Category Archives: Episode

The Coolest Review Software Ever

Who would you trust to remodel your house: Billy Bob’s with no customer reviews, or 5-star rated Justin Home Remodeling with 327? These are made up company names, but they demonstrate the essential value of client feedback when it comes to local search marketing. In this market environment, positive consumer reviews makes all the difference in transforming casual interest into actual customers. In our latest podcast, Nolen and Jason reveal how feedback heavily impacts your business and how the right review software can help. 

If your business has struggled to achieve lasting brand growth and earn leads, be sure to listen in closely!

Key Points to Listen For

  • Reviews are one of the truest forms of brand currency.
  • Review management software works best when fully integrated with your website.
  • Getting more reviews is easy when you make it simple for your clients to provide feedback.
  • DIY reputation management doesn’t have to break the bank, if you use the right platform.

How Do I Get More Reviews?

That’s a question we hear time and time again from frustrated contractors and business owners. Most of them have tried the traditional means of accruing them. Some owners even go the extra mile and provide a business card that include a link to a review site. But most companies simply aren’t capturing as many client reviews as they desire.

This begs the obvious question: Why?

While some consumers would climb any mountain to praise the companies they love the most, the vast majority of consumers simply don’t show the willingness to research and commend their service providers. Sure, they’ll hunt down your business on Yelp (or Google Reviews) if they have a negative experience.

Surely all a business needs to get a review is ask, right? Perhaps. According to a 2016 study by Search Engine Land, “70% of consumers will leave a review for a business when asked”. I don’t know about you, but do 70% of your customers leave feedback for your business? Probably not. This naturally leads us to one logical conclusion: either businesses aren’t asking for reviews correctly, or they aren’t asking at all

Companies That Could Benefit From Reviews Software

Reviews Convey Trustworthiness, So What Does Having No Reviews at All Convey?

The Change We Need to See

Reviews only happen when everybody gets on board. As a business owner or manager, you don’t have time to go around emailing every single client asking for retroactive reviews. Even if you have the aid of review management software, contacting people six months after a project (or sale) will mostly irritate people. Worse, even the most exuberant clients can find reasons to complain after that long a period.

By the way, if you’re asking “What is review management software?”, it’s a digital tool companies can utilize to capture positive client reviews, while keeping a close eye for negative feedback.

In most cases, feedback should be collected within 24 hours of completing a project or sale. Obviously, some industries may have a longer standard period, but you should generally strive to gain those reviews sooner rather than later. Whether your business takes advantage of review software or good old-fashioned phone calls, it takes the entire team to gather that feedback!

For roofers and other home services, this means partnering with your project managers and asking for a review at the end of every installation or repair. For storefront businesses, this means training your register operators to explain the review process. Here’s a hot tip when it comes to these post-sale reviews: make sure the review includes the employee’s name and a customer service rating! If your employees have a stake in the reviews (perhaps a well-earned bonus), they’ll be much more enthusiastic about promoting them. Your clients will also be more likely to participate if they have a specific face to support instead of your brand.

A Salon Owner Who Likely Use Review Software

This Salon Owner Nails the Process of Following Up on Reviews and Address a Complaint.

How Much Does Reputation Management Cost?

That depends entirely on what sort of solution you land on. Some companies specialize in monitoring customer feedback, charging to $10,000 or more per month. If that figure makes you want to jump out of your seat, you’re not alone. At the same time, you don’t want to pay an untested professional a couple grand for shaky results. That would be just one more task to manage.

Many businesses opt for some form of review software or manual feedback. There are plenty of solutions available online with very reasonable pricing. For growing businesses, you may also find review software available as part of an online marketing package.

Our own solution, Righteous Reviews, comes integrated with each of custom-built websites. It provides geotagged check-in capability, in addition to automatic requests for reviews through text or email. Finally, it prompts an email alert for reviews of 3 stars or lower, so that you can quickly address client grievances.

A Banner for Our Company Review Software

Our Review Software Makes it Easy to Gather and Manage Feedback.

Team Up With Nolen Walker!

If you’ve been wondering how to protect your online reputation, our team at Nolen Walker would love to help. We partner with businesses all over the United States, providing premium rankings in local search, better traffic, and higher-quality leads. We’d be thrilled to find new growth opportunities for your business!

Call us today at (866) 356-8198 for a free consultation.

Additional Resources From Nolen Walker

Related Podcasts and Articles
How Can I Improve My Conversion Rate? (Article)
7 SEO Tactics You Can’t Afford to Miss (Article)
One Simple Trick to Get More Google Reviews (Podcast)

Related Services by Nolen Walker
Online Reputation Management
Local Business Listings
Search Engine Optimization

One Simple Trick To Get More Google Reviews

What you are about to learn could change the course of your online marketing presence. It’s one simple trick to get more Google Reviews for your small business. Some might call it a hack but it’s perfectly legitimate and white-hat. That’s why it’s so valuable to know.

We are giving this trick away for free so that small business owners around the United States can compete on Google Maps, especially in the Local 3 Pack. As you may know, a presence on the Local 3 Pack is critical to local lead generation. While more than just the quantity of reviews influence Google Maps rankings, they remain one of the foremost and sought after components to a Local SEO strategy.

The Free Advice Review Generator

We had a client who fielded a significant number of daily calls in which people were asking for help with a service that he did not specifically provide, but was closely related to his niche. Instead of telling them he couldn’t help, he pointed them to a service he knew of that could. Aside from providing free advice to several people per day, he gained nothing out of it for his business.

After consulting with the Nolen Walker team, we urged him to ask nicely for a review after providing said advice. We stressed that asking and demanding are separate things. We told him not to pressure the caller into leaving a review, but to present it as “if you don’t mind.” You are not asking them to write anything unethical. All they have to write is that you helped them find the proper services. After implementing Nolen Walker’s strategy, this client saw their reviews surge quickly.

They now dominate Google Maps for their industry.

It wasn’t the extra reviews alone that did the job, but they were a central component. If you are a small business who fields calls for advice, you too can take advantage of this cutting-edge review generation technique. Follow these rules:

  • Ask Nicely
  • Don’t Apply Pressure
  • Keep it Ethical

The benefits of utilizing this trick are not only short-term but long-term as well. Besides getting the feedback in a form of a Google Review, you also increase the probability of that same person recalling you when they need the precise service you provide.

You’ve established something known as brand recall. When you form a personal connection with an individual, they recall your brand when problems arise that you can assist with. So the free advice hack is not just about a single review or even multiple ones, it’s about growing your brand incrementally. It’s about leveraging part of your marketing appeal into increasing its output. All good for SEO.

Add Positions Quote From Nolen

Other Online Review Generation Tactics

The other review tactic that can be used effectively is asking your clients in person. There’s something about the personal face to face interaction that lends itself to a higher probability of reviews. Following up with texts and emails is more effective after that personal interaction takes place.

People are busy, so they want the review process to be as convenient as possible.

You can make it so with a business card that has directions on how to leave the review. You can also invest in a website reviews widget so that they can leave the review directly from your website, and don’t have to find your Google profile (although it isn’t hard to find). People would rather binge watch Netflix than leave you a review, and that won’t change anytime soon. But if they feel you did a great job and then saw you take the initiative to ask in person, they just might take the 5 minutes and leave the feedback. Even 3 out every 10 clients can work wonders for your SEO.

  • Ask In Person
  • Remind Via Email & Text
  • Website Reviews Widget Integration

Avoid Black Hat SEO Tactics

There’s other review tactics you’ll find online but many of them are what are known as black-hat. It means they are unethical and violate Google’s guidelines. Furthermore they may result in manual penalties issued by Google and completely destroy your online presence! Recovering from this won’t be easy, as your brand will now be tarnished in the eyes of Google.

If a tactic mentions anything about financially incentivizing (or providing favors for) the client to give feedback, DON’T DO IT! Avoid these tactics like the plague. We’ve seen companies lose millions because they tried to incentivise reviews.

There’s also platforms where you can buy reviews in bulk. These are spam reviews, and it’s plainly obvious by the tone and voice of the feedback. If you’ve ever read reviews on Amazon that seem fake, it’s because they are. Amazon cracked down on that and now only accepts legitimate reviews. Google is even more strict in their reviews policy, so don’t expect to get away with anything unethical.

Streamline the Process With Righteous Reviews

Nolen Walker clients get a complimentary bonus widget known as Righteous Reviews. It is a native plugin, developed right here at AP, that integrates Google and Facebook reviews directly on your company website. We know that some consumers have a hard time locating the profiles on which they are asked to leave a review.

Righteous Reviews eliminates this uncertainty by having it all done through your main website. This way, when you provide clients with a business card and ask for a review, all they’ll have to do is navigate to your website – this should of course be listed on your card – and click on “Review Us.” Using this widget, you can expect to see a more consistent flow of reviews streaming into your Google and Facebook profiles, as long as you’re getting clients regularly and following the protocol of asking them in person. Benefits of Righteous Reviews include:

  • Convenience: Make the process simpler for consumers
  • Integration: Keep everything organized on one place, your company website
  • Volume: Encourage a greater amount of reviews towards your system

Nolen Walker does everything possible to give our clients advantages towards ranking. Most times, it is attention to detail that swings a website from the top 5 to the top 3 and beyond. The foundation of your website still rests on design, SEO, and mobile usability, but your online presence as a while expands beyond just your website.

That’s why Righteous Reviews is so valuable. It takes one of your greatest digital assets (your website) and integrates it with perhaps your 2nd and 3rd greatest assets (your Google My Business & Facebook pages). As these entities feed off one another, each enhancement to any of them, is an enhancement to all of them. This mutually beneficial relationship between your website and profiles creates the robust online presence that Google prioritizes when ranking companies.

If you’d like more information about ranking up your business online, or more details concerning our Righteous Reviews tool, give our team a call at !

Web Content Writing: Why it Should Not be a Standalone Service

Most would argue that content is the lifeblood of the SEO industry. Although its most frequently attributed to Google themselves, the origin of the phrase content is king can actually be traced back to Bill Gates in 1996. Google has certainly echoed the sentiment though, seeing that their Steps to a Google-friendly site explicitly states that high quality content on your pages, especially your home page, is the single most important thing you can do. So we definitely get it… content is of extraordinary importance when attempting to rank your business online. But we also know better than to think that content as a standalone service will move the needle at all.

Because of Google’s affinity for quality content, many small business owners look for services that will provide content only. Similarly, some marketing firms promote content as a standalone service. In each case, the service will fail to deliver what the client really wants, which is search visibility. It’s prudent to trust a professional’s judgement when investing in marketing, but skepticism is certainly understandable in the SEO world. A legitimate SEO company will tell you that content on its own will not be enough to change the fortunes of your web presence. Here’s what else you need to be successful online in 2019.

Design & Coding

What’s content without design? It’s HTML text with a default font. Nobody cares to read through these types of pages. In fact, try to find a result on Google page one that is text by itself. Sure, content can mean more than text, but can you find one example of a poorly designed website that ranks on the first page of Google? The reality of content is that it’s only as valuable as its presentation. This is especially true in our increasingly mobile society. If a smartphone user cannot consume content on their iPhone device, what good is it to them? It could be written by a scholar and enhanced with high resolution images, but if it doesn’t fit within a mobile design that is simple to navigate, it will not matter one bit. In summary, here’s how design supports content:

  • Accessibility
  • Consumption
  • Presentation

Blogging

There’s several different forms of content that exist on the internet today. One of the most appealing ones is blog posts. Yes, Google states that home page content is most important, but research conducted by 3rd parties indicates that blog post quality, length, and frequency, can combine for a major influence on organic search position. Blog posts are a more informal way for users to consume content than a traditional page. Since many blogs are written as topical and instructional, their clicks and engagement rates are much higher. They can also serve as something known as evergreen content. These are posts that people consider a resource to go back to over and again. They often earn links from external websites which increases the page’s authority. In summary, blogging supports content through:

  • Engagement
  • Frequency
  • Informality
WordPress Internal Blog Example

As You Can See, This Very Post is Published an Internal Blog Using The WordPress CMS. And By Reading it You Become Part of Its Engagement and Ultimate Success

Link Building

What good is a book that nobody reads? The same logic can be applied to content published online. If nobody sees it, it becomes the sound of a tree falling in an empty forest. The chicken or the egg argument seems to immerse itself into the content visibility discussion every time. The idea from Google and others is that great content will get seen because it will earn links naturally and people will organically come into contact with the most premium writing. Sounds great, but it’s hard to prove whether or not this is accurate. Brands with more resources and more inbound links pointing to their domain, are going to get their content seen more, even if it’s inferior. Sure, writing great blog posts can help you earn links, but you still must pursue exposure on your own. Ways to do this include NAP citations, guest posts, and blogger outreach. In summary, links supports content through:

  • Domain Authority
  • Exposure
  • Visibility

Google My Business & Reviews

The best kind of content is user-generated content, and that’s exactly what consumers provide when they published feedback on Google, Facebook, Yelp, or elsewhere. Google My Business Is the premier brand platform for small businesses. It’s the module that appears when a user performs a branded search of your company name. It’s also one of the most trusted sources for legitimate reviews, if not the most trusted. A company without a GMB page or without Google reviews, has little chance of improving search visibility, even with the greatest content ever written appearing on their website. That’s the harsh reality of the SEO world. If you run a business, you must act like one online. In summary, reviews support content through:

  • Consumer Trust
  • Google Integration
  • User Generation

Social Media

The most highly populated channels of content are social media platforms. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube, they are all brought together for a common cause, content sharing. The content you think of on your website might not be exactly like the content you think of on Facebook or Twitter. But the fact remains, it is all content. Some of it is user-generated (like with reviews) and some is published and syndicated by brands and organizations like your own (yes, even small ones). Think about YouTube as one of the central hubs of content. There is no more appealing content than video which is confirmed by the platforms usage statistics. Thinking about these social channels as opportunities to syndicate content of your own, puts you on the right track to understanding how content works in 2019, and why it relies on other platforms aside from a text editor. In summary, social media supports content through:

  • Diversity
  • Promotion
  • Syndication

Ongoing Work

Another misnomer about content is that it can be a one time deal. No, you can’t write a website full of content and then ignore the site for the rest of its tenure. Google favors websites that deliver fresh content regularly. So how do you do that? By utilizing some of the concepts discussed throughout this post. Blogging is a great way to publish regular content on your site. WordPress supports internal blogging, which means each new post is published under your primary domain name. This helps funnel all traffic to a central domain. Another idea to think about is review generation. User-generated content is about as valuable as it gets, so you should pursue reviews from satisfied customers (ethically, of course). But most of all, ongoing work is required on your website. You can’t pay for content, and then tell the marketer to go away. To succeed and sustain success, content marketing and management is an ongoing process. In summary, ongoing work supports content through:

  • Recency
  • Regularity
  • Traffic