Online reputation management has two intimidating challenges. Firstly to clean up bad reviews appearing in the first two pages of search engine and then to clean up bad reviews appearing on leading review sites.
You must replace bad reviews with positive reviews and drive the negative reviews to the third or still lower pages of search results.
It is impossible to delete negative reviews on the internet unless you get the person who posted it to remove it. You cannot help it because such is the nature of the internet.
The only alternative available to you is to flood the internet with a lot of positive reviews so that the stray negative reviews will become inconspicuous and driven to the lower pages of search results. Most searchers are impatient and will not travel beyond the first two pages of search results.
If the complaint is genuine, then take immediate remedial measures, satisfy the customer, earn his/her goodwill and then persuade the customer to remove the negative review.
If the complaint is authentic and of a grave nature, do not hesitate to apologize publicly. In fact, this will send robust signals that you care about your customers.
If you find the review is malicious and intentionally posted by an unscrupulous competitor or a disgruntled past employee, then consider initiating legal action.
Reviews sites like Yelp are high authority domains giving them enormous powers to damage the reputation of a business irreparably. If you don’t take prompt action, your sales will plummet, and your customer base will shrink.
If there are no reviews about your company – it is as bad as having adverse reviews. If there are no reviews, it is evident no consumer buys your products, and none cares about the existence of your company.
One way to easily overcome this critical situation is to improve drastically your customer-base and also request your happy customers to post positive reviews. Periodically perform a Google search for your business name and see what results show up.
Yelp indeed has the toughest review algorithm and is known for picking up online fake reviews and will filter out real authentic reviews that are apparently too positive or too negative.
Reviewers of negative content are usually angry, and you must take steps not only to remedy the situation but also defuse his/her anger. You can consider offering some additional discount as a goodwill gesture to soothe his/her temper.
If you can get a host of positive reviews, they will overpower all the negative reviews. But never think of buying positive reviews as the practice will be unethical and if you are caught, your fate will be sealed.