Reputation is everything, and one negative review can keep you up at night. We all strive for the best star ratings and customer feedback possible, it’s the lifeblood of assuring potential new customers they can trust your products and services. But does it affect your position on search engines? In this article, we explore how to maintain your reviews, legal regulations surrounding them, and even how to get a negative review removed.

Let’s start with the obvious question, do the star ratings and reviews affect my ranking? The answer is, yes. Not only does your reputation give prospective clients feedback of your credibility or trustworthiness, but the ranking and reviews do have an actual impact on your listings position. For instance, according to a study done by Semrush called Do Reviews Impact Local SEO Rankings?, it was discovered that the top 3 positions on Google Maps may hold the same rating, but the amount of reviews correlated to who held the first position. Sounds fair. Time to get to work.

But wait, there are other sites like Yelp, Angi, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. Do they effect the ranking? Well, yes and no. There have been many studies done, articles written, public statements made, and they all seem to point in the same direction. If you type in your business name to a search engine, you’ll show up as more of the available links to your social accounts, but it does not seem to impact your SEO ranking when searching for services or products you provide. You can think of those platforms as their own ecosystems with their own ranking and reviews, so it’s best to manage them as well.

Ok, so you have great reviews, now you need more. Should you send an email requesting a review? Should you text a link? What about asking over the phone? In our experience, the best way to get a new review is to politely ask at opportune moments. Is the client happy? Did you just complete a major project? Are you on-site and have their attention? You’ll obtain better results when you think on an individual basis. Happy customer equals a good review.

What if your company is large or doesn’t have time to ask everyone individually? Sure, larger businesses have more data points and client lifecycles to think about, that is why you really need a properly managed Customer Relationship Manager (CRM). Milestones, anniversaries, project completions can all automatically trigger a review request directly to a customer, increasing the probability of you getting a new positive review. You can read more about CRMs and their benefits in another one of ALTAMIT’s articles, CRMs, How Can They Benefit You?.

So most of what we are saying shouldn’t be that complicated, in fact most of it is common sense. Happy customer means a higher likelihood of a good review. But now here comes the challenge, how do I get good reviews and not negative ones? Well, let’s start with the guidelines according the FTC Guidelines:

1. Don’t ask for reviews only from people you think will leave positive ones.

2. If you offer an incentive to consumers for leaving a review, don’t condition it, explicitly or implicitly, on the review being positive. Even without that condition, offering an incentive to write a review may introduce bias or change the weight and credibility that readers give that review. For these reasons, some platforms have prohibited incentivized reviews altogether or have established mechanisms for labeling them.

3. Don’t prevent or discourage people from submitting negative reviews.

Ok, good now what about incentivizing reviews, is that allowed? We are not attorneys, and it is always our recommendation to seek guidance for your legal advisors, but again according to the FTC, if you do not “gate” negative reviews, you are allowed to offer incentives and the incentive is fully disclosed. Again, this is in reference the FTC’s webpage Featuring Online Customer Reviews: A Guide for Platforms. It goes without saying, this information is subject to change after the posting of this article.

Guidelines out of the way, how do you get that pesky negative review removed? Well, maybe you can and maybe you can’t. What is more important is the context of the review and if it violates Google’s policies. As of this article’s posting date, they define a few of these categories as follows:

• Fake engagement

• Impersonation

• Misinformation

• Misrepresentation

• Harassment

• Offensive Content

• Personal Information

• Obscenity & Profanity

• More can be found on Google’s User Contributed Content Policy

If someone violates these policies, the review is fair game to be contested and potentially taken down. It’s always worth a try, right? We’ve seen some reviews take many back and forth emails with their support team to resolve and remove, and we’ve seen negative reviews taken down within 24 hours, it really depends on how you approach it. Sometime a review is so obviously inappropriate it’s an easy process, but in those cases where a review is more nuanced it is best to be precise, professional, and collect empirical evidence to support your request for a review’s removal.

We’ve gone over a lot in this article, but there is much more to this than most business owners realize, that is why we are here to help. Whether you need to start growing your company reviews, need assistance with a negative review, or show your outstanding customer reviews on your website, contact your local experts at ALTAMIT today. Visit ALTAMIT.net to chat live with an online specialist. Or call (888) 377-ALTA, that’s (888) 377-2582 to speak with a specialist now.