What Google’s New Verified Reviews Update Means for You

Reviews have become one of the most important components of optimization, especially for businesses that primarily interact with their customers online. As I’ve said before, the data shows the importance of reviews with the majority (88%) of consumers trusting online reviews as much as a personal recommendation, 40% of buyers forming an opinion after reading just 1-3 reviews, and 72% of buyers taking action only after reading a positive review.

But as businesses became more aware of the importance and efficacy of reviews in recent years, they began looking for ways to shortcut and obtain more of them, not always in the most honest ways. Fake reviews have become more and more prevalent, and some studies even claim that up to 15% of all online reviews are fake. This is a problem because user-generated content (UGC), like reviews, is an enormous part of what motivates user action and contributes to overall user experience. In light of the fraudulence infecting online reviews (Yelp, Amazon, Google, etc.), many platforms began taking actions to prevent fake reviews and ensure honest and trustworthy reviews for users.

Reviews on Google

In the past, Google has used its Trusted Stores program, which is essentially just “Google Reviews.” It allows pretty much anyone to leave a review on a business’s Google listing, regardless of whether or not they’re a real customer. But with shady business practices and fake reviews becoming more of a problem, Google has retired its Trusted Stores review program and replaced it with Verified Customer Reviews.

What’s new about Verified Customer Reviews?

Rather than just anyone being able to leave a review, Customer Reviews are verified as being written by customers who have made a purchase from a business’s website. This also means that Customer Reviews are exclusive to businesses that have an online store as opposed to just having a business listing on Google.

Some other new features to this type of review include customizable options that businesses can use, include how their review badge looks to users and where seller ratings from these reviews appear through AdWords and Google Shopping.

How can I participate in Google’s Verified Customer Reviews?

Using this new review feature is totally free and easy to implement. Per Google’s blog post about Customer Reviews, here’s how to implement it:

• Sign in to yourMerchant Center account (or sign up if you do not have an account).
  2) Select “Merchant Center programs” from the dropdown in the upper right-hand corner.
  3) Click “Get Started” in the Google Customer Reviews card and accept the Program Agreement.
  4) Add the survey opt-in code to your website.
  5) [Optional] Add the badge code to your site wherever you want. This will make the badge appear on your site, allowing you to display your seller rating and show customers that you’re integrated with Google Customer Reviews.

A quick word about best practices for customer reviews…

If you haven’t been already, now is a good time to make reviews part of your online marketing and optimization efforts. UGC is one of the easiest and most effective ways to drive original and unique content for your website and more likely than not, your audience wants to see honest reviews from previous customers. You can get ideas about different ways to get reviews here and learn about the importance of having reviews across multiple platforms here.

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Why You Should Use Social Listening (and Tips on How to do it)

Since its early development, social media has become an increasingly important and constantly evolving component of online behavior. What used to be platforms for connecting with friends have expanded to include features that integrate everything users need and do online. That overlap includes everything from reporting features and live video sharing to news publications and e-commerce transactions, all streamlined in a way that makes social media platforms the watering hole for modern users. Users now turn to social media platforms to stay informed, post reviews, buy things, and more, and the data that shows just how many users do that is staggering:

• 81% of millennials check Twitter at least once per day
• More than 56% of online adults use more than one social media platform
• 79% of American internet users are on Facebook
• 93% of Pinterest users use the platform to plan or make purchases

This is exactly why brands have a vested interest in not just securing their presence on different social media platforms, but in using the prevalence of it to track their brand. To miss out on what’s being said about a brand or industry online is to willfully bypass an opportunity for business growth and improvement. This is where social listening comes in.

Social Listening is when brands monitor what’s being said about them or their industry in conversations online. Whether a brand follows a set of keywords relevant to their industry or their specific brand name, monitoring what’s being mentioned about them can provide useful information that can provide huge insights. For example, if a brand using social listening began observing several mentions about one of their product’s shortcomings, they could take how their audience is responding to it and use it to address problems. Or if an industry’s customers are buzzing over a specific trend or topic, brands would know what to weigh in on and how to engage their audience.

The idea behind social listening is for brands to keep a finger on the pulse of their own business and industry so they can perform better, and it’s not hard to do. Here’s how you can get started.

Tools for Social Listening

First, you’ll need to use a tool that helps you track the brand name or industry keywords you want to monitor. One of the best tools for this is Google Alerts, because it’s free and is convenient if you’re already using Google Analytics. Other options for social listening tools are Mention, Social Mention, Brand Watch, or Who’s Talkin.

For these tools, all you have to do is input the brands, phrases, or keywords you want to monitor. The tools will return the queries and mentions of them online, and from there you can decide how you want to use them.

How to Use Social Listening for Your Brand

You can use the information you gather from social listening however you see fit for you brand, but here are some ideas on how to get started.

1. Get Content Inspiration

Anyone with a blog knows that constantly coming up with fresh content ideas can be challenging, and social listening can help with that. By reading the mentions and conversations happening around keywords pertaining to your industry, you can see what questions people are asking or what they’re excited and/or talking about to generate ideas for your website or blog. Or, at the very least, you can see what your audience is talking about so your brand can better participate in conversations and engage in relevant discussion.

2. Identify Problems

If you’re monitoring a specific product, topic, service, or otherwise, you can use social listening to potentially identify problems that need addressing. Maybe there’s a glitch in a product that people are talking about or a snag in an online service. By finding the problems through your social listening tools and seeing what people have to say about it, you can use that information to identify and correct problems related to your brand.

3. Reputation Management

Similarly to how social listening can be used to identify problems, it can also be used to manage brand reputations. Monitoring what’s being said about your brand can reveal damaging mentions or reviews that could contribute to a negative image. By having a tool and process in place for tracking those kinds of mentions, your brand can stay on top of its reputation and know what’s being said online.

4. Crowdsourced Campaign Ideas

A lot of research goes into social media or marketing campaigns, and social listening is a great way to enhance that research. Brands can review mentions to get ideas on what type of campaign/content will be successful with their audience, see what the brand is doing that users like or dislike, and use those brand mentions to crowdsource marketing ideas.

5. Find Influencers

Influencer marketing has become one of the most effective ways for brands to communicate with their audience, but sometimes finding the right influencers can be difficult. With social listening, brands can potentially find users that are saying a lot about their products or services online and recruit them to advocate on behalf of the brand.

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How to Overcome a Bad SEO Experience

As an SEO agency, we deal with a wide range of clients. From extremely niche industries, like selling pre-engineered steel buildings, to broader industries, like fitness, our clients come to us from totally different situations with completely different needs. While variations in the industries and needs of our clients presents challenges, there’s almost always a way to help them succeed online with SEO strategies and practices.

Despite how different our clients are and their histories with digital marketing have been, there is a common experience we hear pop up from time to time that’s concerning for us as an agency and others as consumers. A bad SEO experience, or getting burned by an SEO agency, is problematic for both us as service providers and potential clients as consumers for a few reasons:

1. First and foremost, it’s problematic for the client that’s been burned because they’re angry, didn’t get the results they expected, probably lost money, and are ready to throw in the towel with SEO altogether.
2. It’s problematic for us as an agency because a bad SEO experience makes the whole industry look shady and unreliable, thereby deterring future opportunities to help businesses.
3. It presents a unique problem because more often than not, the way to recover from a bad SEO experience is by having a good SEO experience.

As I’m sure you can imagine, it can be a little difficult to explain why a business should consider SEO with another agency after they’ve just lost time, money, and hope on another. “Why should I put more resources into SEO when it’s how I got into this mess in the first place?” “How do I know the same thing that happened with the last SEO agency isn’t going to happen with this one?” We’ve heard both of these valid concerns from clients who have been burned before, and this is how we tell them to overcome a bad SEO experience.

Reflect on what went wrong.

We never blame the client for a bad experience with SEO, but we do ask them to identify what went wrong and how it went wrong. Between businesses and SEOs, it’s easy for the lines of communication to get crossed or for responsibilities to get scrambled, and that’s where problems start to arise. If you’ve had a bad experience with an SEO company, ask yourself: Was I unclear about my expectations? Was there something on my end I needed to do but wasn’t aware of? Were there questions I didn’t know to ask that could’ve prevented this?

By taking a good, critical look at how your situation played out, you can sometimes identify actions or steps that either shifted the course of your strategy or could have been taken to prevent mishaps. If you understand everything that happened and could have been done better on your end, you’ll be more prepared moving forward.

You can learn from your mistakes.

Once you’ve identified what went wrong and have some clarity on the situation, you can use what you’ve learned to have better experiences moving forward. The trick is to use the bad experience you’ve had to set yourself up for success and to do that, you have to prepare. Post bad SEO experience, you have to regroup and reassess your goals. What were the new goals, and what are your goals right now? What needs to happen this time that didn’t happen last time? What questions didn’t get asked last time? Again, use the past experience to broaden your understanding of how SEO works and what was lacking with the company doing it for you.

Think critically about what the solutions to your problems are.

So, the company you hired took you for a ride, and bad SEO has had an adverse effect on your business’s online performance. Now what?

For many businesses that have been burned by SEO, the tendency is to dump it as part of their strategy and never look back. This is understandable, because why would anyone want to invest more time and money into something that failed them? But the problem with that logic is that damage done by bad SEO is often only corrected by good SEO. If bad SEO got your website a penalty, bad rankings, or a messed up site, then good SEO is what gets you out of that.

As natural of a reaction as it may seem, don’t swear off of SEO because you’ve had a bad experience. The right SEOs can and will help you recover and find solutions that will not only help you bounce back but help you have greater success than before.

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Topic Spotlight: The Death of Organic Search

If you haven’t noticed, there have been a lot of articles circulating lately about “the death of organic search.” Half of these articles are dramatized accounts of SEOs impending irrelevance, while the other half are high-level tech-talks that discuss the future of machine learning. In between are everyday business owners who have invested in SEO services and are getting freaked out by all the chatter regarding the alleged dying out of SEO. To clear up some of the common confusion surrounding this topic, here’s a simplified overview of the main things you should know.

So, first thing’s first:

Where did all the death talk come from?

This topic stems from developments that have been made in machine learning and chatter about how it will affect organic search. To understand why people are talking about this, you first have to understand the role of machine learning and AI (Artificial Intelligence) within Search.

A Brief Understanding of Machine Learning and AI

It used to be that keyword stuffing-in titles, headings, content, etc.-was enough to climb to a top ranking position because search engine algorithms started off pretty simple. But that quickly changed as search engines became more sophisticated and adept at spotting shady SEO practices, such as spammy link building or hidden text on web pages. Penguin 1.0 served as the initial game changer for what I’ll loosely refer to here as the ‘Old SEO’, and since then search engine algorithms and advancements have only made it more difficult to game the system.

Since then, search engines have become less focused on a set of simple factors and more concerned with an ongoing and comprehensive approach that commits to user experience. Now, ranking factors determine which sites provide users with the best experience and information (quality content, mobile-ready, fast page speed, easy to navigate site structure, etc.). That means digital marketers have had to get a whole lot more strategic and think holistically about quality and what their audience is most likely to find useful or interesting enough to engage with. So, in other words, there’s been a lot less faking it for SEO.

As a result of all this, search engines now develop and use machine learning AI systems as part of their algorithms to process search results. That’s part of why search has taken on a more natural tone as of late and why Google can guess what you’re searching for before you even finish typing it. It’s also why forcing keywords doesn’t work anymore and says a lot about the direction search is heading, which you can read more about in this awesome article by Jeremy Knauff. The point is that advancements in machine learning AI have changed how SEO works and how it will work in the future.

Connecting the Dots

I’m sure you’re wondering where the advancements of ranking signals and machine learning make the drastic jump to the death of organic search. In short, fear and predictions about shrinking organic space stem from developments implemented from machine learning and Google’s efforts to drive revenue through paid ads.

Basically, it goes like this: findings from machine learning AI systems are used to further improve user experienceàsearch engines adapt by modifying the layout and functions of their search experienceàthe results of machine learning are processed and prioritized in how search engines look and workàthe space for organic search results shrinks. Specifically, the space for organic search results is shrinking under things like more paid ads on top and carousels. Just in October, data showed that the number of traditional organic search results dropped from 10 to 8.5, and that is where the hype surrounding the death of organic search really takes off.

The Bottom Line

An important thing for digital marketers to understand is that as search engines get better at predicting user intent and what search queries will be, there are fewer opportunities to be viewed by users. Think of how voice search has evolved: when a user conducts a voice search, search engines pull the best result without user selection. And while all of this may not mean organic SEO is dying out completely, it certainly does mean it’s changing.

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New to SEO? Here’s how to get started.

If SEO is brand new to you, knowing where to learn or start can be difficult. In fact, SEO can be difficult and overwhelming even if you’re not brand new to SEO. Some people want to learn about SEO so they can do it themselves, while others want to sharpen skills for their digital marketing career. Regardless of what brings newcomers to SEO, it can’t be denied that at least understanding and keeping up with the world of search can be beneficial across many industries.

SEO is an integral part of business, online behavior, and an evolving marketing landscape.

For that reason, it’s near impossible to avoid hearing about-after all, when was the last time you heard someone say “I don’t need SEO for my business”? When the majority of your competitors and businesses within the same online space are all doing something, it gets harder to ignore, which is exactly what’s happened with SEO. The term SEO pops up in conversations, at work, in job interviews-it’s everywhere, and that’s why having a basic familiarity or working understanding of it is so important. Regardless of whether you’re considering SEO as a potential service or just wanting to learn more, here are some simple tips to get you started.

1. Identify what you want from SEO.

First and foremost, identifying why you even want to learn about SEO in the first place can help guide your approach. Are you interested because you’re considering SEO services for your business? Are you looking into starting a career in digital marketing/SEO? Or are you just curious about the developments of search and how they impact the lives of everyday consumers? Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, ‘getting started with SEO’ can mean different things for different people.

2. Start learning.

Once you know what you want from SEO, you can start learning. For a beginner crash course, Moz Academy is a good starting point. A series of friendly videos will walk you through the fundamentals (and beyond) of SEO. When it comes to SEO, there is always more to learn, and you can always choose to add to your knowledge of it once you nail down the basics. To learn about the latest happenings within the world of SEO, read the latest articles produced by reputable search news publishers, such as Search Engine Journal, SEO Round Table, the Moz Blog, and Search Engine Land. Reading the content they produce and following the leaders who write them (their blogs or social media accounts) will help you see what conversations are happening within the industry and put you in the know with who’s who.

3. Talk to people who know SEO.

No matter how far the digital world advances, people remain the greatest resource we have. Regardless of what draws you to SEO, a little good old fashioned conversation can sometimes be the most productive way to get started. For example, if you’re looking into SEO because you’re considering it for your business, then chatting with an agency or SEO professional could help you determine whether or not it’s the right move or the specific practices you’d benefit most from. If you’re interested in becoming an SEO professional, speaking with one can help you get an idea of the skills and prerequisites necessary to make that happen.

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SEO Short Cuts are Tempting, But Not Worth It

As an agency, all our clients come to us expecting different things and holding different ideas about SEO. Some clients are looking for a way to grow their traffic a little more, while others are making a last-ditch effort to save a sinking business. Regardless of the situation they come to us in, we end up hearing a lot of the same questions, comments, and concerns: How long will it take? What works the fastest?

In response to these questions, we find ourselves explaining time and time again that there aren’t any shortcuts to instant viral content or top rankings overnight. Even as an SEO agency and Google Partner, we don’t have special insider hacks or cheats that allow us to bypass the best practices and strategies that take time to help websites. Google is also very clear about the fact that there are no shortcuts for SEO. In fact, in a recent video, they stated 4 months to a year as the typical amount of time needed for SEOs to first implement improvements and then see potential benefit:

There is no secret formula, shortcut, or back door method for SEO, and we think that’s a good thing. Here’s why.

If there were a shortcut, everyone would take it.

SEO has a broad range of approaches, so businesses can pick and choose which strategies will work best with for them (and their budget). SEO is by no means a one size fits all solution and that’s a good thing, because it creates multiple pathways for online success. If there were a shortcut for secret formula that bypassed the process of SEO, everyone would take the easy route. The result would be a bunch of jumbled together results in response to user queries, none of which stand above the rest because they’ve all taken the same shortcut to get there. Search engines are driven by user intent and focused on user experience, and the absence of shortcuts keeps it that way.

Transparency is part of SEO’s appeal. 

Part of what makes SEO such an attractive option for websites is its transparency. Our clients can look up and read about the exact methods we’re using for their account, how it works, why it works, and more. In an industry with a lot of moving, it’s rare to have transparency on how it all works. The areas that lack that transparency, like black hat SEO, are the ones most likely to offer shortcuts and quick fixes, which is exactly what you should be avoiding.

Quality is imperative-and that’s a good thing for businesses.

In a world full of fraudulence, quality remains one of the few things that’s really hard to fake. That’s why the foundation of successful SEO starts with a good hard look at the quality of your website, content, usability, and so on. The best SEO strategy in the world won’t work if it’s for an extremely low-quality business or blog. Part of the reason there aren’t recognized SEO shortcuts is because it would take away from the necessity of quality that search engines are trying to provide users with. Plus, when has improving the quality of business practices and/or content ever hurt a business?

Some things to keep in mind…

SEO is not for everyone.

Different businesses have different needs, and you shouldn’t do SEO if you think it’s going to be a magical, instant fix for all of your challenges. Prior to seeking SEO services, business owners should always look into what their competitors within their industry are doing. Maybe they’re focused on different forms of marketing, or maybe your business just doesn’t have the need for SEO that others do. If your business is on its last leg, maybe there’s a more effective way to spend your last marketing dollars rather than pour them into SEO. Whatever your situation may be, do your homework and decide early on if SEO is the right solution for your business.

Patience is important.

If you do decide that SEO would be beneficial to your business, try and have patience right from the start. As I stated earlier, SEO is not an overnight fix or a quick solution. SEO done well and SEO done right takes some time, and no honest or worthwhile agency will promise you a shortcut.  In fact, a recent study by Ahrefs investigated how old the top ranking pages on Google are and how long it takes a page to rank on average, and the results all reinforce the same message: it takes time, often at least a year:

Remember: a customized SEO strategy that’s both well put together and executed will take time, patience, transparency, and quality.

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3 Awesome (and Easy) Ideas to Boost Brand Personalization

The relationship between consumers and brands is something that’s always evolving and shapeshifting as new trends, behaviors, and channels of communication develop. Marketers have always had to adapt to the demands of consumers, finding new ways to appeal to them and position themselves as relevant, desirable brands.

In recent years, those developments have created a need for increasingly personalized performance and consumer interaction between brands and consumers. Now more than ever, highly targeted and uniquely personal strategies are necessary for brands to effectively connect with and resonate with their audience. Thus, a new imperative in online branding was born: brand personalization.

Brand Personalization

The rise in popularity of more natural marketing tactics, such as native advertising, has indicated some important things about how users interact with brands. Overall, it seems that users are most receptive to brands that position themselves as peers. People want the brands they support to be reflective of their values or align with/contribute to who they are as individuals.

For as many new challenges as this poses for brands, it also creates a lot of new opportunities to be creative and connect with target audience in a more impactful way. When a consumer comes to view a brand as not just someone trying to sell or promote something but rather as a peer that has something of value to offer them at eye level, the likelihood of brand loyalty goes up. Even better, brands that consumers feel a strong connection or sense of loyalty to is one they’re more likely to recommend to their peers over others:

Source: OneSpot/Marketing Insider Group

Brands are more than just sellers of goods, services, and information now, which is why brand personalization is critical for long-term success.

Easy, Beginner Ways to Boost Brand Personalization

For as big of an undertaking as all of this may sound, brand personalization is probably much easier than you think. There are easy, pain-free ways to bring a more personalized, effective element to your brand that will set you up for further success down the line. For a quick and easy-to-implement start, check out these ideas.

1. Personalize Emails

Email marketing is a powerful and effective way for businesses to generate leads and maintain relationships with their customers. Brands have an opportunity to convert and permeate their presence every time an email lands in an inbox, so ensuring that users open up and interact with those emails is crucial. Moreover, an inbox is more personal than other marketing channels; brands are directly communicating to their audience and therefore have an opportunity to position themselves as acquaintances or friends just trying to stay in touch. For that reason, personalizing emails help brands become more memorable to users and seem less like spam, which in turn yields a more positive reaction to the emails in the first place.

Personalizing emails doesn’t have to be needlessly complicated. It can be as simple as adding dynamic tags to address email recipients individually, or using a little retargeting to suggest similar items after an online purchase. The point is to put voice and personality into your emails to make your brand seem personable. This makes customers more likely to acknowledge what you’ve sent rather than treat it as just another spammy, promotional offer.

2. Create Social Buzz

Social media channels are one of the best ways for brands to develop a persona. By maintaining active social media profiles, users start to recognize brands as peers and engage with them. That’s why brands have to use social media to build identity-because it contributes to the social network of their audience members.

Consistency across social media channels is key for brand personalization. Voice, tone, posting frequency, and engagement are all things that should be consistent so your brand develops a presence that’s as identifiable on a daily basis as it is throughout campaigns. Responding and engaging with users gives you a chance to showcase the persona behind your brand while also encouraging your audience to share their experiences and interact.

3. Implement Loyalty Programs

If you want to cement your brand as being identifiable and have customers who recall and return often, then loyalty programs might be the best way to personalize your brand. A method that brings people back to the brand over and over is one that develops a relationship. This makes your brand a fixture in the minds of consumers, especially when there’s a benefit or added incentive to their loyalty.

Loyalty programs don’t have to be overly complex or expensive. Any business can implement practices that reward new customer referrals with something small, such as a discount or freebie. Many businesses develop more detailed loyalty programs, rewarding continued customer loyalty with rolling perks and recognitions throughout the year. Overall, a loyalty program facilitates the relationship between businesses and their client base that ultimately helps brands further the develop the identity and relevance necessary to become more personable.

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