If you are a business owner by now you are well aware of online reviews and the impact it can have on your business.  Negative reviews can have a serious impact on your business, did you know that a customer is 75% more likely to write a negative review than a positive review.

Is this how you feel when you see bad reviews about your business!  Nothing is more frustrating than a negative review that is very misleading, customers are very likely to exaggerate a negative review.  I have clients every week call me frustrated about reviews that are not true.  They all want to know how to deal with them or how do I get rid of them.  The best answer is to engage the upset customer and see if you can resolve the issue and have it removed.

Another complaint that I hear over and over is about Yelp.  Yelp is notorious for extorting business owners.  I have seen dozens of instances where Yelp put positive reviews into a filtered area (can’t be seen and not counted in star system) and only show bad reviews of a business owner.  They have been sued dozens of times but continue to prevail in court.

What is the Financial Impact of Negative Reviews:

Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Michael Luca set to find out exactly by how much, and identify winners and losers in the process. “I have always been interested in how companies form their reputations, not only restaurants and hotels but also schools and doctors,” says Luca.

How reputation is earned in the digital age is a fertile area of his research. Luca is looking at rankings, expert evaluations, online consumer reviews, and quality disclosure laws to see how they work in market settings, and which are most important for consumers.

Luca determined that each ratings star added on a Yelp review translated to anywhere from a 5 percent to 9 percent effect on revenues (depending on the control variables and means of estimation)—more than he had expected.

How to Control your Online Reputation:

First and foremost sit down with your staff and develop a plan.  Engage your customers through social media channels like Facebook and ask them to review your business.  One of the services we offer all of our clients is an automated review systems.  Make sure to train your staff to ask for reviews and reward your customers for the reviews.

Word of Mouth is now taking place online and it is important that you take control of the process.

If you are struggling with your online reputation we can help we are experts in this area call us today for an evaluation.

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Is Dentist SEO a gamble?

As a dentist you are well aware of how competitive your industry has become, and there has been a major change in the clients you desire coming in your door.  Yes, there is a dentist on every corner these days, making it very tough to be profitable and we all know how little insurance companies are paying.

If you want to drive in the big ticket procedures, like dental implants, veneers and other cosmetic procedures you need to dominate your marketplace online.

For example here in San Diego the keywords “dental implants San Diego” is searched over 1500 times per month and “cosmetic dentist San Diego” is searched 2400 times per month.

Lets do some math here, that is about 4,000 searches per month!  If you were at the top of the search engines for these keywords you would certainly see a ROI on SEO.  Google says the top 3 listings get over 50% of the clicks to their site, so lets say you are able to convert 1% of this traffic, you are looking at 40 new clients for cosmetic procedures a month!  If the average transaction is $2500 you are looking at $100k in additional revenue per month, certainly justifying a strong dentist SEO strategy.

We are finding that Google is definitely giving a preference to the sites that are dedicated to what the user is searching for, we recommend every dentist should have a site that is dedicated to cosmetic procedures only.  Google sees most dental sites as just that, dental sites not cosmetic dental sites.  You need to have much more content geared towards these procedures.  For example you should have a whole page geared towards dental implants, a page geared towards veneers…this is what Google is looking for when indexing your site, CONTENT!

You want the site url, titles and all the content to be geared towards cosmetic dentistry procedures.  If you do this and perform SEO to site your site will be in the top of search engines rather quickly.

We have recently launched a number of cosmetic sites that have the main keywords in the url, titles and all the content of site and they hit page 1 withinn a few weeks of being launched.  With proper SEO and content development these sites will certainly be at the top of search engines within a few months.

Call us today for an analysis of your website and Dentist SEO.

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Ok the game has changed again and our phones have been blowing up with people frustrated by the loss of ranks with the most recent update by Google.

In the past SEO was mostly link building and now it is much more than that!

Google has made it clear it isn’t interested in promoting any sites (unless it is their product of course) but in giving the user the best search result possible.  You have heard the phrase “content is king” well it is more important than ever.  Google wants to give the user the content they are looking for.

After analyzing our clients over the past 6 weeks we are finding the sites that have had consistent content and active social media to be performing the best.  We understand that blogging is time consuming and for many clients they find it boring but it is essential to the SEO program.

That is why at Accelprofit Systems our SEO packages include blogging and social media as they are the keys to online success.

And when blogging is done correctly those articles will rank well in the search engines and drive traffic and sales to your business.

For example if you Google “Online Reputation Warfare” you will find an article that I did a couple of weeks ago in the top of search engines.  This article and most that I have written drive lots of traffic to our site every month.

5 Things you should know about the benefits of Blogging;

1- Content may be king but so is traffic, blogs will help direct more traffic to your site.  As Google continues to get smarter it can tell whether your site is about “kitchen remodel san diego” or if your site is simply over optimized targeting this keyword.  You need to continuously add content about remodeling to your site and feed the engines with your great content.

2- Blogs have become a very important part of linking.  As Google finds your blog post and see’s that it links back to your main site it follows this path and validates that your site is about remodeling.

3-  Everytime you add new content to your site Google and the other search engines get “pinged” or alerted that you just added new content and the engines need to crawl it to find out what it is about.

4-  Blogging takes time and research.  For example prior to writing this article I went to my Google keyword tool and did some research on blogging searches.  What I look for is the number of searches for the keywords in my article and the competition.  I chose to write about the keywords “blogging and seo” it is searched 40,000 times a month and has medium competition.  This will drive solid traffic to my site in the next few weeks.

5-  Your website and blog are one giant funnel.  You need to use it as a source of information to the user and establish that you are an expert in your field by providing good quality information that can help them.  Once you start to help people online you will find they will convert to customers once you establish a relationship with them.

If you are struggling online contact us today for a free consultation.  We would love to help your business become more successful.

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We all know the old adage “reputation is everything”.

Your online reputation is one of the most important aspects of your online marketing campaigns and it is one of the most overlooked.  Many clients come to us lost on how to have bad reviews removed.  Bad reviews can be removed from Google, Insider Pages, Yelp and other online review forums by responding to the negative review or filing a complaint with the review source.  The problem is it may take weeks or months to remove a fraudulent review or it may never be removed, costing you thousands in business.

Now more than ever we are seeing “Reputation Warfare” this is where your competition is posting negative reviews about your company in an effort to steer business their way.  Reviews now play a very important role in business. Potential customers often read reviews about a certain business to carefully select the best product/service available in the market. Since these reviews are usually based on users’ experience, potential customers do pay attention to them. Certainly, potential customers will be less likely to purchase products/services from companies with bad reputations. Furthermore, reviews are one of many factors that affect the ranking of Google Analytics. In the same industry, a company with more good reviews tends to rank higher than companies with fewer reviews. Therefore, it is essential that business owners keep a close eye on their reputation.

Did you know that a customer is more likely to write a negative review than a positive review.  This is why you have to be pro-active with having your clients write positive review.

At Accelprofit Systems we design an automated response system for our clients to build the positive reviews, by doing so when you get that negative review it will have little impact on your ratings.

Here are a few tips to help build positive reviews;

• Follow up with your customers and direct them to your Google Places, Yelp or Insider Pages to review your service or product.
• Control the review forum by sending email with link or QR Codes.
• Respond to negative reviews and try to turn it into a positive, many times a complaint can be fixed and the the customer will remove it if handled properly.
• Offer an incentive for leaving positive feedback.

DON’T write angry rebuttals. Below is an example of one.

Don’t make excuses and turn yourself into a victim. Chances are the whole situation stems from a mere misunderstanding. Blaming customers for their bad experience will definitely not improve their experience. Remember that there is a possibility that potential customers will read your angry rebuttal, which will discourage them from your business.    

If you are losing business due to your online reputation contact us today we can help!

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A few years back Google launched what is call “Google Places” as a way to give the user a better local experience.  In the early years it was very easy for SEO guys like us to get our clients results in the local places listings.

what is google places

The map section is a very profitable area to have your business found in the search engines.  This is one of the most important listings your company needs to take care of, not only on Google but don’t forget Bing and Yahoo.

So the question is how come you are not in the local maps section of Google, right?

There are many reasons for companies not being found from duplicate listings, poor SEO on the site and more.

The other question I hear over and over again is how come that guy is listed and I’m not?  You may run a better business and your customers love you but the other guy has taken a more serious approach to his online presence.  In order to be listed in the very competitive local listings you need to feed the Google machine.

That means link building, social media and don’t forget Google Plus.  You may start to see images also showing up next to the local listings like in the image below.  We believe Google is pulling these images from Google Plus profiles and other social media sites like Facebook.

If you are struggling with your Google Places account call us today we can help.

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Accelprofit Systems is a leading SEO and Medical Web design company in San Diego.  If you are a Plastic Surgeon and you want to grow your business you must have a SEO Team in order to have an online presence.  Once your business is at the top of Google and the other engines your phones will ring consistently.  Check out our Plastic Surgeon Seo video.  Click Here to watch.

The keywords associated with your business are extremely competitive and require a professional Plastic Surgery SEO team to drive your practice to the top of search engines.  SEO does take time and you need to keep in mind many of your competitors have been building their online presence for years.

It is our experience if you have a brand new URL, it will take between 4-6 months for our company to get you to the top of engines.  During this period it makes sense to do pay per click until your organic results warrant termination of PPC.

You can visit our SEO case studies page to view our clients stories of success online at SEO Medical Case Studies.

Prior to launching your campaign Accelprofit will reverse engineer competitors in your market.  For example lets say you are a Plastic Surgeon in Beverly Hills like our client Dr William Bruno.  We launched Dr Bruno’s SEO campaign in Dec 2011.  He was ranking page 3-4 at the time and was frustrated with his results.

The image below will give you some perspective at the task at hand, the number one guy in Beverly Hills is Dr Teitelbaum and here is a snapshot of his website architecture and why he ranks #1.

This site has over 44,000 links, lots of EDU links and much more going for it.  Dr Bruno only had a few hundred links when we began his campaign, now he has over 6,000 and growing.

He is currently page one mid pack for keywords like “plastic surgeon beverly hills” and in the next few months we expect it to go higher.

The key to SEO is understanding what your competition has done and doing, so you can catch up to him.

If you would like for us to analyze your competition give us a call and we would be happy to provide you with this free information.

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Google is at it again and the chat rooms are full of webmasters crying the blues.  This past week Google targeted over optimized websites.  We are glad to see that our clients have not been impacted by this latest update.  It looks as though sites that were keyword loaded in their title tags, meta descriptions and content got hit the hardest.

This is straight from Google Blog;

“White hat” search engine optimizers often improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for both users and search engines. Good search engine optimization can also mean good marketing: thinking about creative ways to make a site more compelling, which can help with search engines as well as social media. The net result of making a great site is often greater awareness of that site on the web, which can translate into more people linking to or visiting a site.

The opposite of “white hat” SEO is something called “black hat webspam” (we say “webspam” to distinguish it from email spam). In the pursuit of higher rankings or traffic, a few sites use techniques that don’t benefit users, where the intent is to look for shortcuts or loopholes that would rank pages higher than they deserve to be to be ranked. We see all sorts of webspam techniques every day, from keyword stuffing to link schemes that attempt to propel sites higher in rankings.

The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs. We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. To that end we’ve launched Panda changes that successfully returned higher-quality sites in search results. And earlier this year we launched a page layout algorithm that reduces rankings for sites that don’t make much content available “above the fold.”

In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.

If your site has been hit by recent update call us today for an evaluation.

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