If your business is lucky, you will spot a few reviews sprouting up across the internet. These may come from forums, from blogs, or through review sites. The reviews may be positive, but many will be negative. Either way, reviews mean good things for your business, particularly in terms of SEO.

The connection between reviews and search engine optimisation is not hard to discern. The more mentions of your business across the net, the more information the search engines have when trying to calculate your ranking. If reviews are posted on a site with categorisation, or on a site related to your industry, the relevance factor of your site increases. This is all good news, regardless of whether the review is a negative one or a positive one. Your business itself, however, relies on the positives outweighing the negatives. There are ways to ensure that all reviews come out as the former.

Marketers tend to pull out the superb Bing Crosby standard when it comes to negative feedback, and ‘ac-cent-u-ate the positive’. The same is true for reviews and SEO. A professional can be of immense help in turning reviews around, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult. However, any business can perform some damage control:

• Accept that negative reviews happen. Many businesses run into trouble by trying to ensure that negative reviews never occur. Customer satisfaction is important for every business, but no-one can please everyone. Negative reviews will be posted. Almost all review sites will refuse to take a review down, even if you suspect it is from a competitor. Negative reviews need to be accepted and acknowledged
• Formulate a policy of response. Many review sites will allow a reply. You need to draw up responses for negative reviews and positive. Both need to respectfully acknowledge what the reviewer has said. You may not always want to reply to a positive review, but it does help to encourage users to review
• Develop a scanning schedule. Negative reviews need to be countered as soon as possible, but businesses can’t afford to spend all of their time on the net. Some review sites will allow you to register for alerts when your business is reviewed. For all other sites, you need to calculate the likelihood that you will be reviewed and check periodically
• Reply, where possible. Not every review site will allow replies. If this is the case, contact the site manager to see if a reply is possible. You will need to present a reason for them to allow your reply. People will be interested if the review had factual errors, or if you have taken steps to remedy the issues brought up in the review. They will be less interested if you simply feel the reviewer’s opinion was wrong
• Resolve the reviewer’s issues. Where possible, you should try to contact the reviewer. In most cases, this will be impossible. In your reply, address their complaint and ask them to contact you

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