Review sites and Online Reputation Management: The new SEO Marriage?

No matter what Google does to discourage bad use of Internet, the SEO professionals find a way to circumvent it. After Google Panda and Penguin updates, one was assuming a cleaner and healthier use of the Net. However, the changed algorithm somehow now gives such a heavy weightage to consumer review sites that, many companies are using it as a bait to improve their online reputation.

Sites like mouthshut.com, consumercomplaints.in, complaintsboard.com are now being misused by SEO spammers to improve the online reputation of their clients. Many companies have been able to successfully push the negative remarks about their brands to the 2nd and 3rd pages of Google. They pose like a real customer of the brand and start posting positive comments about the brand, some time in such length and detail that it becomes apparent that it is too good to be true.

This raises a bigger question: have the consumer and product review sites fallen prey to the over enthusiastic SEO professionals? If so, how will they continue to maintain their position in the market as a neutral platform to raise genuine consumer enquiries?

Why E-Commerce companies need Google Plus One? 4 easy steps to get started

Like it OR Hate it. Google Plus is here to stay. If you value SEO, then its a given that you should value Google Plus for its immediate impact on SERPs.

Instead of ranting on how it has not picked up waves among people, its better to focus on how a marketer in an e-commerce company can make use of it. 4 quick steps would help.

1. Create a Google Plus page & post regularly. 
2. Place Google Plus button on your site. It should be placed wherever there is an image and an opportunity for users to plus it. 
3. Communicate: This is slightly a hard part. As it has not picked up yet among the masses, it is essential to communicate the existence of Google Plus page to your employees ( most of them will have a Gmail ID) with a request to plus the page. 
4. Spread it everywhere: Place the link of the page on your Twitter account, Facebook page or any other social media community and also on your newsletter. 

Google Plus impacts SERPs in the customized search front. So if I have plused a product, my friend who is looking for a similar product online is likely to see the same on his SERPs. This benefits all e-commerce companies, as peer influence has the strongest influence on buying habits of people. So if you care about SEO, you better get started with Google Plus right away. This is also a boon for budget constrained marketers to get more relevant traffic to the site. The conversion can also be expected to be better as it works like a "recommendation" from a friend.

PS: Ensure the Google Plus page is updated regularly, as an un-updated page looks pretty ugly.