Prospect Genius

SEO Is Crucial. Make Sure You Can Afford It.

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Signing up for an SEO program is a long-term financial investment. Many small business owners mistakenly sign up for SEO services without considering that they’ll need to pay for several months of lead generation before they see a return on their investment. Instead, they rearrange their budget just enough to pay for the initial setup fee and the first month, hoping that will be enough to amplify their web presence. Unfortunately, that’s not the way SEO works.

SEO Is a Slow Build

SEO, especially for lead generation purposes, takes time. Business owners are typically looking at a baseline of three months before they can expect to see results. That’s why most online advertising experts recommend hiring a company that offers services on a monthly retainer, which means a business owner pays a monthly fee to have an SEO company perform regular site maintenance, analytics, call reports, keyword research, link building, and more. (This is the model that Prospect Genius follows.) But if you do opt for a monthly retainer, then you’ll need to plan for at least three months of payment before seeing any tangible improvement in your web presence.
Note: Sometimes, the process can take up to six months, depending on the condition of your web presence before you hire an SEO company. If you have mismatching information on business directories, social media pages, and Google+ listings, or you’ve previously participated in dubious or spam-like behavior, then three months may not be a sufficient timeline for resolving these problems and boosting your rankings.

Why Does SEO Take So Long?

Effective SEO requires repetition. Social media listings must be routinely populated with fresh content, press releases have to be syndicated, and directories must be updated as needed. However, not all of these tasks can be done at once. There’s a strategically tiered system of steps to be completed by your SEO specialist for optimal results, and proper spacing and timing of these tasks is essential. Once this foundation has been completely set, a few months have gone by.

Do Not Leave Your SEO Provider High and Dry

The initial setup period of your SEO campaign takes more than just your time—it also consumes the time and resources of your SEO provider. Signing up for your campaign is a tacit agreement that you’ll be patient for the first three months, and during that time, your SEO company is hard at work promoting your business. Make sure your budget allows for several months of payment. If you’re forced to quit early, all that work, and the money you’ve invested in it, is for naught.

Prospect Genius Has Options

If you have trouble predicting what your budget will look like through the next fiscal year, that doesn’t mean you must abstain from an SEO program entirely. Instead, you could opt for a service that sticks to the bare essentials or one that will give you a temporary push. At Prospect Genius, we’re addressing this need for options by rolling out a new selection of packages. From our lower cost Starter package to the bells and whistles of our Premium package, our offerings provide different types of service and kinds of online advertising at a range of price points.
Here’s a quick overview:

Starter—This basic, cost-effective package builds you a LeadTrax™ site and adds a Google+ Local listing on your behalf. There’s no off-page promotion included; we simply get your web presence up and running. This compares to many of the low-cost “lead generation” programs out there.
Core—This is our bread-and-butter SEO lead generation package. We build you a LeadTrax site and optimize it with plenty of off-page promotion, including social media, directory listings, a Google+ Local listing, and more.
Boost—This package is a targeted, three-month pay-per-click campaign that focuses on one of your major service offerings. It’s used in conjunction with our Core program to give your campaign a temporary boost, just like the name implies.
PPC—With a pay-per-click program, your site is displayed in sponsored ads on Google and other search engines. This can be a stand-alone package or it can be combined with Core in our Premium package.
Premium—This package brings you the best of SEO and the best of PPC, combining Core and PPC to augment your organic rankings with the help of sponsored ads. It’s like a permanent Boost to bring you high value today and in the future.

These packages are designed to provide you with an Internet marketing program that’s tailored to your budgetary needs. If you’re a business owner, you must have an online advertising strategy to succeed in today’s market, so make room for one in your budget, whatever it takes. You can’t afford not to. Just make sure that you’re able to afford the strategy you select—stretching your budget won’t get you very far if you can’t maintain your SEO program long term.

Make Your Presence Known: Get More Customer Reviews Online

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Day in and day out, you’re churning out terrific work for seemingly appreciative customers. You have no shortage of confidence in the quality of your services. So how come your online presence doesn’t reflect that? Why aren’t your company’s customer reviews pages brimming with five-star ratings?
Unfortunately, it’s not enough to perform dependable dryer repairs or to install central air systems flawlessly. You also have to get the word out about your satisfying work. That’s why getting online customer reviews for your company is now a critical part of promoting your business. When prospective customers find your company online, they want to see how previous customers fared before they make an investment.
As David Streitfeld of the New York Times wrote in a recent article, “If you provide a service or sell a product and you are not reviewed, you might as well not exist.”
It’s simple: If you want to attract more customers, you need to get more customer reviews. Here’s how.

1. Make it as easy as possible.

Most people are short on time and patience, so make it as convenient as possible for them to leave you a review. After all, they’re doing you a favor. Don’t make them search high and low for your Google+ listing or Facebook page. Instead, there are a few ways to streamline this process for your customers:

Use an on-page feedback feature (like the Prospect Genius one!). Chances are, your customers are already familiar with your company website, so they’ll be able to visit your page, submit a review, and disseminate it to other review sites in a few simple steps—all without having to navigate away from your page.
Add a QR code or shortened URL to your business card and other handouts. Customers can use their smartphone to scan the code, sending them straight to your website or Google+ listing. This removes the steps they would normally take to type your URL or find your listing elsewhere. Alternatively, if you use a shortened URL (from bit.ly, for example), they’ll be able to type it into their navigation bar without much confusion.
Send an e-mail with direct links to your preferred platforms (e.g. Facebook, Yelp, Citysearch). When you send a follow-up e-mail to a customer to ask how their experience with you went, include a link to one or more of your business listings. This way, the links are already provided, and all the customer has to do is click their mouse to get to a review page. Plus, if you want, you get to influence where the reviews are posted.

2. Ask directly.

Most customers aren’t going to take the initiative on their own, so if you want a review from them, you’ll have to ask. You can call them, e-mail them, ask in person, or even put a reminder at the bottom of their invoice. This can all be done once the job or transaction is complete. However, many business owners have actually seen an increase in reviews by asking for a review before the job even starts. For instance, if you’re an appliance repairman, you could say to the customer, “If you’re happy with our work at the end of the day, would you mind reviewing us on Facebook?” With the idea in their head early on, they’ll be more likely to pay attention to your work and write a more thorough review.
Bonus: Directly asking for reviews also emphasizes your concern for customer satisfaction. When you call or e-mail a customer to see how their experience was, it shows that you care about them even after they’ve paid you. This helps to ensure repeat customers.

3. Act quickly.

A customer is most likely to write you a review when the experience is fresh in their memory. If you wait even a couple of weeks after the house cleaning, car stereo installation, or gutter repair is complete, your customer might have already forgotten important details about the experience and therefore be reluctant to leave a review. Capitalize on their initial impressions and how they feel about the finished product before their enthusiasm wanes.

4. Offer incentives.

This tactic is pretty divisive, as many review sites forbid giving rewards or special treatment to customers who leave reviews. Sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and even Google all explicitly stipulate in their terms and conditions that they want honest, unbiased reviews that are free from any conflict of interest.
However, a major conflict of interest only seems likely if there’s a massive contest, prize, or future discount on the line. We recommend staying away from lavish incentives like that. Instead, you might consider offering a small, $5 coupon to the local coffee shop in return for a review (no matter what the review’s content). This gesture is enough to show that you value their feedback without it coming across as a bribe.

Two important notes when soliciting reviews:

Don’t ask customers to create new accounts (especially on Yelp) just to leave a review for you. Strict spam filters will peg the first few reviews from a brand-new account as spam until the user proves his or her legitimacy. In the meantime, their positive review of your company will probably be filtered out, rendering it invisible to others visiting your page. In short, it will be a waste of a good review.
Spread your reviews around. Don’t ask all of your customers to review you on Facebook, as that will leave your Yelp or Google+ listing totally useless to prospects who prefer those sites. Moreover, if you rely solely on one site, that leaves you completely at the mercy of that site. If there are any guideline changes or technical glitches, your listing could be ruined. So instead, give your customers options of where they can review you. Chances are, the reviews will stay pretty evenly distributed on their own. But if you do notice that one of your listings has significantly more reviews than the others, you can always stop asking for reviews on that particular site and let them pile up elsewhere.

Getting reviews isn’t easy, even when you’re consistently providing stellar customer service and results. But by using these fundamentals, you’ll be able to slowly and steadily pull in the quality customer reviews you want.

Is Yelp Doing More Harm Than Good for Your Business? Part 2: Prospect Genius Case Study

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Last month, we issued a post detailing the problems that the popular site Yelp causes for small, local businesses in all different corners of the country. In today’s followup post, we’ll detail how, like many businesses, Prospect Genius was hit by Yelp’s well meant but poorly executed practices. It was an unfortunate experience, to say the least, but there are some important lessons in our story that are worth sharing.

First, an Overview…

As you know, Yelp is a self-described urban guide that’s predicated on active users and community members voluntarily writing reviews of local businesses. Its purpose is to enable individuals to assess how well other customers fared with nearby companies in terms of service, quality, price, and overall value. Generally speaking, Yelp empowers consumers and helps businesses connect with prospective customers.
However, there’s a major flaw in Yelp’s review system, namely the automated review-filtering software. Intended to improve the reliability of Yelp’s content, it weeds out questionable reviews while keeping seemingly trustworthy ones. When a review is filtered out, its star rating goes with it, leaving zero impact on a company’s rating, for better or worse. While this seems like a good idea in theory, it has actually wound up hurting a great number of users due to an imperfect algorithm that seems to favor negative reviews over positive ones. This is what happened to Prospect Genius’s very own Yelp listing…

How the Issue Transpired

We’ve been in business for over five years now, and we’ve always committed ourselves to providing clients with exceptional service and support. In fact, we are accredited by the Better Business Bureau and maintain an A+ rating.
However, our Yelp listing used to paint a much different picture. As it turns out, a former, disgruntled client decided to spam his own Yelp listings and ours. This is a client who had signed up for our lead generation program three different times for two separate, unrelated businesses. On his own listings, he boldly left glowing reviews without even disguising himself with a different username. These reviews beat the filtering system. Meanwhile, on our listing, using the same name, he wrote a deeply negative and false review, which also made it past the filters.
At the same time, five different, legitimate clients gave us very positive reviews. How many of those made it onto our Yelp listing? Zero. You read that correctly: 100% of our positive reviews were filtered out. This left our listing with a one-star rating and a solitary, terrible review from an angry spammer, while five excellent reviews remained filtered and hidden. As you can guess, we weren’t happy about this.

Our Course of Action in Response

Not prone to ignore blatant injustice, we faced the issue head on. First, we reported our former client’s reviews as spam on his own listing (because that’s exactly what they were). Then, we contacted Yelp’s Customer Service Department and requested that a human, not a robot, look at the reviews on our listing because the automated filter had made an error. In return, we received a form response that explained how the review filter works without providing any semblance of a solution.
At this point, we decided to go one step further and contact the Legal Department, this time with a stronger request: either manually review the results of the filter or remove Prospect Genius completely from the Yelp directory. Rather than comply with our request, their response was to mark our listing as “no index,” meaning that it still exists but cannot be found via search. Obviously, this is not the same as deleting it.

The Less-Than-Agreeable Outcome

As it stands now, our listing still exists on Yelp without being indexed. While you won’t find us by searching for our name, you can view the listing here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/prospect-genius-troy.
The negative review from our former client is no longer anywhere on our listing. One terrific client review with a five-star rating has made it through the filter—but four other positive reviews still remain hidden.
Unfortunately, Yelp’s review filter is here to stay. We can only hope that the software becomes more accurate as time goes on. For now, we’ll chalk this up to a learning experience and use it as an important lesson for small business owners everywhere.

The Lesson to Take Away

While this encounter with Yelp and its Customer Service Department has certainly left a bad taste in our mouth, we’ve at least managed to take away a few lessons—primarily, that you must be vocal and stand up for yourself as soon as you notice a problem. Otherwise, the bad guys (a.k.a. spammers and uncaring corporations) will win. Who wants to live in that kind of world?
The second lesson is a point that we’ve made before, but it bears repeating: Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Unpleasant interactions with former clients and impersonal web directories are bound to happen. That’s why you should always use a variety of websites when marketing your company. Some of our preferred directories include Google+, Yahoo! Local, Bing Local, Citysearch, Local.com, and Angie’s List. When you utilize a handful of different outlets, you’ll prevent your honest advertising efforts from being crippled by any one spammer, nasty competitor, or irate customer.
If you decide to stick with Yelp, just remember, that while it can be a useful tool when the system works in your favor, it also has equal potential to harm your reputation. Stay on top of your listing, watch out for dubious behavior, and report any problems as soon as they appear. If you end up having an experience similar to ours (which we wouldn’t wish on anyone), then you can save a lot of time by directly asking for your company not to be indexed. Yelp won’t delete your listing, but at least others won’t be able to find it without knowing the precise URL.

Get Advice From Prospect Genius

No matter which online business directories you decide to work with, vigilance is your best strategy. But if you see something suspicious and aren’t positive that it should be a red flag, feel free to give us a call! Having gone through this ourselves, we’ll be more than happy to give you our opinion.

Local University: Prospect Genius's Higher Education

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

At Prospect Genius, many of our clients are family-owned, brick-and-mortar businesses. They are extremely talented and knowledgeable in their respective trades and industries, but since they don’t specialize in online marketing, they aren’t always familiar with best practices and sound SEO strategies. Instead, it’s our job to stay abreast of all the latest developments in the online advertising world and remain as knowledgeable as possible about the evolution of local SEO. That’s why they hire us, after all.
In our most recent attempt to stay up to date with new local advertising strategies, we decided to attend a Google-sponsored event known as Local University. The conference was put together by a brain trust of the savviest SEO experts in the industry, focusing on an array of topics that centered on improving Google Maps rankings and local search results for businesses of all shapes and sizes. We knew that this would be an educational and invaluable experience, so we sharpened our pencils, opened our notebooks, and got to work.

Why a Conference?

As anyone in the SEO field knows, the world of local online advertising is constantly changing. This is especially true for Google+ Local, which is predicated on the physical location, relevance, and proximity of search results. Effective SEO on a local level is an art form and a science all at once. As Google takes strides to weed out lazy, dishonest web marketers through update after update to their search algorithm and filters, the process gets just a little more complicated for the rest of us.
While we consistently read industry blogs, interact with other SEO professionals, and conduct our own independent A/B testing in order to keep up with Google’s changes, information straight from the horse’s mouth cannot be undervalued. That’s why we ultimately decided to attend this conference: it would be the best way to receive the most forward-thinking information directly from the brightest minds in the field.

What Did We Take Away?

The expert speakers and panelists who presented were extremely knowledgeable, and we were able to glean a great deal of insight from them. While not all of the content was applicable to Prospect Genius, there were some important highlights:

Strategies to help draw real reviews for local listings
Proven tactics for improving local search rankings
Paid advertising options for local businesses
Ways Google is fighting spam in local business directories
Solutions to common problems encountered by businesses with multiple locations
Effective marketing tools beyond the scope of Google and Google+ Local

How Can It Be Applied?

Our production team is currently in the process of reviewing this flood of new information and brainstorming innovative, practical applications for it. We’re looking forward to:

Expanding our SEO practices into more paid advertising
Revamping our press release syndication strategy
Changing how we leverage local business directories (e.g. Yelp, Superpages, etc.)
Continuing to implement updates and best practices for Google Maps

Is Yelp Doing More Harm Than Good for Your Business?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Small businesses in every corner of the country are wondering where all of their good Yelp reviews have gone.
Yelp’s official website states that their primary purpose is “to connect people with great local businesses.” What they don’t tell you is that a large number of these upstanding local businesses are feeling the squeeze of Yelp’s practices every day.
This is especially true when it comes to reviews. In fact, a shocking number of small businesses have reported that a majority, if not all, of their positive reviews have been filtered out while their negative reviews remain. But before we get into the nuts and bolts of how Yelp’s filtering system may be hurting instead of helping, let’s take a quick look at what Yelp even is…

(Source: Yelp.com)

Yelp: A Brief Overview

If you’re a frequent Internet user, you’ve probably noticed that Yelp listings for local businesses tend to appear at the very top of Google search results. If you’re also an informed user, then you probably clicked on that listing to check out the business’s contact info and reviews.
Yelp.com is a relatively up-and-coming website that only gained significant traction on Google’s search results when Google dialed up the importance of reviews about 12 months ago. Yelp describes itself as an “online urban city guide,” designed to assist locals on the hunt for good restaurants, bars, hair salons, repair shops, dentist offices, and the like. Moreover, it helps local businesses connect with the people who are already searching for their products or services.
Over the course of the last year or so, listings on Yelp have gone from the bottom of Google results pages to the top, thanks to the site’s increased popularity on social media and a strong focus on user reviews. Will the party last? A Google algorithm update weighting social relevance and reviews more heavily is responsible for Yelp’s sudden rise. But, since Yelp competes directly with Google+, we think it’s likely the bubble will burst sometime in the next 12 to 24 months, as Google targets Yelp as the competition.
Today, no business owner can argue against the value of a good Yelp listing, whether it appears in Google search results or on the Yelp mobile app. When attractive photos, accurate contact information, and plenty of positive reviews are included, a solid Yelp listing can convince local consumers that a company is worthy of their business.
Unfortunately, if business owners are unable to fill their Yelp listings with flattering content—or are unaware that they have listings on Yelp to begin with—then they’ll quickly feel the negative consequences. The basic downside of Yelp is that anyone can create a listing on a business’s behalf and leave poor, unsubstantiated reviews. While Yelp seems to be making efforts to improve the quality of their listings by promoting community involvement, filtering dubious reviews, and nominating especially helpful and active users to “Elite” status, there are still many loopholes that allow poor content to slip through.
But how does Yelp’s wide range of positive and negative aspects pertain to small business owners and local service providers?

Good Intentions, Poor Execution

As Yelp continues to develop, it has attempted to enhance the efficacy of business listings by designing a handful of additional features, most notably filtered reviews.
The review-filtering feature is purported to weed out questionable reviews. It’s meant to provide users with more dependable and informative content and to discourage dishonest or spam-like behavior. Furthermore, any review that’s been filtered will not contribute to the business’s overall Yelp rating.
Operated by undisclosed software, the filtering process gives more credence to reviews written by users with proven track records of honesty, helpfulness, and fairness. While the intended goal is to increase the reliability and accuracy of Yelp’s listings, there may be some unintended consequences, due mainly to the fact that the filtering software isn’t perfect. Frequently, legitimate reviews from new, not-yet-established users will be filtered out, while poorly written, deceptive reviews from dubious users will make it onto the listing. Since filtered reviews have no bearing on a business’s rating, this can prove to be highly detrimental to listings that have few reviews to begin with.
(To hear about Prospect Genius’s own unfortunate brush with Yelp’s filtered reviews, stay tuned for our next blog post.)

Don’t Fall Into the Yelp Trap

Some businesses have been fortunate enough to maintain positive reviews on their listings, thus benefiting greatly from their experience with Yelp.
However, countless other businesses have felt the wrath of one angry competitor who’s gaming the system or are struggling due to the number of positive reviews that have been inadvertently filtered out. Those businesses may not realize that they have other options.
We’ve learned a lot from our brief run-in with Yelp, namely that it’s not the be-all and end-all of local online advertising. Many business owners think they’re stuck with Yelp just because a listing was created, but what they don’t know is that they can actually contact Yelp representatives directly and ask them to remove their listing from the site. If they don’t want to go that far, they can try to encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews and hope that Yelp’s review filter won’t remove all of them.
Moreover, there are several other online advertising options available outside of Yelp. While Yelp can be a helpful business tool, it’s not the only local business directory out there. Business owners can utilize Google+, Yahoo! Local, Bing Local, Citysearch, Local.com, and even Angie’s List to protect themselves from problems with any single website. It’s important for business owners to remember not to put all of their eggs in the Yelp basket, especially with Yelp’s success in Google search results predicted to melt away down the road.

To Be Continued…

In our next blog post, we’ll discuss our own experiences with Yelp and use it as an example of how other small business owners can take action themselves.
Stay tuned!

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