How To Respond To Negative Reviews Online

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Your company’s online reputation is vital to the continued success of your business. Because so much of today’s web content is user generated, thanks to the Web 2.0 revolution, what people say about your company and how fast it can be ricocheted around the internet, can no longer be ignored. If your company has been unfortunate enough to have a negative review impact its profitability, then you will appreciate the techniques Optimum7 can show you to combat its effects.

1. Respond to the negative review on the site where it was originally posted. This will give you back control over the tone of the dialogue by being able to inject professionalism into the debate. State to the reviewer how their facts might be incorrect, or implore them to contact you directly so that you can work towards resolving their problem. Not only does this show potential new clients that you are willing to listen to their complaints, it sends a clear signal that you care about your reputation and you will defend your brand’s name.

2. Ask the site on which it was posted to remove ...
... it. Yes, unfortunately you will have to do this for each site that picks it up. Explain is the most honest way you can why the review should be removed: why it is incorrect, how you know it is intended as a malicious attempt by a competitor to hurt your brand, why you think it was written by a past employee with a grudge. This is important because otherwise, companies have no incentive to remove a negative review if they feel it is justified, or if it is driving traffic to their site.

3. Replace the negative review with positive content. By writing ‘fresh content’ that search engines will pick up which deals with the topic that was negatively reviewed, you can effectively respond to a negative review by replacing it on the search engine result pages. This lets you manage the overall impact of the negative review because, if someone is looking for it or searching for information about your company, they will come across these positive articles and blog posts before they get to the actual negative review. The hope is that you have addressed the matter so thoroughly that a prospective user will dismiss the negative opinion by the time they come across it.

The way that search engines work is to harvest new content, so it will pick up a new negative review if someone plugs in your company name in a search. Other sites know how search engines works also, so they employ automated programs to pick up ‘fresh content’ from other sites and bring it to their own. This is one of the organic ways content gets syndicated and ends up having a life of its own, because all online companies want the search engine bots to visit them so they can gain visibility. The downside of these processes is that a negative review could end up all over the web before you catch it. At Optimum7, we use this kind of organic SEO in your favor to help you respond to and counteract the effects of a negative review. Contact us if you have a negative review, we can help. You can call us at 1-800-736-9618.