What Determines Your Business’ Online Reputation

Your business’ online and offline reputations are related, but they’re determined by vastly different things.

Every business knows that their online reputation matters, but what determines it?

A lot of businesses in this day and age fully understand the importance of having a good, solid reputation both online and offline. With a good offline reputation, you can get your business’ name out there largely through word-of-mouth marketing, which will save you a lot of money and hassle over time. And with a good online reputation, your customers will spread the word about your business for you through referrals.

Both online and offline reputation are essential to a business’ long-term success, and that’s especially true if you’d eventually like to cut back on your marketing budget, as the leads you get from your reputation come much, much more affordably than the ones that you can from buying ads. However, building a strong online reputation isn’t quite the same thing as building an offline reputation, and to build the kind of reputation you want, you’ll need to know what determines it.

The Top 7 Aspects of a Business’ Online Reputation

#1. Customer Service

You might be surprised to learn that the number one thing that affects your business’ online reputation largely doesn’t happen online at all. The fact of the matter is that kind of customer service you offer — be it chatting over the phone or on chat, or in-person — can make or break your business’ online reputation.

Most customer complaints online and offline don’t stem from innocent mistakes; they stem from poor customer service. Largely, people understand that businesses are made up of fallible individuals who make a mistake or two sometimes, and as long as you demonstrate your willingness to correct the problem, they’ll still be able to find a reason to be happy with your service. However, if your customer service isn’t up to their standards, that’s much more difficult to bounce back from. That’s why, when you want to build the kind of online reputation that converts prospects into customers, the first thing you should do is start focusing on providing next-level customer service in your business.

#2. Listings

Your business is listed on a wide variety of review sites, and that’s true whether you’ve set up the listing or not. That’s because review sites are designed to help consumers find the right plumber, dentist, window cleaner or whatever professional they’re looking for, and the good ones want to offer the best results, which means listing businesses that haven’t signed up with them yet. But keep in mind that this is a good thing for your business, as it ensures that your name is seen on a variety of sites.

The one downside to your business being listed on review sites without you knowing it is the high possibility that the information listed isn’t accurate or up to date. A successful reputation management strategy includes claiming and editing your business listings for accuracy across all review sites. This ensures that any consumers who find you online are able to get ahold of you when they need you.

Another big benefit of claiming your listings is that, on many review sites, it gives you the ability to respond to manage your reviews.

#3. Reviews

Reviews are probably the most obvious aspect of a business’ online reputation, because they consist of direct feedback from your real-life customers. And as we mentioned in our last point, the ability to manage and respond to those reviews is essential to a business’ ability to build the kind of online reputation they want.

Although reviews are supposed to be from real-life customers, people aren’t always honest, and that’s not always the case. This is another reason why it’s vitally important to your business’ online reputation to monitor and manage any reviews you get, which should absolutely include responding to your reviews.

Whether a review is positive or negative, fake or authentic, accurate or unfair, crafting your own response will give you a chance to share your side of the story. And unfortunately, if you do end up getting a fake review, it’s not always going to be easy to get it removed. While responding to a fake review may not be as effective as getting it taken down, it’s far better than leaving the fake review about your business without setting the record straight.

#4. Website

Your website is your business’ main hub online, so if you’re currently operating without one, it’s time to take the leap and invest in a website. And when it comes to maintaining and protecting your business’ online reputation, you should never overlook the importance of having a solid, user-friendly website that you update frequently with new information. Your website is the main place where prospective customers can go online to learn about your business, get to know you and determine what kind of business you are.

If you want your website to make an impact, it’s essential that your business listings across the web all directly point to your website, and that includes any social media profiles you have, like Facebook or Instagram. These links, as well as the information you add to your website on a regular basis in the form of blogs, testimonials, tutorials, etc. will help to ensure that your website ranks among the top search results for relevant keywords.

#5. Social Media

Being on social media is a great start, but if you really care about your business’ online reputation, it’s not enough. In order to have an effective impact on your online reputation, your business needs to be active on social media, and you need to ensure that you do so in the right way. Think about it — how many people have gotten themselves into trouble for saying the wrong thing on social media? It’s happened to everyone, from CEOs to politicians to celebrities, and businesses are no exception.

Social media gives you a powerful way to connect with your audience like nothing else, and your focus should always be on sending out a positive message to your audience and providing an impactful experience. Post about things that make an impact on your customers and their lives, including your business’ community involvement, helpful tips and tricks that are relevant to your business, humorous memes and photos, and customers’ personal testimonials and case studies (with their permission, of course!).

Just as regularly adding content to your website can help to ensure that it ranks highly in search results for relevant search terms, so will regularly posting to your social media sites. Managing social media is key for SEO (search engine optimization) success.

#6. Search Results

Search results are another key aspect to your business’ online reputation. After all, when a customer searches for your business name on Google or Bing, you want the results that show up to be positive, not negative press or one-star reviews. And while you can’t control what your customers and employees — or even a disgruntled competitor — are saying about your business online, with SEO, you do have some degree of control over what pops up in the SERP (search engine results pages) when your business is googled.

As we mentioned, what you post on your website and on social media can have a huge impact on what comes up when people search for your business online, but those are just a couple of aspects of SEO. Reviews and how you respond to reviews also plays a role, as well as the accuracy of the information listed about your business across the web.

#7. Brand Mentions

Like we said, you don’t have any control over what people say about your business online, and that can seem unfair, but you do have the ability to respond to it. Your response can turn a one-star review into a five-star experience, and it can demonstrate your customer service prowess to anyone who might be considering working with you. However, in order to respond to any mentions of your brand in a timely manner, you need to know about in the first place.

Ignoring negative reviews and press doesn’t make them go away — it only makes matters worse. And a key part of building and maintaining an online reputation involves setting up alerts for brand mentions, so that any time negative information comes up, you can address it quickly and minimize the damage it can do on your online reputation.

Take control over your business’ online reputation with Top Rated Local®.

Understanding the different aspects that determine your business’ online reputation is the first step towards building and maintaining the online reputation you want, but the second step involves having the right tools on your side, like Top Rated Local.

With Top Rated Local, you’ll get an aggregate score of your online reputation as a whole across a variety of different verified review sites. Gone are the days of having to look at five different review sites to get an idea of how you’re doing online. And the benefits of becoming a Top Rated Local business don’t stop there.

Learn more about the benefits of becoming a Top Rated Local business and sign up today!

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