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Can Bad Internet Reviews Be Removed?

Sadly they cannot. I have myself been contacted on a number of occasions by companies who promise that they can “remove bad reviews”.

The fact is that if a person was not satisfied with your service or feels aggrieved in some way and posts this on the internet, the review cannot be removed. What you must do is respond.

There are some reviews that can be the subject of complaint and can be gotten removed. Bad reviews that include discrimination, racial slurs, obscene language and so on can be the subject of complaints and can be removed in this way. Google has a “flag as inappropriate” option for their reviews.

Responding to Bad Internet Reviews

Numerous studies that I have seen make mention of the importance of responding to bad reviews. Google has a function that allows you as the owner of a business or medical practice to respond, though you have to have claimed your Google places listing in order to do this. One thing I always recommend is 1)Respond as best you can and 2) Try to figure out who the person is, look them up in your records and contact them. Even if you can’t make it right for them, even if they are still upset with you for some reason, the fact that you cared enough to try makes a huge impression.

How many times has it happened to you that someone did something rude or inconsiderate and then apologized. Did the apology make it right? No, it did not. But now think about the times that someone did something rude or inconsiderate and then did not apologize and continued about their businesses as it you were the least important thing in the world. In fact sometimes just contacting someone, listening to the problem in an understanding manner, and apologizing, can result in the person returning to continue to do business with you. One thing is for sure, ignoring people who did not have a good experience does not work.

How Can I Get Good Reviews on the Internet?

Internet Reviews are a vital part of your on-line presence, and they are easy to get. Just asking people to review your service is often enough. Some businesses give small incentives to satisfied customers to encourage them to give a good review. A small discount, a small gift. While you are building a collection of good reviews this is well worthwhile.

It is fairly well known that satisfied customers and patients normally go on their way without further comment. Even if one in a hundred has a beef, chances are good they will go on-line and make some noise about it. So it is a good idea to make sure everyone is happy, but an even better idea to encourage the 99 happy customers to say something about it.

When people search for you on the internet, one of the most important pages they visit is the Google Places page.

This is the “map” page and on it are a many listings. If you dig around on the map, you will see that there are tens of thousands of businesses that Google has listed on it’s map and they all have profiles, which include not only your physical address, website and other information but also internet reviews– both good and bad. Bing has a similar service. One thing that is really important is that when people look at your Google map entry, they see some good reviews. What a lot of people do not realize is what these reviews do not have to be entered into Google in order to show on Google maps. Google pulls reviews from citysearch, insiderpages, angieslist, in fact just about anywhere you can place a review of a business or practice on the web, Google will search and pull those reviews to its map. It is possible to provide patients with a link that will let them simply click the link and start filling in review directly into Google maps and if you would like to know how to do this simply contact us and we can create that link for you.

However just encouraging patients to write good reviews into any review based website will help you with your google map listing. If you do this on a regular basis it will not be long before your listing has tons of positive reviews next to it and that really inspires confidence in what you offer.

Coming next, all about review managemant, what is the deal with the bad ones? Can they be removed?

How Often Should I Blog?

Blogging on your website is extremely important.

Google evaluates and ranks websites on many factors, and because they keep those factors secret, there is alway some discussion about which factors are most important.

However one thing is certain.

New and fresh content is important for your site's ranking!

The easiest way to do this is blog.

Your blog posts do not have to be long and they do not have to be profound. They do have to be done.

Based on how often a website normally gets fresh content is how often google will come visit your site to check it out. If you put up new content once a month, then google will come prowling only occasionally. If you are putting it up every day, google will prowl much more frequently.

But of course there are few people who are able to blog on a daily basis. So balancing practicality we recommend that you create a new blog post on your website at least once every two weeks. This will keep a steady flow of new content, and is also not an unrealistic on hard to manage goal. Do it more if you can. But there is no point in doing it lots one month then not at all the next. The target is steady, consistent new content flowing into your site.

Have a Profitable Week!

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