For businesses operating in competitive markets such as Tampa and Clearwater, online reviews often influence first impressions before a customer ever makes contact.

A single negative review can feel damaging, especially when reputation and trust play such a central role in purchasing decisions.

However, a bad review does not have to define a business. When handled correctly, it can become an opportunity to demonstrate professionalism, accountability, and long-term credibility.

Why Poor Reviews Happen

There are many reasons why people write negative reviews. Occasionally, they have a real problem with the service. In other cases, they occur due to miscommunication, setting goals that are too high, or factors beyond a business’s control. Sometimes, reviews come from people who have never been customers.

Search engines and review sites know that no business is perfect. It’s normal to get both good and bad reviews, which often means they’re real. The real effect comes from how a business reacts, not just from the fact that there is criticism.

The Immediate Reaction Matters

When someone gets a bad review, their first reaction is usually emotional. It’s normal to want to defend yourself or ignore someone, but doing so can make things worse. A calm and professional response shows that you are mature and dependable.

It’s important to acknowledge the concern, state that you’re willing to resolve the problem, and maintain a respectful tone. The response is not just for the reviewer; it is also for every potential customer who reads it later, even if the review seems unfair.

How Reviews Affect Online Visibility

Reviews affect more than just how people see things. They also help search engines see your site. Search engines judge a site’s trustworthiness by the number of reviews, how often they are written, and how they feel about them.

If a business is active and cares about its customers, it will regularly respond to reviews. Being open and quick to respond to negative feedback can actually improve your online presence.

Best Practices for Responding to a Bad Review

Listening is the first step in a strong response. Thank the reviewer for their experience and make it clear that you value their feedback. Don’t blame anyone or use language that makes things worse.

When appropriate, offer to continue the conversation in person. This method keeps people’s privacy and shows that you really want to resolve the problem. Readers will still notice the work even if the reviewer never follows up.

It is also important to stay honest. Don’t argue in public or share private information. The need to defend should never be stronger than professionalism.

Encouraging More Positive Reviews

One negative review can often feel more important than many positive ones. The answer is not to ignore criticism but to balance it with honest, regular feedback from happy customers.

Companies can ask customers for reviews after positive interactions or send simple reminders to encourage them to do so ethically. Over time, a steady stream of favorable feedback makes the occasional negative comments less important.

When a Review Is Unfair or False

Some reviews might not be true or intended to hurt. Documentation is useful in these situations. Most platforms let businesses flag reviews that don’t follow the rules.

Even if you disagree with a review, it’s still a beneficial idea to post a calm public response. This indicates that you are professional while the platform looks into the complaint.

Frequently Asked Questions About Bad Reviews

Do negative reviews hurt my business permanently?
No. A single negative review rarely causes lasting damage. Consistent quality service and professional responses matter far more over time.

Should I respond to every negative review?
Yes. A thoughtful response demonstrates responsibility and assures potential customers that you take their concerns seriously.

Is it acceptable to ask a reviewer to remove a negative review?
You may politely ask after resolving the issue, but removal should never be pressured or incentivized.

Can bad reviews improve my business?
Yes. Constructive criticism often highlights areas for improvement that may otherwise go unnoticed.

How many positive reviews offset a negative one?
There is no exact number. What matters most is overall sentiment, consistency, and engagement.

Long-Term Reputation Management

Managing reviews is not a one-time task. It is an ongoing process that requires monitoring, consistency, and a strategic approach. Businesses that actively manage their online reputation often appear more trustworthy and established.

A proactive approach includes setting internal standards for responses, tracking feedback trends, and continually improving customer experience. Over time, this creates resilience against occasional negative feedback.

A poor review does not signal failure. This is an inherent aspect of running a visible and growing business. Companies in Tampa and Clearwater that approach online criticism with professionalism and strategy often emerge stronger and more credible. For organizations seeking guidance in reputation management and search visibility, Affordable SEO FL provides structured solutions designed to protect credibility and support long-term growth.

Picture Source: AI-generated

The post What If You Get a Negative Review? Turning Online Criticism Into Opportunity appeared first on Affordable SEO Company for Small Business.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is widely recognized as a valuable strategy for improving a website’s visibility and generating online traffic. In Tampa Bay and beyond, businesses invest time and resources into building their online presence through ethical and strategic SEO practices. However, what happens when malicious tactics undermine those efforts? The answer lies in a practice known as negative SEO. This lesser-known but highly damaging issue can silently erode a site’s rankings, reputation, and credibility. Understanding how negative SEO works—and what to do about it—is the first step in safeguarding your digital presence. This is where SEO remediation becomes highly relevant.

What is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO refers to deliberate actions that damage a website’s ranking in search engines. Contrary to typical SEO, which is used to create and improve a website’s authority and relevance, negative SEO is directed towards its destruction. The activities are not the result of poorly executed optimization, but rather the work of deliberate sabotage, which competitors and spammers most commonly carry out.

The methods used in negative SEO vary. In any case, some common tactics include creating thousands of spam backlinks to an intended website, duplicating content across the internet, accessing an individual’s website to insert harmful links, or writing false reviews to damage the business’s image. They are designed to evoke search engine penalties or confusion and distrust among web users.

The Real-World Impact of Negative SEO

Negative SEO is not just a theoretical concern. For businesses that rely heavily on online visibility, such as local service providers, e-commerce sites, and content-driven organizations, the damage can be significant. A drop in rankings can lead to a loss of traffic, fewer leads or sales, and ultimately, a decline in revenue.

In addition, the effects will tend to be deferred. Negative SEO is conducted in the dark, such that by the time effects are felt, the damage will be extensive. It is for this reason that tracking, along with active mitigation of SEO, is an essential element of an electronic strategy for any business operating in competitive business ecosystems, such as Tampa Bay.

How SEO Remediation Works

SEO remediation is the process of identifying, analyzing, and resolving issues that negatively impact a website’s search engine functionality. In the case of negative SEO scenarios, it involves detailed audits to determine unusual backlinking patterns, duplicate content, and other anomalies.

Once threats are identified, action is required to eliminate toxic links, remove unauthorized pages, and protect against potential future attacks. In some instances, webmaster contact to request removal of a link or sending reconsideration requests to engines is also included in the remediation process.

SEO remediation is both technical and strategic in approach. It requires an in-depth understanding of search engine algorithms, link profiles, and digital forensics. Above all, it requires vigilance with swift action to prevent any further degradation.

Who Is at Risk?

Although high-traffic websites may seem the most vulnerable targets, new websites and small businesses are often the most susceptible to negative SEO. Having a smaller internet footprint and less mature backlink profiles makes it easier for nefarious behavior to create performance interruptions. In competitive regional economies, such as Tampa Bay, where small to medium-sized companies depend on favorable rankings to compete with chain stores, the risk is exceptionally sharp.

A single successful attack of negative SEO can obliterate the effects of months of optimization work. Readiness and awareness, therefore, need to be included in any SEO strategy.

Why Timely Intervention Matters

The less that is detected negatively by SEO efforts, the longer it will continue to impact your rankings and online reputation negatively. Spam backlinks or copied content can be interpreted by search engines as manipulation signals, leading to algorithmic or manual penalties.

Prompt action, with the help of professional SEO remediation, can halt the threat and initiate the recovery process. Tracking software, frequent audits, and expert supervision can help businesses stay ahead of this kind of threat and ensure their web integrity.

Negative SEO is a stealthy threat that can affect any website, regardless of the business or company. For Tampa Bay businesses that want to preserve their web investment, catching warning signs early and acting on them can help avoid permanent damage. SEO remediation is not a reactionary measure, but an anticipatory action that traces back to the roots of your online presence.

To learn more about how you can shield your website from these harmful tactics and restore your rankings, visit Affordable SEO Florida. Their professional SEO remediation services are designed to help businesses defend against digital threats and sustain long-term growth in a competitive online environment.

Picture Credit: Freepik

The post When SEO Turns Against You: Understanding And Responding To Negative SEO appeared first on Affordable SEO Company for Small Business.

First off, you must understand what negative SEO is. An SEO company will tell you that this behavior is aimed at a business competition to have them rank lower than what they are now. Some of these tactics are done off-page, such as creating unnatural links, copying content, etc.), while others are done on-page. This is done when someone hacks into your website, making changes to the content on your pages.

There are times when negative SEO is not the culprit for a drop in rankings. These reasons might include a Google algorithm change or lost backlinks.

One off-page negative SEO method is to use link farms. We have all seen many sites that have spammy links on them. While you do not want any spammy links, one or two will probably not hurt your rankings too badly. But there are ways that you can keep tabs on these links. By monitoring your link growth, you will be able to see if there are any high increases over a short period of time. One good place to check this out is SEOSpyGlass.

A second negative SEO strategy that some may use is scraping. Your competition could copy your content, then paste it onto other sites. We all know that search engines are against copy-paste, so this is an easy way for your competition to ruin your site. Google is generally smart enough to know which site was the original source, but if they crawl the site with the copied content first, you may be penalized for it. To help protect yourself, use Copyscape to look for your copied work. Then you may ask the website owner to remove it. Many of them will be in agreement. If they do not agree, file a copyright infringement report.

Let us move on to some on-page negative SEO that an SEO company will tell you to look out for. The first one is to modify the existing content on your page. This can be hard to spot at times. Many will hide it, so you will never notice it unless you look in the code.

A hacker may also redirect your website to theirs. For smaller companies, it usually is not an issue. But if you have high authority, it is an easy way for them to help their own page rank. If Google finds the redirect before you are able to, you may be penalized for redirecting to a malicious site. But you can protect yourself by having website audits with tools such as WebsiteAuditor. This tool will let you see changes that are made that you might not otherwise notice as long as you run it regularly.

You should note that not all hackers have the mindset to hurt your rankings. Regardless, Google does want to be on your side. If they suspect that your website has been hacked, they can put a label on the search engine stating the website may be hacked.

Negative SEO is something that you should watch for with your website. If you are worried about this happening to your website and are in the Tampa, FL, area, consider using an SEO company, such as Affordable SEO Company Tampa.

The post Kinds Of Negative SEO appeared first on Affordable SEO Company for Small Business.

By now, you are probably thinking we are crazy for saying this. But it is true. We all know how exciting it is to get a good review. It makes all of us feel great when the customer gushes about excellent experiences. Yet, we still know how our hearts sink into our stomachs when a negative review is left.

The first thought is often how to take the negative reviews away. Should you? And how do you go about doing that? We are here to tell you to leave it up. When a customer leaves negative feedback, it can actually help your business. It can influence your sales, how people view your label, and even have an effect on the search engine ratings.

You probably knew all that, but what you may not know is that these negative reviews can shed good light on all of the above. After all, 88% of Americans look at reviews before determining if they make the purchase or not.

First, we have all heard the saying “if it’s too good to be true, then it is”. What if an individual sees all these glorious reviews about how wonderful your company is and how great the staff treated them. Some individuals may feel that it is too good to be true and think that you paid someone for those assessments. As alarming as that sounds, some businesses do.

Think about this for a moment. In a questionnaire, American customers were asked what rating they trust the most when looking at reviews. Twenty-seven point nine percent said that they tend to look more at the 4.7 ratings than those that have a 5-star rating.

You may wonder how often customers leave unfavorable reviews. Surprisingly, they tend not to leave as many as one would think. A whopping 65% of customers do not leave a negative review when they have a poor experience.

Therefore, there is a much higher chance that your positive reviews will shine through, making your local SEO effort even easier.

So why should you leave bad reviews? Because you can address them, which will help your business management. Local SEO can be improved when you leave those reviews, and your clients will have more trust in your company. Furthermore, this feedback can assist you with how you will handle problems in the future.

Let’s take a further look into how you can improve your local SEO with negative reviews. Even if your reviews are negative, they will still help you rank in the search engines. Goggle states that when reviews of high quality are left, your business is more visible. This, in turn, can help you move up the SERPs. This means your clients are more likely to click on your site.

When you have reviews left, it is important to respond to them. If they left positive feedback, thank them. If they left negative feedback, delve into the issue. Let them know you are sorry for their unfortunate experience and offer to make it right. When you leave sympathetic responses, you are letting clients know how you are willing to accommodate them, that you value their opinions, and that your customer support will always be there should they need it.

It is important to respond fast to the person who left a negative review. In a survey done, 51.7% of individuals expect a company to have a response within 7 days. (https://www.reviewtrackers.com/reports/online-reviews-survey/)

When reviews are left, the person who left the review will receive a notification stating you have replied. If you have fixed the issue, the consumer may be willing to change the review. Although you should never ask them to do so.

When a negative review is left, it shows that your business is authentic. If you had all 5-star reviews, customers may wonder why. Think about this. On Facebook, the average review score is 4.42, and on Google, it is 4.3. Trip Advisor’s average is 4.25, while on Yelp, the average is 3.65.

Your clients will also be able to see how authentic your brand is through these reviews. Ninety-seven percent of consumers look at reviews before making a purchase, and 85% look at negative reviews to determine if they will make the purchase. By taking a look at both positive and negative experiences with the product, consumers are able to see the best and worst-case scenarios.

A positive note about negative reviews is that they may shed light on issues that you may not be aware of. Ask yourself if there is something faulty about your product. Or maybe a staff member needs to be reminded of policies or mission statements. Sometimes issues are very easy to correct, so be mindful of this.

Whether you have positive or negative feedback, it is imperative to address issues. Your customers will see how you handle your brand, which can make or break a company. Through your online reputation management plan, you can monitor any feedback left. Develop a plan that allows you to respond to all feedback.

If you are uncertain how to develop a plan, or even how to manage feedback left for your company, consider using a company, such as Affordable SEO Company Tampa, to assist you in this. This way, all reviews are seen and properly responded to quickly so your brand does not have to worry about them.

The post How Negative Reviews Help Local SEO appeared first on Affordable SEO Company for Small Business.

1. Increases unique page content: For a successful SEO strategy in the eyes of Google it is important to have unique content. Whether the user review is positive or not, the fact is that it is unique content. It means you have unique content that is relevant and engaging to the target audience. The reviews created on the external websites also means that they help you in improving SEO ranking as it is creating backlinks to your website. As long as positive reviews are accompanying the negative ones Google will not penalize you.

2. Using LSI keywords: No one can know a customer better than the customer himself. Negative online reviews may be utilized by a business for identifying the popular long-tail keywords. They can be later used for page optimization and for improving the visibility of the website in the eyes of search engines. When you select the long-tail keywords from negative reviews and place them within the body of the text on your website, it may improve the page ranking. This also results in the site reading and flowing better for users.

3. Develops trust: People do not find the companies with all five-star reviews trustworthy. It is too good to be true in the eyes of many people. So, it is a better idea to keep mixed reviews as they appear more genuine and authentic to the prospects. It also establishes that you are not getting involved in shady practices such as buying good reviews and hiding the bad ones. It can lead to more clicks and raised interest in the business which will lead to improved ranking in Google.

4. A chance to respond: The negative reviews also provide you a chance to respond to the customer and if it is done correctly you can demonstrate to the current customers and prospects that you are taking your business seriously. There is an opportunity for improvement by admitting to a mistake and working on a solution as it also makes the company more human and relatable. Making the existing customer happy by fixing his issue is worth the trouble as you will retain the client rather than having to find a new one. Responding to the user reviews is recommended by Google My Business. It is an indicator that search engines are factoring this while developing the rankings. If you are including the relevant keywords in your response to the customer your business will benefit as you will be optimizing the content for the SERP.

It is a fact that negative reviews can aid the company by providing more authenticity and credibility. You can also respond to criticism by showing that you care about your customers and are committed to improving the service. You are not going to get positive customer reviews all the time no matter who you are. But keep in mind that it is an opportunity to boost your SEO strategy. You can also take help from professionals such as the Affordable SEO Company for SEO strategies if your business lies in the Tampa, FL area.

The post Positive Effect Of Negative Reviews On Your SEO Campaign appeared first on Affordable SEO Company for Small Business.

The world has seen many changes with varying impacts due to COVID-19. For example, an increase in online shopping has changed the way small businesses should be looking at SEO. With more shoppers turning to resources like Google to make their purchases SEO isn’t a business expense, instead, it has become an investment, even for small businesses.

The primary benefits of small business SEO include maintaining a competitive edge, high return on investment, low cost, brand development, and top-notch site traffic. Small business owners can follow these easy tips to effectively advertise with SEO and maintain a competitive business website.

Evaluate Your Businesses Website

Shoppers will be more inclined to purchase from a website with a professional appearance. They will be more likely to make repeat purchases if the website is attractive with a memorable brand. Use the business logo throughout the website to help with branding. Also, be sure to avoid any fancy designs, which could be distracting to shoppers.

Many shoppers do not use a computer but instead shop directly from their phone or tablet. Small business SEO accommodates for mobile use.
If your business website takes a long time to load a shopper may be discouraged. Make sure your website loads in less than three seconds. Your website should be easy to use and the structure should make sense.

Recognize Keywords

Brainstorm keywords that would be profitable for your business, then implement them on the web. To effectively use small business SEO you want to identify profitable words. These aren’t necessarily highly search words and phrases.

For example, say you own a hair salon. “Haircut” may be a highly searched word related to your business. That doesn’t make the word haircut an ideal keyword. Most searchers that look up “haircut” will be looking for information and not necessarily to get their haircut. Instead try, “best haircut near me”.

Use Separate Pages to Maximize Small Business SEO

Having a separate page for each product allows you to encompass additional keywords, rank higher during a search, and overall will increase your web presence. One big mistake a lot of businesses make is listing all of their products on one page. This can become information overload, and make it hard for a search engine to direct traffic to the webpage.

A good way to structure your website would be to break out each product category from the homepage. For example, if you have a home goods business, you may have individual pages for décor, home office, living room furniture, mattresses, etc. Then within those individual pages, you can create more subsections such as home > décor > pillows. The more specific you can be the better.

Utilize Schema to Maximize Profits

Schema is essential for small business SEO. By structuring data, Google can more effectively direct web traffic to your business’s webpage. Schema helps search engines understand what your business webpage is all about. Make sure your business is using the following three schemas: product, FAQ, and local business. Using schema can help your business webpage rank higher during a search, become a featured snippet, and more.

Keep Your SEO Focus Local with “Near Me”

Small businesses rely on local shoppers, so it is very important your business pops up when a shopper runs a local search. A large portion of local searches is also voice searches. Optimize your business website for “near me” and voice searches.

Online Listings Should be Relevant

Another way to stay locally relevant on the web is to keep all of your online business listings fresh. Make sure the information on your Google My Business and other online review platforms are correct. Small business SEO can help you establish a ranking that will increase web traffic and promote sales.

Take Advantage of Local Backlinks

Optimize local backlinks by asking community members to link their web presence to yours. You can reach out to your business partners and ask them to link to your website. Other avenues that could serve as backlinks include local online press and business directories.

Final Thoughts

Small business SEO is an essential investment, even at a local level, to stay relevant and competitive in today’s economy. COVID-19 has changed the way the consumer shops, increasing the relevance of an online presence. It’s time for your small business marketing plan to change too. Let the Affordable SEO Company help you find future customers and embrace the future of marketing.

The post SEO For Small Businesses: How To Rank Your Website appeared first on Affordable SEO Company for Small Business.

One of the best tidbits of advice that can be offered in order to help our website out against negative SEO is to be sure your security on your website is top-notch and up to par. You need to have a plan in place so hackers can not access your site, causing damage to your website and business.

Hacking should never be put on the back burner by anyone. This occurs when a person accesses a site without permission. Most of the time these individuals will do it for private information or to redirect the individual searching to another source.

There are various tools that a hacker can use. Malware is often used by people in order to damage a specific site. The goal for the hacker will be that of a data breach typically. The website’s company can have effects that are tremendous after the hacking has taken place. This is usually a very expensive fix on the company’s part.

Spamming is a second tool that hackers have used. Hypertext can be added by the hacker to the page, which will link the hackers’ destination when the website searcher clicks on it. Hackers will do this negative SEO trick in order for them to see more traffic to their site. And with more traffic, there comes the increased chances of gaining a higher search engine ranking.

In a Google study, it was found that almost three-quarters of websites that had been hacked were because of spam. It is likely that many of these cases were planned attempts in taking the website down. However, it could also be a chance for less-known websites to become visible by getting others to their site.

Unfortunately, when a genuine website is hacked, in many circumstances it will become a link farm. Here website visitors may also be conned into going to malware sites or phishing without having knowledge that they are doing so. A good deal of the time this is planned by the one spamming the site.

Should the above happen, and Google sees it, they can put your site in the sandbox. This means that when people try to visit your site, Google will send them a message saying in a roundabout way to stay away from the site. Or if you are really unlucky, Google will take down your site altogether.

This will greatly affect your SEO. It will mean that any organic visit will probably see a drop in numbers. You will also see an effect on your engagement. People will not go to as many pages on your site, nor will their time be very long on your website. You will more than likely see an increase in bounce rate.

Google will see the above as users having a bad experience. Therefore, your site will not rank as well either.

And we can not forget about trust issues. Even if people have been to your site before, trusting it, a trust factor can come into play. Past users do not want to see any trust issues at all.

Hackers have been known to do redirects as a form of negative SEO. Visitors will be taken to a page that is completely different from the one they thought they were going to be navigated to. These sites will often contain content that has been copied. It may not be true content, and it may very well be malicious. Other times a user is required to click on a link where sensitive information is revealed.

When a hacker hacks your website, backlinks are generally added to your site. Google will see this as a trust issue as well since most of these backlinks will come from questionable sources.

If you want to develop a plan against negative SEO, but are not sure where to turn to, consider hiring an SEO team such as Affordable SEO Company. This company will be able to help provide you with the best tactics to avoid SEO that is not wanted.

The post How Negative SEO Affects Your Website appeared first on Affordable SEO Company for Small Business.

But this isn’t actually easy.

Most doctors believe that just having a website should be enough and patients will come to them. It won’t happen like that.

The truth is that a website is just the very first step in building an online presence as they will need to rely on medical SEO in order to make it easier for people to find them.

This entire “medical practice SEO” is something relatively new but a lot of doctors are using it for their businesses, with excellent results.

Simply put, SEO stands for search engine optimization and it’s how a practice – or any other type of business – shows up in search engine results. The better you’re doing it, the higher you will appear in Google when somebody is searching for your specific keywords.

Let’s get a bit more into details, shall we?

At first, medical SEO may look and sound like a marketing concept, but it’s actually a bit more complex than this.

Google’s algorithm, the ‘magic formula’ that decides how a website ranks, looks at three main factors: quality, trust, and authority.

Quality

Remember how a few years ago a lot of websites were simply filling their pages with keywords, in order to make sure they rank higher? Well, that doesn’t make any sense right now, as Google penalizes this move – called “keyword stuffing” – while prioritizing quality content.

By quality content, we mean something that people want to share, as it provides valuable information, but it’s also prioritized for search engines. Keep this in mind.

Authority

One of the main purposes of a medical SEO strategy is to grow your business’ authority. Why? Well, Google ranks higher those websites which are considered authoritative – meaning that they are liked by visitors and have a constantly engaged audience.

Focus on creating your own fanbase, consisting of people who love what they find on your website and want to share it with others. The big G will love this and give you a serious ranking boost.

Trust

You know what they say: hard to win, easy to lose. And the problem is that you must win your visitors’ trust first, following this principle.

As a dentist, a potential client wants to find a website that’s credible enough, not to mention that he will surely check out the reviews, before calling and making an appointment. By the way, did you know that over 70% of patients first check online reviews before calling a practice?

Therefore, our recommendation is to let your clients know that your business has an online presence and, why not, inform them about the possibility of leaving a review of your practice. Good reviews are great for building trust, not to mention that Google will rank your site higher if people share…kind words about their experience.

As mentioned above, this entire medical SEO concept can seem complex and probably a bit tricky, but there’s no need to panic. You can always let a professional help you!

The team at Affordable SEO Florida can provide high-quality optimization services, based on final objectives, as well as negative SEO remediation and Google Adwords services, perfect for making your medical practice stand out, attract traffic, and finally, collect new leads which can turn into long-term clients.

The post Introduction To SEO For Medical Practice appeared first on Affordable SEO Company for Small Business.

Counteracting a Negative SEO Attack

With a little diligence you can catch these attacks before they cause irreparable harm to your website. To do so you must:

• Perform link audits on a routine basis: This will be your savior if you’re ever the victim of a negative SEO attack because it’ll allow you to spot suspicious activity before it spirals out of control. Watch for any sudden, huge spikes or drops, especially when you haven’t been working on link building.
• Watch your site’s speed: This is an important ranking factor when it comes to Google. When your website is acting sluggish and you don’t know why, you should use crawling software to see if there’s anything suspicious happening. If you’re having a problem and can’t figure out why, more than likely you’re the victim of forceful crawling – something that’ll create a heavy server load, slowing your website down and possibly even causing it to crash.
• Be on the lookout for scraped content: Over the past few years content marketing has grown in importance. Unfortunately, this isn’t an area that everyone is skilled in though. This has caused a rise in scraping – someone taking content from your website and pasting it on theirs. This has serious consequences when discovered. It can cause your content to be devalued and your website to fall in the SERPs. Copyscape and Google’s Copyright Removal form are your best allies here.
• Monitor Google My Business: While the occasional negative review will happen, when you get a bunch of them at once, it’s probably a negative SEO attack. When this happens, you must act fast to prevent your reputation from being damaged. To flag and report these reviews you should look for your business on Google Maps, click on your business, click review summary, and flag the fake ones. Make sure you also fill out the report form.
• Monitor your keywords’ CTR: User experience plays an important role when it comes to Google’s SERPs. If someone programs a bot to land on the competitions’ websites that are ranking well for these keywords then immediately bounce away from it again this will increase their bounce ratio and decrease their ranking in the SERPs.
• Pay attention to where you’re at in the SERPs: When you notice a drop in ranking or complete de-indexing (something that rarely happens) you’ll want to see what’s happened. For a full review of how your site is performing you should use rank tracking software. Sudden drops here should encourage you to look and make sure your robots.txt file is still properly set up.
• Make sure your website’s security is up-to-date: The number of cyberattacks grows yearly. You need to have applied all your software’s security patches and make sure your CMS software has powerful encryption to protect your site from such attacks. It’s also important to use HTTPS if your site has any sensitive customer information on it. Doing so will also help you in the SERPs. Doing your best to protect your site will ensure that Google doesn’t flag it as being compromised – something that will definitely ensure a hefty dip in your traffic.

Before you’re faced with a negative SEO attack, hire the Affordable SEO Company to handle your website for you. They’ve done this successfully for many companies over the years. You should call and put them to work for you today.

The post How to Protect Against Negative SEO appeared first on Affordable SEO Company for Small Business.

The “Problem” With Online Reviews

Unfortunately, there are still some problems with online reviews, including:

• People are “gaming” many of these online review sites, creating false impressions of the businesses and their services or products and a nightmare when it comes to online review management
• Companies find themselves having to ward off unfair, unwarranted, and fake reviews their competition has posted about them

It may surprise you to learn that there’s a whole industry whose “job” it is to distribute fake reviews about competitors while creating positive reviews for their clients.

Business Aren’t Permitted to use Contracts to Prevent Negative Reviews

According to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) companies have tried to prevent negative reviews by creating contracts in which consumers are prohibited from creating negative reviews. This is something that’s explicitly prohibited by the 2016 CRFA (Consumer Review Fairness Act). Businesses can’t prohibit consumers from leaving these types of reviews or threaten them with legal action for doing so. Of course, as a business you can be rightfully concerned about how much of an impact these types of reviews would have on your reputation. It’s just illegal for you to prohibit your consumers from voicing any concerns that they have after doing business with you.

There are many consumers who will review online ratings prior to using a business. Businesses may think it’s a good idea to use a “gag clause” to keep these positive. Unfortunately for businesses, gag clauses aren’t legal. In fact, if you choose to ignore this fact and use them anyway, you’re subject to civil penalties. This means you can’t limit what your consumers say online. Since March 14, 2017 businesses have been required to tell their customers who may have unknowingly entered into such a contract with them. Such contracts are now void and businesses aren’t allowed to enforce them, which means that customers who’ve signed these contracts can still post honest reviews – even negative ones.

When Businesses are Permitted to Remove Reviews

When you have a negative review left about your business, the CRFA says you can remove it if it:

• Contains confidential information
• Is libelous, obscene, harassing, vulgar, or abusive
• Inappropriately intrinsic characteristics like race, sexuality, or gender
• Doesn’t relate to your products or services
• Clearly contains false or misleading information

Handling Online Review Management Today

Things have clearly changed. In the past unhappy customers would call a business and give them the opportunity to correct things. However, today they’ll go online and destroy your reputation in a matter of minutes. This is why you must monitor social media and customer review sites quickly and efficiently. You must also remain calm while doing so because studies have shown that it’s very rare for businesses to win an online argument. Instead, by approaching the situation with humility and goodwill you can prevent a bad situation from becoming worse.

When you need help with your online review management it’s best to leave the work to the professionals who have a thorough understanding of what is and isn’t allowed. For this reason you should consider hiring the Affordable SEO Company to do this work for you. Many businesses have already done so and are glad they did. Yours should be next.

The post What Businesses Can And Can’t Do About Customers Posting Negative Comments appeared first on Affordable SEO Company for Small Business.