Blog – Page 85

Fresh Off the Press: Announcing New Product Offerings to Help Your SEO Campaign

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

The PG team is continually working to ensure our customers receive the best, most comprehensive service. As a result, we’re constantly coming up with new ideas of how to better serve you. Today we’d like to announce a few brand-new product offerings that will help us make certain you really are getting a full-spectrum of top-quality options for your online advertising campaign.

E-mail to Phone

Do your e-mails sit around for days (or longer) because you just don’t have time to check the computer? Are you not a huge fan of e-mail in general? Well, at PG, we’ve just launched a product that lets you get your e-mail on your phone. Here’s how it works: Each time you get an e-mail lead, the program triggers a call to your phone. The system reads the e-mail message aloud to you and then follows up with a text message containing the caller’s phone number. It’s like having a personal secretary to read all of your e-mails to you! With PG’s E-mail to Phone program, you’re just a button or two away from returning the call—and you don’t even have to turn on the computer or open your inbox.

Blogging

Share your expertise, announce news/events, and improve your Google ranking all at the same time! Prospect Genius has added a blogging product/tool that allows you to add blog entries right on your microsite. Blogging on your site offers several versatile advantages.
For starters, having good content on your site makes your company more attractive to consumers. When you post blog entries like “Tips for Keeping Your Dryer in Top Condition” or “How to Know If You Need Air Conditioner Repair,” you illustrate your expertise to potential customers and grow their confidence in your knowledge and services.
Secondly, each and every blog post adds another page to your microsite. So if you post 100 blog entries over the course of the next year, you will have transformed your 15-page site into a 115-page site. More pages makes your microsite more credible to Google and Bing, because the larger your site, the more important it seems to the search engines.

Half-Price Until November 1

These two new products are going to be in a beta-testing period for the next couple of weeks, but we are offering a limited number of half-price openings until November 1. If you want to be one of the very first PG clients to experience the benefits of our E-mail to Phone or Blogging features, give us a call and we’ll get you signed up today.

Photo Gallery

You’re right: Photo galleries aren’t precisely a new offering from PG, but since they work almost the same way our new blogging feature does, we wanted to remind you how beneficial our Photo Gallery option can be. Just like each blog post creates a new page on your microsite, with the photo gallery, every new picture you add creates another “page” for your site. When you go ahead and add captions to each picture, especially those containing keywords (think: “ABC Appliance provides professional refrigerator repairs to a client in New York, NY.”), you can get even more value out of this new “page.” More pictures equal more points with Google and Bing.
For a little perspective, this is exactly how big companies like Walmart and Sears stay at the top of the results pages for service searches. Their sites have literally thousands of “pages” because they include a descriptive photo page for each and every product/service that they offer.

Coming Attractions

Next up in terms of new product offerings is our review validation service. Available very soon, this feature will allow you to not only collect customer reviews directly on your microsite, but it will also enable you to have a third party validate them.
The simple truth is that customers view reviews with skepticism. After all, they have no way of knowing if that glowing review was fabricated or written by a real, satisfied customer. Our validation system will actually contact the reviewer by phone or e-mail to verify that they are legit. Once the review has been validated, an icon will appear next to it, illustrating to prospective customers that this review is accurate, authorized, and able to be trusted!
If you’re interested in signing up for the beta-testing period on this feature, just give us a call, and we’ll make sure you get on the preorder list.

EDriven Concepts: Posting Bogus Reviews to Manage Reputation and Counteract Mounting Negativity

Last Updated: September 7, 2011

As a business owner, reputation management is an integral part of maintaining a positive image for your company, especially when it comes to your Internet presence. Given the immense number of online business directories and consumer complaint forums, it’s fairly easy for anyone to post reviews of your business for public viewing. Unfortunately, this means that if any of your past customers has had a poor experience with your business, there’s a strong possibility that they’ll utilize the resources at their disposal to post a complaint online.
One company in particular that is struggling with the issue of customer complaints is EDriven Concepts. Recently, however, it has made efforts to compensate for this negativity. If you’re a business owner looking for a way to counteract customer complaints online, take note of EDriven Concepts’ strategy and avoid it.
Why EDriven Concepts Needs to Manage Its Reputation
Lately, EDriven Concepts has seen a mounting pile of negative reviews all over the web. They have been accused of scamming business owners through deceptive sales calls and fraudulent information, and are now tasked with having to manage their reputation in order to keep these negative reviews from surfacing on Google’s search results pages. Some of those negative reviews can be found here:

The user reviews on Scambook, ComplaintWire, and Brownbook all detail the same scenario:

A business owner receives a call from a representative of EDriven Concepts posing as whichever SEO company that business was currently working with.
The sales rep from EDriven Concepts refers to a previous conversation with the business owner that never actually took place, thus confusing the business owner.
The sales rep requests the business owner’s credit card information but never states his/her true identity.
The sales rep hangs up when pushed by the business owner to reveal his/her identity.

In the Yelp review, a different individual also writes about an experience that she had with EDriven Concepts, wherein she was contacted by a sales rep who was pretending to be from her current advertising agency. They finally revealed their true identity when she asked for her specific account manager, but this was after they had already asked for her credit card information on three separate occasions.
[If you’d like to listen to audio samples of similar phone calls between EDriven Concepts and existing Prospect Genius clients, check out our previous blog post.]
As you can see, these kinds of reviews can be rather damning to a company’s reputation. That’s why it’s important to counteract any negativity surrounding your business with an effective reputation management strategy. This is not, however, what EDriven Concepts has done.
How EDriven Concepts Is Attempting to Manage Its Reputation
While you don’t have the power to permanently delete user comments and reviews on sites that are not your own, there are ways to neutralize them. A very simple way of doing this is to post an even greater number of positive reviews, so that the negative ones will be drowned out.
EDriven Concepts has begun an attempt to push the negative reviews down the search engine rankings by writing and duplicating their own positive reviews. We’ve been following their attempts at reputation management for a few weeks, and their strategy has piqued our interest because their efforts illustrate a clear pattern:

They write a fictional yet lengthy testimonial on behalf of a nonexistent company.
They create fake accounts on various blog sites.
Using these fake accounts, they post the same testimonial in multiple locations.

Below, you’ll see a sampling of different testimonials created by EDriven Concepts that are intended to quash negative reviews that are all over the Internet. While they have succeeded in diluting the volume of complaints against them with a handful of fictitious blog posts, the deceptive nature of these posts is wholly transparent to any casual reader. Sadly, this practice won’t get them far.
We’ll continue to update this post as we find more examples.
First group of false testimonials: “is edriven concepts a scam”

This set of blog posts by EDriven Concepts contains identical reviews from a company called “Apex Plumbing.” The posts detail the experience of “Leroy Gonzales,” an alleged plumber from Dallas, TX, and are given the title, “is edriven concepts a scam,” (that’s not a typo—no punctuation or capitalization are included in the original posts). Right off the bat, there are several elements that stand out as red flags:

A comprehensive search of the White Pages and other Internet directories showed zero results for a Leroy Gonzales or Apex Plumbing in the Dallas area.
The titular question, “Is EDriven Concepts a scam?” is never addressed nor answered.
The team at EDriven Concepts is leveraging a common search term (“is edriven concepts a scam”) by using it as the post’s title with the sole purpose of directing curious readers to a fabricated story.
The fact that the phrase, “is edriven concepts a scam,” is a popular search term tells you that they already have a reputation for scamming clients.

By the time you get to the third sentence of the review, you already know that the premise is completely false.
Second group of false reviews: “As a small business owner I set out to do due diligence…”

The reviews in this group are all identical, with slightly revised titles, under the pretense of a “small business owner” seeking a “quality SEO company.” However, none of the review’s contents coincide with that alleged reality. There are several holes in this review’s logic—for example:

It is 584 words long. Your first thought should be, “What kind of ‘small business owner’ has the time or motivation to write a nearly 600-word review for another company?”
If it were a legitimate customer review, it would be a short paragraph on a popular consumer directory like Yelp, Brownbook, Manta, Hotfrog, etc. Instead, these are standalone blog accounts that are named after EDriven Concepts and contain only one lengthy post.
The review is filled with detailed personal histories of EDriven Concepts personnel. Why would an ordinary client be privy to this kind of information?
It’s fair to say that no average “small business owner” would be familiar with programs like PHP, JavaScript, HTML5, etc., much less identify a team with expertise in those fields.
The company remains anonymous throughout the entire review. If the EDriven Concepts program worked so well, why isn’t there a link to the business’s website? Why isn’t there a name for referral? Why isn’t there any evidence of the program’s efficacy?

Given the combination of blatantly promotional language and zero specificity regarding the actual job performed for this anonymous client, the average reader can easily conclude that this is a fictional review written by EDriven Concepts themselves.
Third group of false reviews: “Is Edriven Concepts Fraudulent? Let’s find out!”

Netlog.com
Dailystrength.com (an online support group)
Wikispaces.com

These are more examples of fake user accounts containing a total of one blog post each. After reading the post in its entirety, you can discount its validity quite easily, as it:

Describes the process of SEO but never offers an answer to the question in the title
Offers no statistics, links, or evidence whatsoever to support the legitimacy of EDriven Concepts
Is written by an “Ezra Finch” who has no profile information, credentials, or authority on the subject

Anyone who has done an hour’s worth of research online can write about what constitutes good SEO practices. However, the fact that this author writes only in vague terms and never offers a direct response to the question in the title reveals that this is yet another blog post designed to misdirect users searching for an actual answer to this question.
Throughout all of these attempts at fabricating and duplicating reviews, EDriven Concepts only serves to exemplify the dishonesty that they are accused of. As a business owner, you can still learn from their mistakes. The only way to manage your company’s reputation effectively and honestly is to provide a valuable service and encourage satisfied customers to spread the word.

Too Busy to Advertise Online?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Some customers tell us that they WANT to sign up, but they just don’t have time to do it. What they’re really saying is that they don’t want to take an active role in the promotion of their own business.
We understand that you’re busy, and that being a small business owner often entails a hectic schedule, but if you don’t take the time to actively participate in promoting your business as accurately as possible, the consequences can be disastrous!
No matter how many jobs you have lined up or how complicated your schedule has become, it’s critical that you take an active interest in the information circulated on the Internet regarding your company. So shuffle your calendar or take a quick break, and spend a little while focusing on how your company is being promoted on the web. Remember, the content generated and distributed by an online advertiser on your behalf DIRECTLY reflects on your company and represents your brand.
If you allow inaccurate, low-quality, or just plain wrong information to spread out all over the Internet, the message you send to potential customers is that your reputation and professional image are not important to you in the slightest. Customers will assume automatically that these errors and inaccuracies are an indication of how you conduct yourself as a general rule, seeing them as symptoms of an overall lack of professionalism and customer service.

Web Advertising: How Much Time Should You Spend?

So, if taking a little time to sign up for a program that promises to create a web presence for you (in the form of a website, advertisements, etc.) is to the benefit of your company, how long will it take? The answer varies from business to business, but you can be certain it’s more than two minutes!
Consider it this way: Could you walk up to a stranger on the street and describe each and every service you offer in just two minutes? Probably not! So why is it fair to expect a third-party advertiser to understand all the nuances of your business in that short an amount of time?
Here at Prospect Genius, it doesn’t take long to sign up, but we do make sure we learn all about your business. The time you invest at this stage gives our team more ammunition to promote your business online, in the end helping drive maximum traffic back to you.
Just how long does it take? Well, in our experience, when a new client signs up with PG, the initial interview typically takes between 20 and 30 minutes. The follow-up interview usually lasts another 10 or 15 minutes. If you’re a chatty person, or your company offers a number of different services, you could spend up to 90 minutes on the phone with us going over the type of work your business does and what makes your company unique.
Everything that you tell us about your company is the fuel we need to make sure your business is represented accurately and promoted efficiently on the web, ensuring you get the most out of your new online presence.

Food for Thought

If a web advertiser says the signup process will only take 30 seconds, or even just 5 minutes, shouldn’t you be concerned? How will they learn anything about your company in that period of time? Especially if all they want is your billing address and credit card number, the red flags should go up.
At Prospect Genius, we take the approach of using in-depth interviews with a number of different goals in mind:

To make certain you get the types of calls you want (for example, calls for repairing large appliances rather than small appliance repairs)
To ensure we promote your business in the correct location and service areas
To identify the details that make your company special, unique, and different from your competitors

All of these goals are for your direct benefit!
If another online advertising company does NOT invest time in getting to know your business when signing you up (by asking for specific, detailed info about your services, etc.), you may find yourself facing several problems:

They may not be planning on doing a whole lot of work for you, so detailed information would be irrelevant.
They may be planning to send you every and ANY call out there, including junk calls. This can be an especially major issue with a pay-per-lead or pay-per-call system.
They may just be planning to copy and paste from your existing website, duplicating content and potentially earning penalties from Google.
They may be planning to spam Google Maps by posting a slew of phony addresses on your company’s map listings page. This may give your company a quick boost in Google rankings, but any unverifiable addresses will be blacklisted by Google. Since your website will be connected to one of those map listings, you’ll also be risking a penalty on Google’s results pages. In extreme cases, Google may even penalize your business name and phone number across the board.

Why It Really Matters

So what? What’s the worst that can happen if you choose to use a web advertising company that doesn’t take the time to learn about you and your business? That’s a really good question because one answer is that you could even go to JAIL!
Sounds extreme, right? Never gonna happen, right? Actually, we’re not kidding. Imagine you sign up with “Advertiser X” and spend just one minute giving them your credit card info and business name, but almost nothing else in terms of information. Then, if Advertiser X puts content on your website that includes false claims of certifications, memberships, or licenses you don’t actually have, you could easily end up on the wrong end of a sting operation.
Several states, including California, are seriously cracking down on these types of violations because the resulting fines are a source of revenue for their cash-strapped coffers. In fact, some of our clients have endured similar situations because they failed to comply with some aspect of state law regarding exactly how you can advertise your services.
Of course, these are the most extreme examples, but the threat of fines and penalties is REAL. In the end, it’s up to you as the business owner to verify that the content on the Internet regarding your company is 100% accurate.

Vet Advertisers Carefully

With all that can go wrong through cutting-corners or just plain sketchy online advertising, it’s vital that you be careful when choosing who will represent your company’s interests on the Internet. In the same way you wouldn’t hire just anyone to answer your phone, you’re better off not hiring just anyone for online advertising.
What an advertiser puts out there about your company invariably becomes the basis for first impressions for many potential customers. If there’s information on the web that’s untrue, misleading, or even misspelled, it could end up costing you a whole lot more than the 30 minutes it would have taken to do it right in the first place!

Voice Mail: Solution or Danger

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

At Prospect Genius, we work with a broad spectrum of small, local companies, and that puts us in a unique position to observe trends in the ways small businesses handle their operations. Recently, we’ve noticed that some of our clients, especially the one-person outfits, are too busy to answer their phone during the day. Instead, they let the calls go through to their voice mail and return the messages once they have time.
On one hand, this is great news: We’re excited that so many folks are getting enough work to keep them this busy. On the other hand, this may end up being a major problem for your company: That’s because when you let your calls ring through to voice mail, you may actually end up missing out on phone calls that could lead to additional customers and additional profits.

The Issue With Voice Mail

With online advertising, we’ve observed that the majority of customers will pick up the phone and call you within a minute or two of landing on your website. Unfortunately, we’ve also noticed that if a real person doesn’t answer the call, these prospective clients will likely hang up without leaving a message. In fact, only a very small percentage of callers will actually leave a message on your voice mail. Worse, most will just click the “back” on their web browser, return to the search results page, and call the next company on the list—likely a direct competitor!
The biggest problem with this scenario is that not answering your calls means that you lose the ability to capture what could be extremely profitable jobs. Think about it this way: It’s great that your business is keeping busy with multiple jobs, but in an ideal world, you’d be able to hand pick the closest, most profitable jobs instead of working yourself to the bone on projects that are farther away or have a lower profit margin.

Option #1

The good news is that there are ways to balance the issue of a ringing phone with the project on hand. Perhaps the easiest solution, yet one many folks don’t even think of, is an answering service. This option is surprisingly affordable, and in many cases, there are even companies that employ only native English speakers if customer service and communication skills are a concern for you. With an answering service, calls will be answered on your behalf, with messages being relayed to you as if you just stepped away from the phone for a moment.
Some answering services immediately send you an e-mail or text message explaining the nature and priority level of the call. Others may even provide you with an option for specifying which calls you would like forwarded to you without delay and which calls you would like to receive a message about.
With an answering service, your customers get the benefit of talking to a real person and you get the benefit of uninterrupted time to work on your current job without missing out on potentially profitable work for the future.

Option #2

If hiring an answering service isn’t in the cards, and your budget doesn’t allow bringing in a receptionist or assistant to answer the phone, your best bet is to simply make the most out of your voice mail recording.
Start by making certain your voice mail sounds as professional as possible. Assure your clients that their call is important to you, and that their message will be returned as soon as possible. Here’s a great example:
“Hi. You’ve reached Bob’s Plumbing of Boston, MA. We are unable to answer the phone at the moment because we are busy providing first-class service to one of our clients. We want to provide this same level of service to you, so please leave us a message, and we’ll return your call later today.”

Prospect Genius Voice Mail Solutions

Did you know that you can enable a separate voice mail account just for your Prospect Genius campaign? Our system allows us to intercept calls after a few rings and play a message like the one shown above. We’ll then e-mail any message left on your voice mail to you immediately.
This service can be extremely helpful if you’re trying to juggle multiple businesses on a single phone line or if you just want to keep your PG campaign separate from other advertising efforts. If this voice mail service sounds like something you’d like to explore for your company, just give us a call, and the Prospect Genius team can help you out!

Prospect Genius Announces Plans to Expand Facility, Accommodate Growing Team

Last Updated: August 5, 2011

Prospect Genius, an online advertising company based in upstate New York, announces that it will annex space adjacent to its current office in an effort to make room for additional hires. Expanding its employee base as the demand for Internet marketing campaigns and SEO expertise increases, Prospect Genius must locate additional space in order to accommodate a growing team.
As the nation faces unmitigated economic downturn, small business owners and local service providers have begun seeking affordable advertising solutions that will generate measurable results (i.e. customer leads in the form of phone calls and e-mails) and quantifiable ROI. Because SEO and online advertising are lower-cost alternatives to print advertising like newspaper ads and billboards, many business owners have found that Internet marketing campaigns are a cost-effective solution to their fiscal concerns.
As John Hart, owner of Audio Ace in St. Louis, MO, recently told a representative of Prospect Genius, “You guys single-handedly saved my company.”
Due to the proven efficacy of its lead generation program, Prospect Genius reports a large increase in local businesses and service providers as clients. In fact, even a fellow SEO company recently hired Prospect Genius to assist them in their own online promotion. Alex Pelli, president of the company, comments, “We’re truly excited that we’re able to help so many small businesses stay in business. That’s where we derive our primary satisfaction.”
According to Pelli, Prospect Genius actually plans to double in size during the year 2012. With these plans currently in the early stages of execution, he recently made the decision to expand his company into an adjacent office space in an effort to accommodate extra desks and cubicles. In acclimating to a larger number of clients, the company will see its most recent full-time hire, Amelia, begin her first day on August 15, 2011.
Prospect Genius is an online advertising company providing SEO-based lead generation to small business owners and service providers.

Prospect Genius

EDriven Concepts: Posting Bogus Reviews to Manage Reputation and Counteract Mounting Negativity

Prospect Genius Announces Plans to Expand Facility, Accommodate Growing Team

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