Category Archives: Episode

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.

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 !

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

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