Google – Page 4

No, Fake Reviews Are Not Harmless

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

You keep hearing about how important it is to have customer reviews on your Google, Yelp, and Facebook listings. In fact, a majority of what you’ve heard has probably come straight from us. After all, we’re always harping on the fact that customer reviews are crucial because they improve your SEO and make you more appealing to prospective customers. So after reading about customer reviews for the umpteenth time, you start feeling a little insecure about the lack of reviews on your own listing. You think, Why don’t I just take matters into my own hands? And you decide to write some fake reviews yourself.

Writing fake customer reviews may seem harmless on the surface, but there can be some seriously negative consequences. When you post fake reviews—whether on your own listing or another company’s—it’s not a matter of if you’ll get caught, but when. Google and other review sites know your IP address and will inevitably connect you to the fake review.
However, it’s true that the circumstances surrounding fake reviews can vary, and so will the penalties for getting caught. In this post, we’ll explain the three major types of fake customer reviews and their typical consequences. Then, we’ll give you some tips on how to get real customer reviews the honest way, instead.

The Unintentional Fake Review

Sometimes, a business owner unwittingly posts on their own Google or Yelp listing using their own username. This usually happens when a business owner intended to post a review anonymously (under the pretense of a customer) but forgot that they were signed in to their account.
With this type of fake review, the potential damage is minimal because it was less of a deception and more of a mistake. Most customers will notice that the review came from the owner of the business and ignore it. Eventually, Google or Yelp might delete it.

The Anonymous, Self-Promotional Review

In this type of fake review, a business owner poses as a customer on their own listing by writing a review anonymously or by creating a new account for a fictional person. These reviews are always positive, with the intention of boosting that business’s overall ratings. If you don’t get caught, this kind of review could give you a small boost.
But this is where we remind you that Google will catch you. It knows your IP address. It will easily notice if a post appears on your listing from your own computer. When you’re caught, your listing will be suspended temporarily and your business will be penalized in the search rankings. And if you continue this behavior once your penalty is lifted, Google could actually ban you completely. Is it really worth the risk?

The Vengeful Fake Review

The final, and most damaging, type of fake review involves the business owner posing as a customer on another business’s listing. These reviews are overwhelmingly negative, and they’re usually done to a direct competitor as a way to bring down their ratings.
These reviews have the harshest penalties because their intent is purely malicious. If Google catches you, your listing could be banned, and you could be kept from ever leaving reviews on Google again. And since there’s no direct benefit to your business (it only hurts another business), this type of review is not worth the backlash, plain and simple.

Get Reviews the Honest Way

Why go through the trouble of writing fake customer reviews and risking serious penalties when you can get real ones, instead? It takes a little more effort upfront to get real customer reviews, but they’ll make your business’s listings much more stable and appealing in the long run. Here are some ideas:

If you’ve done any work for family or friends in the past, ask them to leave you a review. They’ll be happy to help you out. Just make sure they don’t write their reviews from the same house! Reviews coming from the same IP address will be flagged.
Target any customers who have a Gmail address. It’s super fast and easy for Gmail users to leave reviews on your Google listing because they’ll already be logged in to their account. To make it as easy as possible, provide them with a direct link and brief instructions on how to post a review.
Use a professional service that keeps track of your customers and calls or e-mails them to ask for reviews on your behalf. Although we do not endorse any specific company, we know that some of our clients use Customer Lobby with good results.
Leverage the on-page feedback feature available from Prospect Genius. Customers can use this to leave a review right on your site, and then (if the review is positive) they’ll be given links to your Facebook and Google listings so they can spread their reviews even further. This feature is nice and simple because it’s just a link on your LeadTrax™ site—it doesn’t require customers to have an existing account.
Check out more helpful tips for getting the most customer reviews possible in our blog post, “Make Your Presence Known: Get More Customer Reviews Online.”

Writing fake customer reviews, no matter what the circumstances, is never worth the risk of penalization or suspension. Instead, use the tips outlined above to get more customer reviews that are actually honest and helpful. You’ll thank yourself for the effort!
As always, don’t hesitate to contact Prospect Genius with any questions.

Avoid the Land Mine of Conflicting Information

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Conflicting information is a hidden land mine that business owners step on repeatedly.
We’ve talked at length about how the success of a campaign is a result of synergy—all aspects of your online presence working together to generate greater results—but this synergy can be inverted, as well. If there are aspects of your campaign that don’t match or work together, your entire online presence will sink. Small mistakes like spelling errors and mismatching addresses on different listings may not seem like major offenses, but the synergistic effect of these mistakes could spell disaster for your Prospect Genius campaign and online presence as a whole.
In this post, we’ll outline some common causes of conflicting information and what you can do to avoid it.

Did Your Company Recently Move?

A recent relocation or change of address is a frequent reason for conflicting information. When your business moves (whether physically or just on paper), traces of your previous address and/or phone number could remain on old directory listings—some of which you might not even be aware of. Unless these traces are cleaned up, your online presence will be haunted by the conflicting information floating around the web.

Did You Recently Switch From a Different Advertiser?

If you worked with another online advertiser before hiring Prospect Genius, then you might have some old, conflicting information out there. This happens pretty frequently with our clients. Usually, when you quit working with an advertising company, they’ll just leave all of your old information up without giving you any resources for cleaning it up (e.g. names of directories that you’re listed on, login information for those accounts, etc.). If any of that information is outdated or incorrect, it’ll follow your company until you take the right steps to fix it.

Have You Not Been 100% Honest With Us?

This is a big one. Sometimes, clients are reluctant to tell us that they used to work with a different advertiser or that they previously made mistakes with their marketing efforts. Whether it’s because they’re embarrassed or don’t want to upset us, we’re not sure. But the truth is, we don’t care about the past—we only care about the future and how we can make yours as successful as possible. That means we need to know the whole truth about your past activity so we can take the necessary steps to clean up any messes that could come back to bite you.

How to Clean It Up

In your line of work, you may be familiar with the concept of a little elbow grease being the only fix for most common problems, like appliance malfunctions, plumbing leaks, and drafty windows. You just have to buck up and fix them with your own two hands. It’s the same for the problem of conflicting information. The only solution is for one of the Internet marketing specialists at Prospect Genius to manually find and delete or correct all of the conflicting pieces of information out there about your company. It takes some time, but it’s the only way.
Thankfully, we offer two different tools that are designed to streamline this cleanup process as much as possible: WebFax^® and CleanSlate. A WebFax report will find and flag any potential problems; then, with our CleanSlate program, our specialists will fix all of those issues and wipe the slate clean.
Think of using CleanSlate like getting your tires changed. You don’t have to do it very often, but the need for it does grow over time. While the signs of wear and tear aren’t always obvious, if you fail to change your tires at all, your vehicle will have serious performance issues down the road. Similarly, if you never use CleanSlate (especially after relocating or switching advertisers), you can expect lots of difficulty finding traction in the local search sphere. It may only be a one-time chore over the life span of your campaign, but it’s absolutely essential if you want to stay on track.

How to Keep It Neat

Once you’ve cleaned up your messy information, it’s crucial to maintain that tidiness. That means you must refrain from going into your Google listing (or any other listing) on your own and changing bits and pieces after we’ve already worked on it. If you need to change something, let us know. That way, we can make sure all of your listings are changed uniformly across the board.
As we said above, if all the parts of your campaign aren’t working in sync, the whole thing can come crumbling down.

Top 5 Online Advertising Mistakes That Will Waste Your Money

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Make sure you’re getting your money’s worth from Prospect Genius. Avoid these online advertising mistakes that are almost guaranteed to ruin your campaign and wash your money down the drain.

5. Hiring Another SEO Company at the Same Time

Many business owners mistakenly believe that hiring an additional SEO company will double their results. In reality, it does the opposite. If you’re already working with us, hiring another SEO company will actually work against our efforts and damage your web presence.
That’s due to a number of reasons. First, we’ve spent years developing and perfecting our lead generation strategies, which are rigidly structured to ensure consistent results. However, since every company has its own unique approach to SEO, the other company’s work may get in our way and potentially counteract our efforts. Second, working with two companies could jeopardize your standing with Google, a far graver consequence. When Google detects multiple account managers updating your listing from disparate IP addresses, it will flag your listing. From there, your listing could be penalized or suspended. Recovering from either of those actions is a long, costly process.
Finally, it’s important to know that there is only a finite number of valuable resources available for optimization. If you have more than one company trying to use those resources, it becomes a battle. Not having access to all of the resources they need will significantly weaken each campaign. Plus, with two companies battling each other and adding different sets of information, you’ll end up flagged by Google for conflicting information.
In short, hiring a second SEO company is a surefire way to damage your campaign—not to mention a huge waste of money. Read more about the dangers of working with multiple SEO companies in our blog post, “For SEO Companies, Two’s a Crowd.”

4. Not Knowing What You Want

We may be online advertising “geniuses,” but we aren’t fortunetellers. We can’t predict what you’ll want in the future—only you can do that. When you sign up with us, make sure you have an idea of what you want for the long term. This is the only way we can tailor our services to your needs. Keep an open dialogue with us about what you want out of your campaign so we can deliver the most satisfying experience possible.
For example, we’ve had clients in the past who decided during their Core campaigns that they actually wanted to focus on their own, preexisting sites rather than their LeadTrax™ sites. If we had known this upfront, we would have been able to save time, money, and hassle for both parties by using our B.Y.O.S. (Bring Your Own Site) package, instead.
If you don’t know what you want out of your Prospect Genius campaign in the long run, you’ll end up spending an unnecessary amount of time and money on a campaign that doesn’t quite suit your needs.

3. Not Answering Your Phone When Customers Call

This one is pretty straightforward. If you’re not going to answer your phone when customers call you for your services, then why are you paying us to connect you with these customers? You may be shocked to discover how infrequently some of our clients answer their phones. These clients are essentially throwing away their money because they’re paying us for a lead generation program and then ignoring the leads that are being generated. This is especially true for PPC clients who are literally paying for each person who clicks on their ad and visits their site.
If you’re having trouble answering the phone, use the Client Portal to reroute your LeadTrax number to your mobile phone or any other phone that you can actually answer with some frequency. For more tips on reducing missed calls, check out “Do You Have a Plan for Handling Missed Calls?” and “You Might Be Paying Your Advertiser for Nothing.”

2. Not Communicating With Us

Having an open line of communication between us is vital to the success of your campaign. Whether it’s turning in your Google PIN as soon as you receive it, responding to our e-mail inquiries in a timely manner, or giving us pertinent company details for your LeadTrax site content, we need you to actively communicate with us. Otherwise, we won’t be able to advertise your business to the best of our abilities.
For example, if you fail to tell us that Google sent you a verification PIN via postcard, we’ll just be stuck in limbo waiting to move forward with your Google listing. If you don’t answer the phone or call us back when we have a question about your company, we won’t be able to finish creating your LeadTrax site. If you don’t give us the full picture of what your business does and how it works, then your site won’t be very accurate. All of these ultimately lead to an unsatisfying campaign.
The bottom line is this: If you don’t actively communicate with us, we won’t be able to do our job effectively. And when we can’t be effective, you’re wasting your money.

1. Leaving Conflicting Information on the Web

Having inconsistent or conflicting information about your business all over the web is the quickest way to drive your campaign into the ground. This often results from working with a second advertising company and not realizing that they created duplicate listings with slightly varied information. However, it can also result from something simpler, like a recent address change or name change. Regardless of what caused the information inconsistency, no amount of SEO wizardry will be successful until all of your online information matches.
To get the most out of your investment in lead generation services, you’ll need to have a clean, consistent online footprint. We recommend a WebFax^® report to check the status of your online information and CleanSlate to fix any problems that come to light in the report. If you don’t take action to clean up your mismatching information, all of our lead generation efforts will be for naught.

Help Us Help You

Thankfully, all of these online advertising mistakes are easily avoidable. We don’t expect you to be super-savvy with technology or knowledgeable about Google’s best practices. All we ask is that you are completely forthcoming and honest with us so that we can do what we do best: send leads straight to you.
There’s no such thing as a perfect campaign, but if you’re able to avoid these destructive online advertising mistakes, you can at least know that you’re doing your part to make your campaign as successful as possible.
Questions or concerns? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at your earliest convenience.

Google Now Displays Tweets in Search Results

Last Updated: May 22, 2015

Earlier this year, Google announced that it had reached a deal with Twitter to display tweets in its search results. On May 19, the experts at Search Engine Land noticed that Google was finally executing its plan, as tweets began appearing prominently in a “new and more graphical way” on mobile search results. Desktop searches have not yet been affected, but Google promises that the change will extend to desktop in the near future.

Having conducted several test search queries, Search Engine Land observes that tweets sometimes appear right at the top of the search results page (primarily when the query contains a hashtag), and other times tweets appear in the middle of the page. And, of course, there are times when tweets don’t appear at all.
Search Engine Land surmises that the appearance of tweets largely depends on whether the query is connected to a trending topic: “Presumably, you’re more likely to see tweets in Google when a hashtag, topic, person or organization appears to be trending or is newsworthy.”
For instance, if you were to google, “#NBAPlayoffs,” which are going on right now, you would probably see lots of tweets about the most recent game or a popular player. But if you googled something like, “spatula,” you would just get the normal results.
This update is just the latest in a string of developments that have highlighted the increasing importance of social signals in Google’s algorithms. It’s still too early to tell how this update will impact local search, but it’s safe to say that businesses should start tweeting a lot more.

For Businesses, Facebook Is Now Pay to Play

Last Updated: March 16, 2015

If you’ve been paying attention to our blog lately, you’ll know that Facebook is starting to replace Google as the destination for local search. That’s because it’s easier to ask your Facebook friends for personal recommendations than it is to comb through Google’s search results looking for a seemingly well-reviewed business. If you think about it, it’s a logical reaction against the overwhelming amount of information that comes from a Google search. Plus, the feedback you get from Facebook crowdsourcing is often much more reliable because it comes from people you actually know and trust.

That’s why Facebook ads and promotions are so popular right now. Local businesses are taking advantage of how many ready-and-willing customers are right there, searching for a plumber, electrician, or handyman for their latest project or emergency. But Facebook is smart, and it now wants you to pay for that advantage.

Sites, They Are A-Changin’

Just like all other marketing platforms, Facebook is rapidly growing and changing. We’re all taking advantage of Facebook as much as we can until it fades out of relevance and a more vital, effective platform comes along. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that Facebook was a small site populated only by college students. Then, Facebook opened its doors to everyone over the age of 13. Soon after, companies and organizations were allowed profiles, and advertisements quickly followed.
Now, Facebook is swimming in content and status updates, and it has realized how much money there is to be made in advertising. As a result, Facebook has significantly limited the “organic reach” of business Pages—in other words, they’ve restricted how many people a Page’s content will reach for free. This forces businesses to pay for sponsored ads and “boosted” posts in order to reach their fans and followers. (When Google rose to power, it did a similar thing by launching AdWords.)

Small Businesses Are at a Disadvantage

But here’s the kicker: Most small business owners aren’t well versed in the complexities of paid online advertising, so they’re at quite a disadvantage with this new restriction. And even if a business owner is somewhat familiar with paid advertising from working with Google AdWords, they’ll face some confusion because Facebook’s model is substantially different from Google’s.
The difference is that Google uses a CPC (cost-per-click) model, while Facebook primarily uses a CPM (cost-per-impression) model. CPM is based on how many times Facebook shows the ad to a user, rather than how many people click on it. Facebook’s advertising options also allow you to choose an “objective,” but your ad will only perform well if you optimize correctly for that objective. That means, in some cases, you can choose a CPC model if it makes sense to do so; however, you’re all but guaranteed to spend a lot more money. At the same time, if you stick with CPM but fail to target the proper demographic, or fail to write an ad that’s compelling, you will still spend a lot of money and get dismal results.
And these are only the basics! It gets much more complicated as you dig deeper.

Grabbing Attention Is Hard

Aside from the payment models, sponsored advertising also presents another difficulty: creating effective ads. This is particularly important if you’re paying for impressions, because you want the people who see your ads to actually be affected by them. Many small business owners are exceptionally skilled at their trade but don’t necessarily know how to create attractive, eye-popping ads or how to write powerful calls to action.
Even if local businesses are able to figure out which payment model works for them, they face a whole new battle in creating ads that will stick in people’s minds—and that’s before even worrying about generating new leads!

Act Fast, Be Smart

While Facebook’s new pay-to-play model may seem like a giant hurdle, that shouldn’t stop you from using it. The reality is that Facebook is the most fertile ground for local advertising these days.
But while it’s crucial to get in on the ground floor of Facebook advertising while it’s still relatively affordable, don’t be too hasty. Make sure you do plenty of research and know exactly what your plan is before putting down your company credit card. If you don’t have a plan for ad messaging, testing, rotation, and bids, then you aren’t ready to do it yourself.

Don’t Be Afraid to Call for Backup

If that all sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. The time-saving alternative, of course, is to hire an advertising professional. This decision might even save you money. The reason is simple: By specializing in online advertising and doing it all day, every day, professionals have gotten really good at it. In this case, “really good” means driving down the CPM and making your dollars work harder for you.
As a prime example, take a look at what Prospect Genius achieved with the last campaign we ran for ourselves. We spent less per Page “Like” than 99% of other Facebook advertisers. Why? Because we eat, sleep, and breathe online marketing. By doing it every day, we’ve reached a level of expertise that, according to Facebook itself, 99% of other people have yet to reach. In fact, by the time we ended this campaign, we drove that cost-per-Like down even further to just $1.65 over the life of the campaign!

Whether you decide to advertise on your own or with a professional, make sure you aren’t missing out on the endless possibilities that an effective Facebook advertising campaign can create for your local business.

Prospect Genius

Google Now Displays Tweets in Search Results

Contact Us

Business Hours

Let’s Connect!

What Drives Us?

Client Portal App

Helpful Links

Sign up for our newsletter!