in Google, Yahoo or Bing within 90 days of your account activation and receipt of your business profile information.

Our Local SEO has a laser focus on achieving front page results in local maps, organic search or in sponsored advertising for your business.  While I cannot guarantee the top listing, we will get your business on the front (first) page results.

We will improve your business page rank by using white hat SEO techniques and apply them to your Local SEO strategies, improving your online reputation through incoming links and other directory listings.

We do this through keyword optimization, linking, business profile pages, business directory listing and web site reviews and consultation on best practice SEO strategies for you to employee.

Again, if I your business does not have a front page listing on Google, Yahoo Local or Bing Local within 90 days, upon your request, your basic service will be absolutely free until you can find your business on the front page.

What we do:

Our guarantee is based on a local search of your primary service category or one of your five business sub categories.  This is how new customers in your area will find you. These results will show in either the local map results or in the organic search results.

For example, your primary category may be “Concrete Contractor in Orlando” and your five business categories may be cement contractor, concrete surfacing, epoxy resurfacing and pool contractor.

If after 90 days or any month after the 90 days, you don’t have a front page local listing in one of the major search engines for one of your categories, simply give us a call and we’ll credit you for your next month service.

What our competitors do:

Our competitors will attempt to fool you into thinking they’ve achieved front page results.  They’ll demonstrate by searching using your business name or even worse your phone number, of course you’ll have front page results for that, you are the only one that exists.  This is not how new customers looking for a product or service search! They don’t know your name and they don’t know your phone number, they generically search for a service or produced, and that’s what we use to guarantee our Local SEO search results.

You may also see a similar guarantee from some of my competitors, but typically this is tied to a Google AdWords or other PPC advertising campaign.  Of course you spend more money every month buying a front page listing.  Anyone can do that, I would be happy to if you want.

Why Local SEO

Once you business is on the front page, your there 24-7 365 days a year.  No cost per click or advertising budget, just one low Local SEO charge to help ensure your front page listing.

Return to Local SEO