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No, Fake Reviews Are Not Harmless

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

You keep hearing about how important it is to have customer reviews on your Google, Yelp, and Facebook listings. In fact, a majority of what you’ve heard has probably come straight from us. After all, we’re always harping on the fact that customer reviews are crucial because they improve your SEO and make you more appealing to prospective customers. So after reading about customer reviews for the umpteenth time, you start feeling a little insecure about the lack of reviews on your own listing. You think, Why don’t I just take matters into my own hands? And you decide to write some fake reviews yourself.

Writing fake customer reviews may seem harmless on the surface, but there can be some seriously negative consequences. When you post fake reviews—whether on your own listing or another company’s—it’s not a matter of if you’ll get caught, but when. Google and other review sites know your IP address and will inevitably connect you to the fake review.
However, it’s true that the circumstances surrounding fake reviews can vary, and so will the penalties for getting caught. In this post, we’ll explain the three major types of fake customer reviews and their typical consequences. Then, we’ll give you some tips on how to get real customer reviews the honest way, instead.

The Unintentional Fake Review

Sometimes, a business owner unwittingly posts on their own Google or Yelp listing using their own username. This usually happens when a business owner intended to post a review anonymously (under the pretense of a customer) but forgot that they were signed in to their account.
With this type of fake review, the potential damage is minimal because it was less of a deception and more of a mistake. Most customers will notice that the review came from the owner of the business and ignore it. Eventually, Google or Yelp might delete it.

The Anonymous, Self-Promotional Review

In this type of fake review, a business owner poses as a customer on their own listing by writing a review anonymously or by creating a new account for a fictional person. These reviews are always positive, with the intention of boosting that business’s overall ratings. If you don’t get caught, this kind of review could give you a small boost.
But this is where we remind you that Google will catch you. It knows your IP address. It will easily notice if a post appears on your listing from your own computer. When you’re caught, your listing will be suspended temporarily and your business will be penalized in the search rankings. And if you continue this behavior once your penalty is lifted, Google could actually ban you completely. Is it really worth the risk?

The Vengeful Fake Review

The final, and most damaging, type of fake review involves the business owner posing as a customer on another business’s listing. These reviews are overwhelmingly negative, and they’re usually done to a direct competitor as a way to bring down their ratings.
These reviews have the harshest penalties because their intent is purely malicious. If Google catches you, your listing could be banned, and you could be kept from ever leaving reviews on Google again. And since there’s no direct benefit to your business (it only hurts another business), this type of review is not worth the backlash, plain and simple.

Get Reviews the Honest Way

Why go through the trouble of writing fake customer reviews and risking serious penalties when you can get real ones, instead? It takes a little more effort upfront to get real customer reviews, but they’ll make your business’s listings much more stable and appealing in the long run. Here are some ideas:

If you’ve done any work for family or friends in the past, ask them to leave you a review. They’ll be happy to help you out. Just make sure they don’t write their reviews from the same house! Reviews coming from the same IP address will be flagged.
Target any customers who have a Gmail address. It’s super fast and easy for Gmail users to leave reviews on your Google listing because they’ll already be logged in to their account. To make it as easy as possible, provide them with a direct link and brief instructions on how to post a review.
Use a professional service that keeps track of your customers and calls or e-mails them to ask for reviews on your behalf. Although we do not endorse any specific company, we know that some of our clients use Customer Lobby with good results.
Leverage the on-page feedback feature available from Prospect Genius. Customers can use this to leave a review right on your site, and then (if the review is positive) they’ll be given links to your Facebook and Google listings so they can spread their reviews even further. This feature is nice and simple because it’s just a link on your LeadTrax™ site—it doesn’t require customers to have an existing account.
Check out more helpful tips for getting the most customer reviews possible in our blog post, “Make Your Presence Known: Get More Customer Reviews Online.”

Writing fake customer reviews, no matter what the circumstances, is never worth the risk of penalization or suspension. Instead, use the tips outlined above to get more customer reviews that are actually honest and helpful. You’ll thank yourself for the effort!
As always, don’t hesitate to contact Prospect Genius with any questions.

Take a Behind-the-Scenes Look at Prospect Genius

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

When you hear us talk about SEO and lead generation, do you feel like Charlie Brown listening to his teacher go, “Wah wah-wah wah wah”? If you’re not someone who specializes in online advertising, it’s perfectly understandable to feel confused—and, frankly, a little bored—about what it is we do. However, it’s important to know a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes so you can appreciate exactly how our services are benefiting your web presence.
Here’s what you need to know.

We Amplify Your Existing Presence

There’s a good chance that you had already set up a Google My Business or Facebook account before joining our program. If that’s the case, you may be misled into thinking that any leads coming from Google or Facebook are a result of your existing presence instead of our work. It’s a logical assumption, but it’s incorrect.
Instead, local search optimization functions as a multifaceted machine, with a series of gears, levers, and wheels all working together to create the final output. The phone call or e-mail inquiry that came from your Google listing is actually a product of the search optimization machine. Your company information ranked well in Google’s local search results, thus leading the customer to contact you thanks to all of the behind-the-scenes work we did.
For proof, take a look at two examples of clients whose Google traffic skyrocketed after signing up with Prospect Genius.
Company A:

Company B:

As you can see, after signing up with us, these two clients saw huge increases in their views and clicks. That’s due to all the work we’re doing for your campaign. But what does that work entail, exactly?

We Build the Machine

Prospect Genius’s job is to design and build the local search optimization machine that powers your campaign. That means making sure each individual part works perfectly in addition to fitting all of those parts together seamlessly.

Here are the four main parts:

Google listing
On-page SEO
Citations
Inbound links and social signals

Google Listing

Local search rankings improve when your Google listing is thoroughly optimized and populated with lots of customer reviews. That’s why Prospect Genius optimizes every client’s listing and provides a handful of tools to help you increase your number of reviews.

On-Page SEO

To appeal to Google’s search algorithms, all of your website’s pages must be optimized. You must have valuable content that’s targeted at specific search terms and is generally informative. All of our LeadTrax™ sites are written and designed for on-page SEO to further boost your company’s rankings.

Citations

Citations refer to all of the instances in which your business name appears alongside your contact information (e.g. address and phone number), and they must be consistently accurate. Citations most often come from online directories and Internet yellow pages, but they may also occur in newspapers, magazines, local blogs, and social media posts. Many of Prospect Genius’s packages add your business info to numerous directories, ensuring accuracy across the board and driving up your citation score.

Inbound Links and Social Signals

Inbound links are links that exist on another website and link to a page on your website. They indicate that your page contains valuable information. Along the same lines, social signals are data points that tell Google how appealing your website is on a human level. If lots of people are sharing links to your website on social media, and your company’s social media account has lots of “Likes” or followers, then those valuable social signals will boost your local search ranking. That’s why Prospect Genius sets you up with Facebook and Twitter accounts (if you don’t already have them) and promotes you on social media.

It’s All About Synergy

Did you make it to the end of this post without your eyes glazing over? Good! Hopefully, you now have a much deeper understanding of what drives your campaign and keeps it successful.
With your cooperation, we’re able to create a uniform front to fortify your company’s online presence. We achieve substantial, organic results by creating a well-oiled machine that runs flawlessly. While your Google listing is significant, you can’t give all of the credit to a single cog.
As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions you may have.
Photo credit: Linda Buquet, localsearchforum.com

Two Need-to-Know Changes That Will Impact Your Advertising Campaign for the Rest of 2015

Last Updated: June 18, 2015

Does it feel like we’re always trumpeting some game-changing update to the online advertising world? You’re not wrong. But that’s because the online advertising world is always changing. As consumer behavior evolves, so must advertising. In the last couple of years, the most dramatic change in consumer behavior has been the rapidly growing usage of mobile devices. Advertisers and search engines alike have had to make sweeping updates in order to account for the fact that, on the whole, more people are using mobile devices than personal computers. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the two biggest changes to watch out for in the second half of 2015 are both linked to the rise in mobile usage.
Here’s what you need to know to keep your advertising campaign on the right track through the end of the year.

The Emphasis on Mobile Will Affect Your Leads

Not only has Google begun evaluating the mobile-friendliness of every indexed webpage, but it also factors the level of mobile-friendliness into each page’s ranking on mobile search results. Essentially, this means your rankings will plummet in mobile search results if you don’t update the structure of your website and make it as mobile-friendly as possible.
Not worried about your mobile search rankings? Think your business will be fine without any leads from mobile users? Think again. In July 2014, the search industry discovered that Internet usage on mobile devices had surpassed Internet usage on personal desktop computers. Then, just last month, Google announced that this trend had affected search queries, as well: In the U.S. and other parts of the world, more Google search queries are occurring on smartphones and mobile devices than on desktops. In other words, if you’re not ranking in mobile search results, you’re missing out on over half of your target customers.

Facebook’s Gone Mobile, Too

Not only will your Google rankings drop if your site isn’t mobile friendly, but you’ll also alienate any prospects who come across your site by other means, like social media. Did you know that, in 2015, 87% of Facebook’s active monthly users accessed Facebook from their mobile devices? If you’re using Facebook to promote your business, this means many of your target customers will be connecting to your site from Facebook on their smartphones or tablets. But if your site won’t load or display correctly because it’s not optimized for mobile, then you’ll lose those customers who got frustrated and moved on.

Unique, Good-Quality Photos Are a Must-Have

Thanks to the prominence of mobile, photos on your Google listing went from being nice-to-haves to must-haves. This shift has as much to do with user experience as it does with search engine ranking.

Appeal to Real People

When people use their smartphones to search for local businesses, they’re usually doing so because they’re on the go and need to make a quick decision. Since mobile users don’t have lots of time or patience on their hands, you want to grab their attention right away. This is where photos come in. Adding catchy photos of your business logo, staff members, products, and/or services will signal to them right away that you’re a legitimate company. They’ll immediately get a sense of what your company is about without having to do too much reading or scrolling. Photos of real people and places speak louder than any description you could possibly write. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
This applies to more than just your Google listing, too. It applies to anywhere that your company can be found. Whether it’s on your own website, Facebook, Yelp, or another online directory, your content should be filled with compelling photos to boost your credibility.

Appeal to Search Bots

Photos appeal to the search bots, too. We’ve recently observed that our clients’ Google listings perform much better when they contain several unique, good-quality photos. That’s because Google’s algorithm has begun weighting photos more heavily, which is probably linked to its new focus on mobile search. As we explained above, photos make for a more mobile-friendly experience, and Google understands this. It wants to give its users the best search experience possible, so it’s prioritizing listings that have the highest appeal. So not only will photos improve your appearance to mobile users, but they will strengthen your search performance, as well.

How to Act

Thankfully, responding to these changes is simple and easy.

To Become Mobile Friendly…

Talk to your online advertising provider, or whoever designed your website, and find out if your site is already optimized for mobile. If it’s not, then you better take action quickly. Most providers and designers—legitimate ones, anyway—are equipped to make this upgrade relatively easily. It shouldn’t cost much time or money to make this very necessary upgrade to your template.

To Add Photos to Your Listings and Pages…

Again, talk to your online advertising provider (if you have one). Send in your own photos and have your advertiser upload them to your site and all of your listings. If you’re working with a provider, do not attempt to upload them to your Google listing on your own. (Google doesn’t like it when a listing is being managed from two disparate IP addresses.) However, if you’re doing all of your advertising on your own, then you’re obviously free to upload photos wherever and whenever you wish.
Remember: When we say “unique, good-quality photos,” we mean that literally. Using stock photos, despite their professional quality, will not do anything to sell your company. People can spot impersonal stock photos from a mile away. Sure, they’re better than no photos at all, but they won’t do much to improve your lead generation or credibility. You’re better off taking your own photos for free. With the high camera quality on smartphones these days, it’s not at all difficult to snap a high-resolution photo while you’re on the job. You have no excuses!

For Businesses, Facebook Is Now Pay to Play

Last Updated: March 16, 2015

If you’ve been paying attention to our blog lately, you’ll know that Facebook is starting to replace Google as the destination for local search. That’s because it’s easier to ask your Facebook friends for personal recommendations than it is to comb through Google’s search results looking for a seemingly well-reviewed business. If you think about it, it’s a logical reaction against the overwhelming amount of information that comes from a Google search. Plus, the feedback you get from Facebook crowdsourcing is often much more reliable because it comes from people you actually know and trust.

That’s why Facebook ads and promotions are so popular right now. Local businesses are taking advantage of how many ready-and-willing customers are right there, searching for a plumber, electrician, or handyman for their latest project or emergency. But Facebook is smart, and it now wants you to pay for that advantage.

Sites, They Are A-Changin’

Just like all other marketing platforms, Facebook is rapidly growing and changing. We’re all taking advantage of Facebook as much as we can until it fades out of relevance and a more vital, effective platform comes along. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that Facebook was a small site populated only by college students. Then, Facebook opened its doors to everyone over the age of 13. Soon after, companies and organizations were allowed profiles, and advertisements quickly followed.
Now, Facebook is swimming in content and status updates, and it has realized how much money there is to be made in advertising. As a result, Facebook has significantly limited the “organic reach” of business Pages—in other words, they’ve restricted how many people a Page’s content will reach for free. This forces businesses to pay for sponsored ads and “boosted” posts in order to reach their fans and followers. (When Google rose to power, it did a similar thing by launching AdWords.)

Small Businesses Are at a Disadvantage

But here’s the kicker: Most small business owners aren’t well versed in the complexities of paid online advertising, so they’re at quite a disadvantage with this new restriction. And even if a business owner is somewhat familiar with paid advertising from working with Google AdWords, they’ll face some confusion because Facebook’s model is substantially different from Google’s.
The difference is that Google uses a CPC (cost-per-click) model, while Facebook primarily uses a CPM (cost-per-impression) model. CPM is based on how many times Facebook shows the ad to a user, rather than how many people click on it. Facebook’s advertising options also allow you to choose an “objective,” but your ad will only perform well if you optimize correctly for that objective. That means, in some cases, you can choose a CPC model if it makes sense to do so; however, you’re all but guaranteed to spend a lot more money. At the same time, if you stick with CPM but fail to target the proper demographic, or fail to write an ad that’s compelling, you will still spend a lot of money and get dismal results.
And these are only the basics! It gets much more complicated as you dig deeper.

Grabbing Attention Is Hard

Aside from the payment models, sponsored advertising also presents another difficulty: creating effective ads. This is particularly important if you’re paying for impressions, because you want the people who see your ads to actually be affected by them. Many small business owners are exceptionally skilled at their trade but don’t necessarily know how to create attractive, eye-popping ads or how to write powerful calls to action.
Even if local businesses are able to figure out which payment model works for them, they face a whole new battle in creating ads that will stick in people’s minds—and that’s before even worrying about generating new leads!

Act Fast, Be Smart

While Facebook’s new pay-to-play model may seem like a giant hurdle, that shouldn’t stop you from using it. The reality is that Facebook is the most fertile ground for local advertising these days.
But while it’s crucial to get in on the ground floor of Facebook advertising while it’s still relatively affordable, don’t be too hasty. Make sure you do plenty of research and know exactly what your plan is before putting down your company credit card. If you don’t have a plan for ad messaging, testing, rotation, and bids, then you aren’t ready to do it yourself.

Don’t Be Afraid to Call for Backup

If that all sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. The time-saving alternative, of course, is to hire an advertising professional. This decision might even save you money. The reason is simple: By specializing in online advertising and doing it all day, every day, professionals have gotten really good at it. In this case, “really good” means driving down the CPM and making your dollars work harder for you.
As a prime example, take a look at what Prospect Genius achieved with the last campaign we ran for ourselves. We spent less per Page “Like” than 99% of other Facebook advertisers. Why? Because we eat, sleep, and breathe online marketing. By doing it every day, we’ve reached a level of expertise that, according to Facebook itself, 99% of other people have yet to reach. In fact, by the time we ended this campaign, we drove that cost-per-Like down even further to just $1.65 over the life of the campaign!

Whether you decide to advertise on your own or with a professional, make sure you aren’t missing out on the endless possibilities that an effective Facebook advertising campaign can create for your local business.

Facebook Is the New Google

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Facebook isn’t just for stalking your old classmates anymore. In the past few years, Facebook has evolved into a hub for exchanging information—everything from political opinions to diet tips to breaking news—among friends, coworkers, and relatives. People even outsource their own questions, asking trusted friends who they recommend for local doctors, dentists, hair dressers, repairmen, contractors, and so on. That means local businesses and service providers have a unique opportunity on Facebook: They can take advantage of this crowdsourcing trend and promote themselves right on Facebook, where people are already looking for info about them.
In fact, Facebook is slowly replacing Google as the go-to resource for local search. People used to turn to Google to find local appliance repairmen, plumbers, landscapers, and the like, but there was no way to know whether these professionals were actually reliable or not. Hence the uptick in crowdsourcing on Facebook. Now, people realize it’s much more easy and effective to ask the people they know and trust for their personal recommendations—instead of taking a gamble on the business that happened to have the best ranking on Google.

Optimize Your Facebook

To take advantage of this new opportunity, you must make your Facebook presence as appealing as possible to prospective customers. Here’s what you need:

Page “Likes.” A Facebook Page without fans is like a restaurant without patrons. People passing by will not go in because the restaurant is empty, implying that it’s unpopular. In other words, more “Likes” on your Page will give your business more credibility.
Reviews. Customer reviews used to just be nice to have. Then, they became integral in attracting new customers. Now, they’re a vital part of your local search rankings on Google. You simply must get your customers to leave reviews on your company’s Facebook Page.
Page activity. Your Page is a showcase for your company’s personality and expertise. You should be posting status updates, uploading photos, and sharing helpful articles on a consistent basis (at least a few times a week), otherwise your audience will see no value in following your Page.
An attractive profile. Your company’s description should be well written and captivating. Your profile picture and header should be unique, high-quality images that are relevant to your business—not grainy snapshots of your own face. You want Page visitors to see how professional your team really is.
Regular engagement. To show your audience that you care, you should be interacting with them regularly. When they comment on one of your posts, respond. When they leave a review, good or bad, thank them for their feedback. This is your chance to hear what your customers and prospects are thinking and to let them know that you’re listening.

What You Can Do Yourself

There are many aspects of social media marketing that you can take care of yourself. Maintaining a presence on Facebook is something that’s entirely within your abilities if you have the time and energy. Here are some of the Facebook tasks that are pretty DIY friendly:

Sharing status updates. It only takes a minute to share what your company has been up to for the past few days.
Uploading photos and/or videos of your work. Smartphones make it super easy to take photos and videos, and the Facebook app makes it even easier to upload them straight to your timeline.
Sharing links to relevant articles and/or blog posts. If you come across an item online that you think your audience would appreciate, it takes almost no time at all to copy and paste the link on Facebook.
Interacting with your audience (e.g. posing questions, replying to comments, etc.). As soon as you get a notification that someone has commented on a post or left you a review, take a quick moment to read it and respond. It’s also easy to engage with your fans simply by asking them about their plans for the weekend or an upcoming holiday.

What You Should Leave to Us

Of course, having some extra time on your hands isn’t always enough to make an impressive Facebook presence. If you really want to promote your brand and put yourself in front of local prospects, then you’ll need to consider some more advanced strategies. However, advanced strategies call for advanced expertise. The below tasks require the kind of experience you can only find at Prospect Genius:

Promoting sponsored ads. We have years of experience working with paid ads. We use those countless data points to identify trends and help your ads get the most visibility and highest conversion rates possible. Plus, since Facebook uses a CPM model instead of CPC (in other words, you pay for ad impressions instead of clicks), you’ll need a team that knows how to set up your campaign so you aren’t hemorrhaging money.
Implementing a “Like” campaign. Again, since we’re able to draw on our wealth of experience with paid ads, we know how to test and rotate ads so they drive the most “Likes” to your page.
Continuously sharing content. Even if you have the time to post on Facebook, you may not know exactly what to say. That’s where our SocialStream package comes in handy. Our professional writers will add a certain number of blog posts each month to your LeadTrax™ site, and our production specialists will share them on all of your social media accounts. It’s the best way to share useful, high-quality content with your audience on a consistent basis.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Social media is a lifestyle. It’s not a one-and-done campaign. Maintaining a solid Facebook presence requires lots of repetition. You need to be continuously active on your account. Your activity can’t just last for one month and then taper off, or else you’ll miss out on countless potential fans. If you don’t think you’ll be able to maintain consistent activity on Facebook, then you should seriously consider calling for reinforcements. Our professionals will give you plenty of valuable content to share and can even promote your brand through sponsored ads. You can’t afford to ignore such a vital (and mostly free) advertising platform… Give us a call and start coordinating with our team today!

Prospect Genius

Two Need-to-Know Changes That Will Impact Your Advertising Campaign for the Rest of 2015

The Emphasis on Mobile Will Affect Your Leads

Facebook’s Gone Mobile, Too

Unique, Good-Quality Photos Are a Must-Have

Appeal to Real People

Appeal to Search Bots

How to Act

To Become Mobile Friendly…

To Add Photos to Your Listings and Pages…

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