In this episode, Cloud Wise Joe and Chauncey help users tackle getting their business found. Joe and Chauncey explain how reviews on multiple platforms aid traffic, conversion, and usage of your web page. Utilizing Christmas may draw attention to a business when done right.

Joe: Chauncey, you wanted to talk about reviews.

Chauncey: I did. I have a really funny story that starts it out. My wife and I went down to Monterey to visit my son who’s going to college down there and we eat at this cafe. There’s this part of the cafe where you get all your stuff. It’s where everybody goes and above that is this chalkboard. I read the chalkboard, “Don’t order your eggs over easy or you’ll get them raw.” And it says one star and it says a name.

And then there’s another one that says like you know don’t do this that or the other thing because the service here sucks. So there’s this list of like five terrible reviews about the place I’m currently eating. And then at the bottom, it says, “Don’t get on our negative review board. If you have a problem all you have to do is ask and we’d be happy to fix it.” And so I thought this was really funny that they were taking the negative reviews and basically using them against the people who were coming in basically saying all you have to do is ask to have it fixed instead of just going off and complaining about it.

Joe: Now did you happen to notice if that was also leading to people who liked them giving them more good reviews?

Chauncey: No I didn’t I didn’t check it online or anything like that. But the food was great and the service was great like everything about the place was great. We really enjoyed it but I thought it was just kind of a fun way to remind people who have a problem that We’d be happy to fix it before it even got to the point of writing a bad review. And then it also kind of reminds people to write a good review.

Joe: Yeah there’s two sides to me right now. One side’s upset because I can’t stand passive aggressiveness. So don’t freak and leave a bad review if you didn’t talk to the manager or someone. Talk to the manager and do something about it like maybe the waitress had a bad day or whatever. But it’s so passive aggressive to just go leave a bad review. The other side to me is the business owner for years now. I’ve listened to what sounds or feels like a very valid explanation of saying “I just don’t have time to get reviews” or “I don’t have time to go and see if people are leaving reviews” or “I’m not really sure what my customers like and don’t like.” Well, you better make time because customers are giving reviews whether you like it or not. You better find out they’re saying. But also it helps you understand what people actually think about your service so you can do what you and I talk about a lot. Is it just your service? That’s the key to good reviews is hearing the complaints and making it visible and doing something about it and not sticking your head in the sand.

Chauncey: Yeah well ultimately you know my topic really kind of came down to that there are three ways that reviews really help you and why they need to be so important. The first one is search so it’s not very exciting to listen to but positive reviews help you show up in local search results. They’re a thinking factor for local search results because they create trust factor to the search engine. The search engine starts to trust that you are something that their audience wants.

Joe: Well so real quick so if your local direct competitor is actively getting reviews and you have no reviews then that is a factor where your competitors are getting a bit of an advantage on you in the search that they will show up first.

Chauncey: The second is conversion. Obviously, this is the one that makes a lot of sense to a lot of people if you have better reviews. People are more likely to click you.

Joe: So when you say conversion you are saying from the search engines or wherever those reviews are showing up to be good because it might be on you know 100 different sites that it’s more likely people are going to follow through because there are people saying good things about you which as a consumer is obvious but sometimes it doesn’t feel obvious as a business.

Chauncey: Right. And conversion you know is very important. You know you can get all the traffic you want but if it’s not converting there’s no money there. And then the last one is basically helping you with your organic search. Because as we’ve talked about a lot on this show your website is really no longer your Website. Your website is a collection of your presence across the Internet. And as you build up each of these presence areas it adds weight back to your Web site. It adds the quality back to your website.

Joe: Well you’re nailing some that I’d like to try to make sense of here. We do tend to think of the Internet as a business. We tend to think the Internet is us making a good website. So if I’m a local truck accessory store I think well once I’ve made a good website I’ve done my part for having a good presence online and getting more customers. What you said and what we talk about is essentially the entire Internet is your Website. Yelp is developing part of your identity. Google is developing part of your identity. Bloggers who may be talking about you. The White Pages, your Website, and Facebook are all developing a part of your identity and your job as a business. As best you can is to recognize that that’s your identity and make sure that you’re being found in the way you want to be found where people are looking.

Joe: If nobody’s looking or talking about you on Twitter or your products, well then don’t worry about it there. Go where people are, which is Google and Facebook. You know what I mean. So the whole internet is now your conversion platform not just your Website. I know that makes people go, “I’m shutting this off, that’s too big for me to take on. I just want a website” but I’m sorry. That’s the new reality.

Chauncey: And here’s a way to put not too fine a point on it is that I’ve seen quite a few successful businesses succeed from only having Facebook pages and Yelp reviews and all that stuff and they don’t even have a Website. I have never seen a successful business that only had a Website and didn’t have any of those other things.

Joe: That’s a good point. Well and one of the reasons I want to talk about reviews today is I’ve seen something pretty incredible happen over the last few months, especially the last couple of weeks. We have a client who is in a really competitive market here locally. There are a couple of its competitors that are good and they’ve been online for eight to ten years. If you google these type of services they’re going to show up and in three months our client is head to head with them. You know they’re not number one for everything but all of a sudden this client’s brand new Web site that’s only been around for three, four, or five months is in the top four, top three, top one, top two. One of the things we did really early on for that client was we went and got a bunch of reviews.

We actually went out and asked his customers if they would review him. And he turns out he’s a great business and he’s a great businessman. He’s super friendly super nice. So it was easy to get positive reviews but I attribute a lot of that success to him going so high up in the ranking to the reviews. And one of the things I wanted to talk about was a client’s ratings going up. In other words, are being found on Google and other search engines way higher up than I would have thought so soon and against some heavy hitter competitors and I think it’s super important and a big part of it. Chauncey is going to share with us you know exactly what’s happening. What is that successful concoction that’s allowing this client to do so well?

Chauncey: So. Two things were going on I know the client that you’re talking about. We were also fixing their citations. But a lot of their citations are review sites. And so here’s the power of doing those reviews is, for one, by doing the reviews, we knew that conversion of reviews was coming through. So we made sure that all those profiles were ready to accept reviews meaning that they were all totally accurate. Now we’ve expanded our website into the area just like we were talking. So that creates trust and that creates backlinks, that creates all that stuff and then reviews themselves create trust. Now Google will just use it as saying OK well these guys are trustworthy and these people are liking them so I’m going to serve these people up more so now that these people are served up more now they get more traffic.

Now that more traffic comes through the site has more usage and more people using it and it’s converting more people adding to Google saying OK good people are liking this. So I’m going to serve it up even more. And so that’s where it’s happening here. There’s a big cycle where once you get into that cycle of traffic that converts and usage you’ve now sort of entered the realm of competitiveness. But you need to get in there. And so there are several ways to get in there and reviews especially when it comes to local is a great way to get in there.

Joe: There are generally two types of clients that we have. There are businesses and two types of situations. One is that you are developing your first new Website or your company is fairly new and you get to put yourself in all and you get a nice clean Web site. In other words, you get to set your impression from the start. The other is I’ve already got an impression that’s been around for years or for however long and that’s got to be cleaned up. Now I’m saying all that because maybe I’m a little grouchy about this too.

You know one of the things I was thinking about going over on the show is we have a checklist that’s a hundred items long and it takes us 90 days if we work really hard to make a website healthy enough to be found. It is a lot. This is hard work. If you think being found for the products people are looking for is insanely valuable so people who know what they’re doing are trying to be found too. So businesses when you’re talking to your Web site team or your team you kind of got to be educated on this is hard work. Frankly, if you’re calling your Web site team or your team and you’re saying it’s been 30 days why am I not number one? Your website team should fire you as a client. They really should. Maybe after 90 days, or six months you, for a lot of your terms, you might be showing up you know in the top five. You know that’s that’s probably OK. And if you’re not by then you probably should start asking what’s going on. Unless you’re a complicated business.

But really this is insanely hard work. And not a lot of businesses are prepared to do it on their own. We get that. The show isn’t so that you know how to do every little thing nut that you’re educated as a business so that you can lead whoever’s going to do this stuff better. And it’s to give you solutions. But you know it’s tough. This is tough stuff. Just that cycle Chauncey was talking about has taken us about four months to create that healthy cycle with fairly a new business. Had it been a lot older, I don’t know how long I would’ve taken but because then we would have to clean up the past mess.

Chauncey: But it is about finding your niche. And so you know reviews are not your only way and there are other ways a lot of people going through social media especially if your business has anything to do with entertainment or people having fun you know stuff like that. The client that we’re talking about is more of a sales service situation which is reviews. I know if it has to do with entertainment you know social media is a great way in. So there are multiple ways in and it’s about sort of understanding you know what is going to spearhead my attack you know and by starting that cycle of being found through trusted traffic the whole thing. Traffic, conversion, and usage.

Joe: So talk to us. You had another topic that you know I don’t even think it’s Thanksgiving or Halloween or anything yet and you are talking about Christmas.

Chauncey: Christmas is coming up. Don’t wait until December 15th to try to come up with what you’re going to do to get traffic and conversion for Christmas.

Joe: What does a plan look like or what are some tips that we can give to be prepared that Christmas traffic?

Chauncey: Well here’s the beauty of people searching for Christmas. They only do it one month out of the year. So if you have like a page up for your Christmas specials you can go ahead and leave that up year round. Just don’t link to it because nobody is going to search for it and if they find it well then they’re crazy. And so this is going to add to its value by leaving it up year round.

Joe: You know nobody searching for that in in January. And if they find it they see it’s a Christmas special you know you have dates on it but you know so. One good thing is to figure out what you’re going to do. You know here’s how most businesses enter the realm restfully of advertising at Christmas is they use Adwords. They come up with what their plan, is their conversion, what they’re going to do and then they get somebody and they start putting together their ad campaign and then they start running their ad campaign to drive traffic to their page that’s going to give that deal or give that perk for Christmas. And what that does is maybe you take a little financial hit know you’re running some ads you’re also getting a percentage off maybe. But this creates loyal customers throughout the rest of the year. And so it’s a great opportunity to take advantage of that.

So what you’re saying is it’s a clear distinction in the intent of a buyer. In other words, we know that the buyer is looking for a Christmas gift and if they’re a man that Christmas gift is probably for themselves. I said my wife will love to have one of those watches. I’ll buy me one so she can have one. So and right now I’m sure she’s listening saying Yeah that’s absolutely true. So we know in other words it’s a perfectly clear time.

Chauncey: We know that they’re looking for Christmas gifts so why not make a landing page on your Web site that is offering not Christmas gifts but most people know that there are Christmas deals to be had, there are Black Friday deals to be had. People are looking for these terms. So if you get yourself ready now you will be prepared for these terms. Then you leave them up through the following year because nobody is searching for Black Friday deals on what you got in February you know but you’re just not linked to but next year when it comes around you’ve got some as we wait for that.

Joe: Right. Well and the other thing is Google isn’t necessarily crawling your site every day. They may not call it again for months. In other words, they’re looking at Google which only so much computer power and they can’t crawl the entire Internet every second of every day. So just because you put a special for Christmas up five days before Christmas. Guess what. Google may not have even called it. Right.

Chauncey: So no. Absolutely this is a little technical and not exciting but when you submit your ex-e-mail sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools part of that is saying a general idea of how often this page is updated so that the bot knows when to come back.

Joe: Right. Right. So if you think you’re just putting it up come two days before Christmas. Google might not even have found it yet. And really your only opportunity for traffic is ad words or advertising like you’re not going to be anybody, actually, even if they didn’t find it they don’t have enough time to trust it.

Chauncey: They don’t have enough time to figure out what they trust. You should have your strategy planned ahead like when are we going to make money. Where are those opportunities to convert and to find that loyal clientele, those repeat customers, those people who might talk about us in the future you know?

Joe: All right. OK, so you’re listening to The Being Found Show get prepared for Christmas.

Listen to the full episode :  Being Found Show