As a business owner or an SEO expert you probably noticed that: some link builder offered “High quality guest post starts from $5” or “Dofollow sponsored post available at $10”.

Sorry to say that, if you use these kinds of services, you will not be able to build a natural link profile. Google is now enough smart to sense which sites refers you as a valuable resource or the other links that you bought for some bucks.

Also, buying high quality links are too costly nowadays. I have noticed some gigs that offers backlinks from Forbes, Huffpost, NYT and the price starts from $3000.

Still some startups spend this huge amount to get a link from these sites. They think these links will boost their sites up within a night or using the sites name on their site like “we are featured as XYZ” would make their brand reputed.

After a year you will find those start up in drop domain list. Reason is very simple, only spending money can’t make a good website. There are other areas like a minimal website design, well researched content, CPC where you can utilize the money to get good results.

Today in this blog I will be discussing about some ways to get natural backlinks. If you can spend your time and effort on these then after sometimes you will be able to notice the change. Though this process is time worthy, but at the end you will be beneficial.

Ways to build natural link Profile:

When you are ready to start all these methods first you need to forgot all the spammy ways that you have used in past to create links for your website. Here I will mention the top five ways that I use to build genuine backlinks.

1.Write catchy content that increase engagement:

Though this point should not be included in a topic about link building. Actually, if you can write articles that gain user as well as search engines attention then you don’t need to think about building or creating backlinks.

If someone founds your article really informative then they will never hesitate to link/refer your page inside their own content.

Some people think that automatically gaining link is not possible for low authority websites. This is not true, when people found a page on top search result nobody checked the authority of the website before reading.

So, the only thing matters here is content. Here I am going to mention some key points to write a catchy content that ranks well on search engine too.

• Keyword Research:

Before writing, a proper keyword research is the key to create a really informative content. Keyword refers to the search phrases that people use to find out the solution of their problem or other queries.

So, if you really want to help people find out their needs first. Search engine will show your page on SERP if your content contains the solution of user’s queries.

For find out the relevant searches of your niche you may use these tools:

Ahref
SemRush
Google Trends
Search Console

• Using Proper media in Content:

Media in content refers to images, gifis, graphics, infographics, videos. A content with medias is more likely to rank in SERP and attracted to users. An Image can express a 500 words story. Also, it is must when you are writing something technical to elaborate every step clearly. A single infographic can express a whole content. Obviously, people would like to take a glance at the infographic than a 1000 words lengthy content. According to a stat  “53% SEO writer use infographic in content and 60% of the contents have a good chance of getting reference link”. Among all kind of media using video inside content is trending now. I used to watch Neil Patel’s short videos nowadays than reading his text content. It saves times for me and represents a clear picture of the blog in my mind within 2-3 minutes.

• Use Stats and Case Studies in content:

 If you are reading this point without missing the above points then you already have noticed that I used a statistic on using Info-graphic and I referred a link to their website. People likes statistics and case studies as these are the outcomes of an experiment or survey. Based on the stats one can assume the result and measure the recent standings. Using a statistic in content and giving a credit link to the source is easy but running an experiment with huge data and making a stat is not so easy.

• Write Ultimate Guide or How to Articles:

As an SEO guy you already heard or read Moz’s “Beginners Guide to SEO” article or Backlino’s “Complete SEO tools article”. These complete guides are famous because Moz covered all the necessary things one need to know as a SEO beginner and Backlinko mentioned more than 150+ SEO related tools at one place. As a result, Moz has more than 5000+ referring domain pointing to the single page “Beginners guide to SEO” & Backlinko has more than 8500+ referring domain pointing to the SEO tools page.

 Another type is how to articles. This type of articles may be 300-500 words but very useful to fix users issues. You should know that maximum people use “how to” in search bar to find out their required solution. In this case a well written how to article on a specific problem has a greater chance to rank or getting links.

• Use of proper Title, heading and subheadings:

Using proper title and headings is another thing you need to maintain to write a catchy content. Maximum of the users take a look at the title and headings before drive into the whole content. If they found nothing interesting in them, they will bounce from your page. Also a well formatted table of content gets benefit in ranking.

2. Broken or 404 Link building:

This is one of the trendy link building technique. If you can execute all the required steps for broken link building then you can get high quality links. Even you can’t buy those links to spend money.

Step 1: Find out the 404 URLs:

First you need to pick your targeted keywords. Search them all in Google. Collect the top sites from the result.

Example: When I was trying to make backlink for my previous blog on reputation management.

I selected these keywords for collecting related blogs: reputation management, how to build good reputation of your brand, reputation monitoring tools, how to respond negative reviews, how to remove negative reviews from Facebook, Google my business, Yelp etc.

Note: From the top search results I have collected sites that are related to reputation. You will find sites like Forbes, Entrepreneur on the top search result. It’s better keeps these kinds of blogs for the second round…as they did not publish only reputation management blogs. So, there will be less chance to find a 404 page on reputation.

On the below screenshot you will find which type of sites I collect first. The domains inside the green rectangle box are picked for the first-round work and the rest domains are kept on a different sheet for the next round.

Now it’s time to explore the 404 pages from these domains:

Best tools to find 404 pages?

The best tool in this purpose is AHREF. Let’s take a look on AHREF dashboard to find out 404 pages:

i. Explore your site in AHREF. Go to the left sidebar and pages> best by links.

ii. In the above bar filter the HTTP and select 404 not found option.

Step2: Collecting the Backlinks:

Then you will find the 404 pages with the number of referring domains and number of dofollow links. Click on the dofollow number then you will find the URls from where the broken links still receives backlinks.

Now you have the list of URLs with a broken outgoing links. Before reaching them out make sure that the broken link content was related to your suggested content. You can check the broken link on way back machine or check it from the AHREF dashboard. At the end of the URL you will notice a triangle click on it, an option for view on Archive.org option will be popped up.

Another Way to Find 404 External Links:

Though this process is not so efficient you can use this if you don’t have any premium tool.

Install Check My Links Addon on your browse:

This addon is very useful to find a 404 link of a specific page. If you are a chrome user then you can install it from the web store.

Then search your keywords and open the URLS in new tab. For checking the 404-external links of those pages you just need to click on the addon icon from the right-side Chrome extension bar.

A pop-up box will open and you will find the invalid links if there is any.

Step 3: Reach out to the editor:

Now you may reach out to the owner with a cold email like that:

“Hi There,

I spotted a broken link on your website.

The broken link appears on this page: “Page URL”

Link text “Anchor text of the broken link” points to “Broken URL” which is not alive anymore.

Also, you may consider replacing the broken link with my updated resource which covers all the topics you want to refer your audience: “Your suggested URL”

Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with?

Best,

XYZ”

Or Try this one:

SL: Quick Note – Dead Resource on your Site

Hello,

I recently visited your site while researching for an article I’m working on Reputation Management.

This is a note for your webmaster, as I found a dead resource on your site that visitors like me surely miss.

It’s on this page: …..

I got an error message when I tried to click on this anchor: “….”.

It looks like the website is not live anymore and it redirects to another broken page.

And while you’re updating your page, I wondered if you’d be open to including some further resources that could help people struggling with similar issues.

We actually have a similar guide about “…..”.

URL: …..

Thanks for your help and for providing great resources!

Best,

MR./MRS. XYZ

3. Find out websites that welcomes contributors:

Still guest blogging matters a lot in terms of getting a backlink or referral traffic. And it’s not very tuff to find out blogs that allow guest contributor. You may run these bellow search terms to find out your niche related blogs for guest blogging.

• Your Niche inurl: Write for us
• Your Niche inurl: Guest Post
• Your Niche inurl: Contribute
• Your Niche inurl: Submit Article
• Your Niche inurl: Add Article
• your Niche inurl: Submit Ideas
• Your Niche inurl: Contributors Guidelines
• Your Niche inurl: Become an Author
• Your Niche inurl: Writes Guidelines
• Your Niche inurl: Submit your content
• Your Niche inurl: Apply for an author account

After finding the websites read their guidelines and the topics they are looking for. Write a catchy content by following the above tips that meets the websites guidelines too. Reach out to the editor with a cold email to request a review of your article.

Bonus Tips to increase the chance of the article’s acceptance:

• Don’t write the topic based on your product or service directly.
• Focus on the topics they are looking for recently or their website’s general theme.
• Use their most popular contents as reference in your article.
• Use your link naturally & don’t use your link several times in the content.
• Don’t attach a fake author bio with a fake image.
• If possible make a custom image/graphic for the article.
• Outreach template tone should be a request type.

A website audit is a type of scrutiny to discover the problems that the website is facing. During the audit, your website will be observed from the both sites on-site and off-site. A depth analysis of your website can detect all the minor to major issues that needs to be fixed. In this purpose you may use some reputed tools to do this task for you. But tools never be the alternative to human eye. So, in some specific findings you need to check manually too.

Why auditing your website is important?

Before spending on anything else you should audit your website carefully. Otherwise your money and the efforts will be in vain. Let’s take a look at the benefits of website audit:

I. Search Engine Ranking:

Still today an organic traffic is preferred than any other traffic sources. Because, it is more reliable and less cheap. And the dictator Google likes the websites that are technically perfect. Technically perfect indicates good insight score, mobile friendly, proper redirects, without any unnecessary java scripts, CSS files, 404 pages, broken links etc. As well as technical perfections, Google likes a good backlink profile too. By conducting a website audit, you can check all these things and fix it if there are issues.

II. Good User Experience:

Let, someone found your site and clicked the link. The next 10-15 second, he just looked at the grey circle of your browser rotates anti- clock wise and clock wise. According to Neil Patel  40% visitors leaves the website if it take more than 3 seconds to open. Also, for an e-commerce website it is must to maintain a fast loading speed. Aa a fast loading speed increase the likeliness of a buyer to buy products from the site. A broken link is also annoying to a user.

III. Monitoring Backlinks:

Except the technical and on-site issues, you need to take care of your backlink profile also. Maybe your competitors or link farms can build poor or spammy links for your website. A continuous poor links may be the cause of your site’s penalty by Google. In this scenario you can audit your backlinks and find out the bad links. After submitting those backlinks for disavow you can tell Google that you don’t want reference from those links.

From a deep analysis of backlinks, you can get the anchor text distribution percentage of your backlinks. Maintaining a healthier anchor text profile has a positive impact on SEO.

IV. Reputation Management:

As a business owner you already aware that how important is to maintain a good reputation. It is very important to keep an eye to those who are referring you, reviewing your service or discussing about your brand. A negative comment and rating can ruin your reputation. You can get help of some reputed tools or do it manually to discover those negative reviews or comments. With a strategic way you can respond all those negative reviews and take action to remove them. So, when auditing your off-site don’t forgot to take care of your reputation. For more details read this blog.

Factors you need to check in on-page audit:

On-page or on-site audit refers to the whole content, media and HTML source code of a website. This part has a huge impact on ranking. So, in the beginning let’s start with the on-site factors. There are many factors to check in on-page audit. Among them I will mention the important ones.

• Title tags
• H1 tag
• Meta description
• Empty alt text
• Redirects (For www and HTTP version)
• 301 and 302 Redirects
• 4xx and 5xx status codes
• 404 Pages
• Robots.txt
• Sitemap.xml
• Google Insight Score (For desktop and mobile)
• Page Load Time
• Optimized Images
• Dynamic URLs
• Broken Images

Things you must need to check during the time of off-page Audit:

• Backlinks
• Broken Links
• Internal link distribution
• Webmaster security Issues and overall performance.
• Google Analytics setup
• Reviews 

Top 5 Tools for website audit:

Without tools a complete website audit is not possible. There are many tools available in market for website auditing. I will suggest the best seven out of them.

1.SEM RUSH:

The most used tool by the professional for auditing a website is Semrush. To conduct an audit on Semrush you have to add your target URL and create a project name first. Based on your website’s index pages set the limit of checked pages. After running the audit, you can check your site’s health and issues from the overview report.

Health Score:

The health score is provided from a 0 o 100 scale calculated based on the findings. The more health score indicates the less issues in your website.

Issues:

This part is displayed in three formats, errors, Warning and Notice. Among these three you must need to take care of the errors. These three parts includes maximum factors for on-page that we mentioned earlier.

Backlink Audit:

This is the most important thing offered by SEMrush. They provide a toxic score of each backlinks of your website. Toxic Scores 0-40, 40-60 and 60-100 are considered as good, semi-toxic and toxic links. These links can shorten your effort when you are disavowing your bad links. You can definitely attach the toxic links in disavow sheet but take a look at the semi-toxic links before attaching. Because, sometimes there would have some good links too.

Key Factor: Toxic Backlinks.

2. AHREF:

Although this website is famous for its fast crawling huge backlink directory and analysis report, you can use AHREF for technical audit too.

Technical Report:

Like SEMrush or other reputed tools AHREF provides maximum on-page findings including health score. Health score is calculated here in a 0 to 100 scale. If you have 100 crawl page and 20 pages without any critical issues then your health score will be 80. Except this you can check the html tags and content issues, redirect issues, image, JavaScript and CSS related issues.

Backlink Analysis:

Basically, this section of AHREF has a huge fanbase. They provide two popular metrices in SEO DR (Domain Rating), UR (URL Rating). As well as your own websites they provide DR and UR for all the backlinks too. Based on this two metrices you can get a basic idea about the backlinks. You can classify your pages depending on most enriched backlinks, ranked keywords or traffic.

Another catchy feature is domain comparison. This is very useful when you are comparing your domain to your competitors. From the comparison you can find out where your competitors are ahead like Facebook, Pinterest share, Backlinks, Referring Domains, Dofollow, Nofollow links etc.

Key Factor: DR and UR.

3. Ubersuggest:

Ubersuggest is relatively new but very popular for website analysis. This tool is quite similar to SEMrush. Let’s take a look at their dashboard.

On-site Findings:

After running the audit, you will find on-page score and the site loading speed on mobile and desktop.
All the issues are displayed into 3 parts (Critical Errors, Warnings, Recommendations) on the dashboard.
Complete details will be accessed by clicking on the findings number.

Off-site Findings:

From the left sidebar you will find Backlinks, top pages by traffic, keyword ideas. Their keyword ideas section is very informative. There are total 5 section in keyword ideas. One more catchy feature in dashboard is content ideas. Regarding any keyword you will be able to explore the top ranked contents and backlinks on those pages.

Key Factor: Site Speed analysis

4. Woo Rank:

Another big fish in this area is Woo Rank. Just enter your website in their home page and run the audit. You will notice both the on-page and off-page findings on the right sidebar.

On-page Section:

This website covers Content, Indexing, Mobile Friendliness, Structured data, Security (SSL status), performances, Technologies (Server, Language, Plugin, Widgets), Branding (URL, Favicon, 404 Pages).

Off-page Section:

This section includes backlink analysis, Traffic Rank, Google Analytics, Local directory reviews, Social profiles and keyword tools. Though maximum features are available on upgraded plans.

Key Factor: Reviews from the local directories.

5.GI, GMB, GWM, GA

The next tools which I will discuss below is not enough to audit a website completely but you need to use them to conduct a complete audit

I. Google Insight:

Another tool for measuring the site’s performance is Google Insight. You can measure both mobile and desktop performance from this tool. After crawling the page, you will find the areas like unnecessary JavaScript and CSS where you need improvements. Also, you will find the time for first contentful paint, time to interactive, speed index.

Key Factor: Insight Score

II. Google My Business:

If your business is on GMB then you must need to monitor at least the reviews. 60% of world’s total online business are listed on Google My Business. A negative review on top can ruins your business reputation.

Key Factor: Monitoring Reviews

III. Search Console:

If you want to know “How good your website is performing on Google?” then Google Webmaster is the best tool for the measurement. You will be notified there is any manual action against your website. Besides, you can check the latest links, performance from webmaster.

Key Factor: Security & Manual Action.

IV. Google Analytics:

For e-commerce and service website it is must to link Google Analytics to your website. You can set up to 20 goals here on Google analytics. Their informative audience overview dashboard on different section is the best option to track your audience.  Different classification like real time visitor, geo location, technology, mobile will help you to analyze your audience properly. 

Key Factor: Audience Analysis

Generally, I use these above tools (Any two of the first four and all of the point five) to audit my own and client’s websites. Now I will mention some key findings that I found when I was auditing websites.

7 common but terrific mistakes that I found in previous audits:

A. HTTP & HTTPS version is not fixed:

For 1-2 clients I found that their website is opening both HTTP and HTTPS versions. In search engine their site will be treated as different site and considered them as duplicate content sites. If it is not fixed, after some times websites may be penalized by Google. Another bad effect is splited link juice. As HTTPS is a recent protocol, your old http links juice will be in vain.

How to FIX it:

As your website is opening in HTTPS version that means you have a valid SSL certificate. But your HTTP version is not redirecting to HTTPS properly that’s why it is opening on both versions. You just need to update your .htaccess file with a redirection code.

You can use the below codes for a successful redirection.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com [NC]

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R,L]

For WordPress:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on

RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

</IfModule>

After that your HTTP version will redirect to HTTPS automatically. Still it may be not purely locked or color will not be green.

This is happened because of the existence of some mixed contents/media. To fix this issue:

Right Click on the page >Inspect tool>Console. Then you will find out the exact URLs which are still with HTTP version. Update the URLs to HTTPS from the source.

B. Staging Site is still live:

 Staging site or clone site is very important for every website before make the original website live. Developers like to design or make any change on the staging website. If every thing is alright then they make the final change to the main website.

Now the problem is that, once one of my clients told me that his website lost some important ranked pages suddenly. After auditing I found that their staging website is indexed too. So, the website was treated as a duplicated content website by Google. Even, some of their staging URL was ranking better than the original.  I just checked the site on Google like site: www.clientsite.com and found those staging indexed URLs.

Quick action to take:

If you found some staging URLs that are indexed already, the first thing you need to open the webmaster. Submit URL removal request in Google webmaster. Generally it doesn’t takes long to remove the URLs from indexing. But it may take up to 90 days.

What are the mistakes that developers make when using staging site?

Their developer just disallowed crawlers in robots.txt file. But doing this you can’t keep out of Google indexing. Sometimes they do nothing to make the staging site deindexed.

What to do when running a staging site?

I. HTTP Authentication:

This is the recommended way by Google to prevent any URL from indexing. If you use HTTP authentication then any user or bot needs a user ID and password to access the page. Google do not index such kind of pages.

II. IP Whitelisting:

IP whitelisting means allowing only trusted IPs. Just allow 2-3 IPs like your won and client’s IP to protect the site from other users’ access and Google indexing.

III. Noindex Metatag:

This is another option to declare a Noindex tag in meta robot. Google will not index a page with a noindex meta tag.

IV: Canonical:

Declare a canonical URL in your staging website that is pointing to the main website. Like <link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.clientsite.com/” />

By doing this you are telling Google that the property of the staging site is belongs to the original site. Then Google will index only the original version of your website.

C. Valuable 404 Pages:

Another common thing that I found for several clients is 404 pages. A URL is getting 404 for many reasons. Let, your client has closed a service recently so he removed the specific service page. In some case we need to move the page on different address.

How to Find 404 Pages?

The easiest and free way is to retrieve the data from Search console. After logging into your webmaster account go to crawl error section and collect the URLs. Otherwise you may use any tool that I recommended for audit earlier.

How 404 Affects to your website?

If someone click a reference link to your website that is a 404 page now then they will be disappointed. That means a poor user experience and high bounce rate, which can be harmful for your organic ranking. Another big lose is old backlink juices that are pointing to the 404 pages.

How to Fix?

Make a 301 redirection of the 404 pages to relevant pages. Another option is to restore the page again if you don’t have any issue with it.

FAQ Section:

1.            How often you need to audit your website?

2.            What is the best tool for website audit?

3.            How to make website audit report?

The reputation of a business or business owner refers to the perception of the audience about them. For an individual or a business a good reputation in the market is the most important factor to be successful.

A decades ago public relation with a business was different. People don’t have opportunities to know more information about the person or products before purchasing and leaving their feedback after using the product or service.

Nowadays the scenario is different, we always check the reviews, quality of services before subscribing any packages or buying any product. That’s why reputation plays a big role to convert a visitor to a consumer.

To maintain a good reputation it is necessary for a business to build a transparent image on social media or other reputed website that provides public feedback and ratings. As well as reviews, a positive discussion among public and published online news are also the key factors.

No one can build a good reputation within a night. It is a long term process that requires a lot of effort to build and maintain. Today in this blog I will be discussing about the procedure to build a good reputation and the steps to recover it if your reputation is ruined in the market. Continue reading to explore more…

How to Build a Good Reputation?

From the starting day of your business you need to think about your reputation.It will be worthy in the end. How good your reputation will be depending on your happy customers. The only thing matters here is your customers experiences and feedback. So be careful to your customers satisfaction. Even satisfaction of your customers is a old theory now. You need to make them delighted for your own sake. Now I am going to share the top 7 tips to build a good reputation.

1. Keep your Commitments:

“WITHOUT COMMITMENT YOU CANNOT HAVE DEPTH IN ANYTHING WHETHER its A RELATIONSHIP, BUSINESS OR HOBBY.”

It is very easy to make a commitment. But it is not so easy to make it happen when the time comes to delivery. Don’t take it as a joke. Before making the commitment think twice. But once you make it do whatever you need to do to keep it. If your delivery or service don’t meets your commitments, your customers never gonna be satisfied.

2. Be Transparent:

Tell them what actually you can do or your service offers. If possible offer them a trial before subscribing or purchasing. It can gain trust of your audience and make them confident. Be honest to your customers.Don’t take advantage of someone’s needs. Otherwise their experience may be bitter and it leads to a bad feedback also.

3. Give Sufficient Support:

Every company is careful to audience until they subscribe their service or buy products. But the support should be continued after the purchasing too. A good communication and technical support can make them familiar with your products. Let, your customers are facing any issue with your product or service and they are trying to reach you out for the fix. If they don’t get any support in this scenario, definitely your impression will be bad in this case. Providing enough support not only builds good impression, you can get returning customer and new customers too that are referred by your old satisfied customers. So, feel them that always you are in their back.

4. Be Consistent and Humble When Replying:

Always be consistent and humble when you are replying even in your bad days. Be careful of your words, a cold reply can flow air in a serious situation. Appreciate all type of comments and assure them that you will try the best to solve their problem very soon. A rude behaviour and inconsistent reply can fade up your customers. And they are most probably leave a negative feedback. And it can spreads quickly than other positive feedback.

5. Focus on Deadlines:

“Sorry, I did not get enough time to complete this task, please allow me some sore days to complete the task”- We all are familiar with this line. This thing is happened due to poor utilization of time. As the delivery time is fixed you should use it properly that’s why you can finish it before the deadline. Even a quality task is ruined if it is not delivered on time.

6. Request for Feedback:

Feedback is the main thing that can grow your product or service. Always request your customers to leave there experience. Different clients have different types of expectations. Accept both positive and negative feedback. Find out the problems, own them, and try to solve as soon as possible. Upgrade the product or services as per the client’s demand. Create a short review link and send it to them through the mail that’s why they don’t need to spend more time finding you on map.

7. Follow your Competitor:

This is the last tips in our list to build a positive reputation of your brand. To explore more ideas you should follow your reputed competitors. Find out the strategy they have used to grow their reputation and you would try those to build yous. As they are already reputed so there is a big chance that their process will be applicable for your brand’s too.

Don’t try to be over smart and trick your customer. Because an honest businessman may take time to be successful but once they are settled, they remains on top for years.

If you can maintain these steps for the very first day, now it’s the time to discover how your reputation is in the market. Well, I am going to share 7 steps to discover or measure your reputation.

7 Steps to Discover Reputation of a Brand or Person:

These are not the universal methods to measure your reputation. But, you can try this to discover easily.

Step 1:

• Search Brand Name/Persons name using “” on Google (Local google search engine if the business/service is based on local).
• Use some negative term with your brand for searching like fake, scam, fraud.

You may search using other words related to the brand with different search operators.

Step 2:

Identify the review websites/directory listing sites that provides user reviews (With ratings and text comments) about the brand from the top search results.

Websites to look out for:

• Google
• Yellowpages
• Yelp
• Superpages
• Glassdoor (Specially for products)
• Indeed (Specially for services)
• Angies List
• BBB (Better Business Bureau)
• Foursquare
• Trip Advisor (Specially for food, travel, restaurant)

Step 3:

Use Google keyword suggestion. Probably you have noticed that when you are typing any term on Google search bar, related suggestion to your search term are shown below the search bar. Those suggestions are made from the recent searches by other people and your search history. You can easily get an idea from those suggestions that people are searching positive/negative thing about your brand.

Step 4:

Check the social pages of the brand or person. If the brand or person is on social media then there is a big chance to appear the social profiles for a query about brand name/person name.

Check the reviews and current comments of the social profiles.

Websites to look out specially:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

Step 5:

Find out the Forum/Discussion/Q &A sites if there is any on top search result. Check the discussion and answered questions.

Step 6:

Use reverse image search for the person’s image. Check the links where the image is used or tagged. This is very important for websites of lawyers, consultants, medical professionals. Search the mail address & phone number. Find out if someone is misusing it.

Step 7:

Identify the popular blogs from the top search results which are providing information about your search queries. Take a glance at the meta description in the search results. If the writing tone is negative then check the whole blog.

Using these steps you will find both negative and positive feedback/ratings. But when the matter comes to maintain your reputation, as a business owner or 9 to 5 employee you don’t have enough time to finding your reputation by doing manual search every time.

For your convenience here I will suggest some tools that monitor your reputation for 24*7. In web every time your name or brand will be mentioned the tool will notify you. And, you will have a clear idea how things are going in the web about you or your brand.

Top 5 tools to monitor your online reputation:

a. Google Alert:

This tool is a very useful tool provided by Google. Thanks to them, they are providing this great service for free. Many tools use Google’s indexed data to monitor on your specific keywords. As, Google itself providing this service using their database then there should be no doubt about the authenticity of the findings. But there is a dispute too, may be you already noticed that they never show the complete findings like backlinks from search console, ranking keywords etc. Still you can set up Google alert to monitor your reputation, checking the new backlinks of your website or keeping an eye on your competitor.

How to use Google Alert?

• You just need to attach your keywords Like Your Brand name, your name. They will notify you by email daily or weekly as you wish.

• You can change the time frame from the setting.

• By editing the keyword you can filter the source(Like: blog,news,web,video), region, Language of the findings.

b. Mention:

Another great tool in this field is Mention. For the maximum mentions(used in web) of your keywords(called as alert in mention.com) you can try this website. They provide a 14 days trial pack before subscribing without any credit card. So, you have a great chance to test their features before paying.

Pricing:

As well as premium packages Mention offers a free plan too. Though the free plan allows to add only one alert. Their most popular plan is the pro plan that is $83 per month. In this plan you can add 5 alerts and get upto 5000 mentions. Check out their full Subscription packages.

How to use Mention?

• Sign up and login to mention.com. From the dashboard create your first alert.

• Select the alert type. Enter the alert name. In the next step enter brand website and social profiles.

• In the next step you can change language setting and enter into the dashboard.

c. Reputology:

This is another special tool to monitor brand reputation. Instead blog, news, discussion mentions this tool focus mainly on reviews. Reputology monitor reviews on Social media sites, directories,review sites and other employee provided review sites. From there easy to use dashboard you can maintain all your reviews at one place.

Pricing:

Reputology offers three three types of plans. Single location plan starts from $29 per month up to the agency plan $49 per month.

d. Brand 24:

In this site, you will get the opportunity to use a free trail before subscribing. Like the above tools you can get brand mentions on various platforms online. So, lets sign up to test the features…

Pricing:

Pricing of this tool is comparatively cheaper than other websites. Starting plan is $49 per month and you get 5000 mentions from 5 keywords. Professional premium is their most popular plan. Click here for the complete details.

How to use Brand24?

• After signing in enter the phrases that you want to monitor.

• Forwarding to the next step you can select your preferred language.

• Then you can enter in your dashboard. And customize the time period as you wish.

e. Buzzsumo:

This is the last tool in our top 5 list. It is built for providing content insight and analytics report. Based on different plans you can get alerts,content analysis reports, backlinks, YouTube analyzer, Facebook analyzer etc.

Pricing:

Prices are competitively high than other tools. Because this website provides content analysis, data research ,influencers identification besides brand monitoring. Checkout their plans here.

How to use Buzzsumo?

• Create an account and enter your brand name/website.
• From the monitor section you can get the brand alerts & backlink alerts. Upgrade the plan to avail the full features.

Using the above manual checking steps and tool’s notification you will find both positive and negative feedback and ratings. Now it’s time to deal with them…

Why you Should Respond to a Positive Feedback?

You may think that why respond to positive reviews? Yes, you need to respond to positive reviews too. Appreciate them, they took valuable time to express their positive experience. Say them a thank you for their kind words. Request them to share if they have any suggestions to make your product more workable.

From those positive reviews you can find out specific products or services that make clients happy. Focus those specific services or products when you are running a marketing campaign for your company.

Even there is a chance to promote the new products through positive reviews. You can request them to try the new service or product and share their experience.

Now I am going to share the most important part in this article….

How to Respond to a Negative Feedback?

Did you know that “94 percent of consumers say that a bad review has convinced them to avoid a business.” So you just need to defend those negative reviews in a strategic way before your audience goes back after reading those reviews. It is natural that some customers will not be satisfied as different people have a different expectation level. Don’t take it angrily instead respond them in a witty way.Some negative reviews make a profile authentic too. Here I will share the top 5 ways to respond to a negative review…

i. Say Thank You:

As I write it earlier, you should appreciate both negative and positive feedback. Say thank you and you are very sorry that your service didn’t fulfill their expectation. If the problem is not from your side, still say sorry at first. Time will speak for you. Tell them that their feedback will help you to grow your products or services in the future.

ii. Take Responsibility and Assure them to Solve there Issues:

Maybe the problem is uncommon or unexpected, still take responsibility. Say them thanks for lightning at the issue and assure them you will try the best to fix it as fast as possible. If the issue is unknown then let them know that you are facing it for the first time and please grant some time to find out the solution.

iii. Send Invitation to Contact Outside the Review Website:

A long discussion about the problem on a review section doesn’t looks good.So it’s better to move the chat offline for further discussion. Provide your email address or phone number in review response. Request them if they can contact via your email or call directly. It will be more easy for both of you to continue the discussion.If the problem is solve, request them to edit their review.

iV. Avoid Generic Response:

A customer who has already a bad experience with your service will never expect a generic response. Instead they will wait for an individual response for his concern. Don’t send them “Dear customer” or “Hi there”. In the maximum website at least the first name of the reviewer is available. So it is advised to use their name and respond to them for their specific concerns.

v. Request them for a Second Chance:

Don’t close the door forever. Ask them if they can give a second chance to prove you again. Maybe you upgraded your products and services after getting some bad feedback or the problem happen unexpectedly for the first time.

Besides these two types of review there exist fake reviews too. And,it is the most annoying review. Maybe your competitors can do this to degrade your good reputation or some unknown spammer can do this too.

In this scenario you need to do two things:

• Respond to the Fake Review
• Do the Necessary Steps to Remove them

How to Respond the Fake Review?

Though it is not the solution to remove a fake review. But it is necessary to respond to show the other audience that the complaints are fake.
Write that you don’t found their name on your customer database. Please prove that you purchase or subscribe our product or service. Then you will take further steps to make the things right.

After responding to the fake reviews it’s time to take action for removing them. Here, I am writing the required steps for some great review website’s:

How to Remove Fake Reviews from Google My Business?

According to a recent survey “, 63.6 percent of consumers say they are likely to check online reviews on Google before visiting a business — more than any other review site”. So removing fake reviews from GMB is the most actionable thing you need to do.

Step 1: Mark the Review as Flag:

• Sign in to your GMB account.
• Find out the review which you want to mark as a flag.
• On the right side you will find a three-dotted button.
• Click the button and another pop-up button will be visible named “Flag as inappropriate”-Click it to mark.

Step 2: Enhance The Process:

Only flagging the review and sit back tightly is not going to work faster…try these steps to get results earlier…

• Open Google my business account.
• Open need more help option.
• Click on the customer review section.
• Mange reviews.
• You will find three options: Email, Chat, Direct call.

Contact them as you wise among these three options. After all these actions if the review is still there then please consult with legal professional and submit a legal request to Google.

How to Remove Fake Reviews from Facebook?

Do you know these interesting stats about Facebook:

• Facebook has 2.46 B monthly active users among them more than 1.5 B visits Facebook daily.
• It has more than 60 M active business pages.
• The most interesting fact is that one out of three Facebook user like to read reviews and recommendations on Facebook.

That’s why maximum business owners now trying to reach their targeted audience through Facebook. So, it is necessary to maintain a clean review profile.
But, things always not happened as you wish. Like other platforms, spammy reviewers are here too and you need to deal with them.

A bad review on top can spoil a well-rated and recommended page. Removing a fake review is not easy and it takes longer. But if your page has a lot of fake reviews the first thing you need to do is hiding the review section until the fake reviews are got deleted by Facebook.

Follow the below steps to hide your review section:

• Open your business page and click on setting.

• Go to the left side menu bar and click on “templates and tabs”.

• Open the review setting.

• Off the show review button.

How to delete a bad review?

Like Removing fake Google reviews the first step is same here. But if the review doesn’t promote violence, nudity or hate then it will take longer to be deleted. The only thing you can do here is to report the review and waiting for the result. Unfortunately there is no way to enhance the process.

Step 1: Open the business page and click on reviews.

Step 2: Find the review that you want to report. Click on the three dotted button beside the review.

Step 3: Click on “Find support and report recommendation”. Select a valid reason to report the review.

Step 4: Continue to the next step. If you think the review is against the Facebook community guidelines then report the post too.

How to Remove Reviews from Yelp?

For reading review users like this huge directory too. As on today this website has 2.26M traffic per month. Now you can guess that how much popular this website is. So, for every business owner want to maintain a good review profile in Yelp. But spammers are everywhere and you need to get rid of their reviews. Follow the below steps to remove those fake reviews…

Step 1: Login to the yelp listing account. Find the fake review and mark it as flag. The flag sign is available below the right side of the review.

Step 2: Choose a relevant reason to report the video and submit.

Their moderator will review your response. If the review violates yelp’s guidelines then they will remove the review. But if you got the mail that the review is not deleted then you can take the matter to court. After the final judgement of the court you can contact their support team through this form.

How to Remove Glassdoor Reviews?

As an employer or company’s owner about this platform. Glassdoor is the largest platform depending on visitors that provides job reviews. An employee can maintain his/her anonymity when leaving review. That’s why employees can express their views without fear. So maintaining a company’s reputation in Glassdoor is very important. You may follow this below steps if you receive a fake or defamatory review :

According to Glassdoor support you can do this things to deal with the bad reviews:

Step 1: Make the review as flag:

Find out the negative reviews and make them flag. In the text box you must explain(Within 1500 character) the reason to flag it. Though every review is published through under review still Glassdoor moderators will take a second look at the review. If they found any fake employee or content that is against the guidelines then they will remove it. Though they will not tell you the identity of the employee.

Step 2: Respond as fast as possible:

Glassdoor allows only employers to comment on an employee’s review. Until the review is not removed you should respond and tell the truth in your feedback. In this way, you can keep your good impression to other readers.

Step 3: Increase the Number of good reviews:

To counter the bad reviews you should focus on more positive reviews. From your employer’s account you can download an email template for submitting reviews. Send the email to your employees and ask them to leave there experience with the company. As a result, you will get a good number of positive reviews.

Step 4: Legal Help:

After the second moderation if the review is still not removed then you may seek legal help.

How to remove Yellowpages Review?

With a 15 M monthly visitor Yellowpages is becoming one of the big business directories. Like other big directories YP provides verified business’s Address, Phone Number, Email, Working hours and coupons. If your business is listed in YP then the URL can appear on Google first page based on your brand search queries Because of the the huge authority and popularity of this site. So you don’t ignore your bossiness profile reputation on Yellowpages.

How to remove Negative reviews from Yellowpages?

1st Step : Login to your YP account.

2nd Step : Find out the bad or fake review that you want to delete.

3rd Step : After flagging it enter your email and the reason in the below box and click submit.

Within some days you will receive a reply from YP support regarding to the review deletation. Good news is that the process takes less time to complete than other websites.