Top 3 Factors That Affect Your Online Reputation

What are the top 3 factors that affect your online reputation? Customer reviews, social media, and your online existence, meaning your website and the content you publish on it. Those three decide what a buyer, a client, or a follower thinks about you long before they ever speak to you. Work on all three and you do not just gain more customers, you keep the ones you already have and build the kind of loyalty that survives a bad day.

Back in the days when customers and clients dealt with a business face to face, online reputation was neglected. It was not considered an area worth investing time and money in. But things changed. Digitalisation took over, and businesses, customers and clients started dealing and buying far more online than offline.

Many a business that failed to improve its online reputation could not fulfil the customer's desire, because those customers did not choose to deal with the business in the first place. The services and products on offer simply were not considered genuine. Worse, businesses with a bad online reputation were considered, and are still being considered, fraudulent, bogus, and cheap providers of low quality products and services. That perception has affected, and is still affecting, businesses with a bad reputation, because they keep failing to reach their business goals.

More than 65% of consumers conduct online research before making a purchase. So it becomes extremely important to pay attention to how your business looks online in terms of reputation. Many businesses have realised the importance of building a good online reputation and have also used online reputation management services to do it, while others remain ignorant and have no knowledge of it at all.

A good online reputation is not only important for a business. It matters just as much for individuals who operate through social media and similar platforms: bloggers, vloggers, influencers, content creators, small business owners and anyone whose name is their livelihood. For everyone striving to build that reputation, meet their goals and serve their customers well, here are the top three factors that affect online reputation, in the order most people should tackle them.

How much do customer reviews affect your online reputation?

Enormously, because reviews are now the first thing a buyer reads about you. Today consumers have become vocal about their post purchase dissonance by giving reviews about a business over the internet. In 2019, studies and research conducted by Bright Local showed that 91% of consumers who read positive reviews are more likely to use the business, while 82% will not consider getting involved with a business after reading negative reviews.

Getting reviewed is important. The more reviews the better, and even a few reviews are still better than none, because an empty profile reads as an unproven business. So make it a habit to ask, and build customer reviews into the moment right after a transaction, while the experience is still fresh.

But what matters more than the volume is the nature of the review: whether it is a positive review or a negative review, and how you respond to it. Your response is public, permanent, and read by every future customer who lands on that page. How you respond will decide the reputation you create for yourself in the customer's mind. We have covered a lot on this in our article on how to handle negative reviews.

Does social media affect your online reputation?

Yes, and today everyone is on social media, so you should consider having your business account there too. Why? Because through social media you are able to engage with your customers easily, in a more humanised and casual manner than any other channel allows.

What is important is the consistency you show on social media: the content you post, the way you interact, and your response time to a comment or a query. Acknowledging your customers and their suggestions signals to them that they are being heard. That is how you improve both your online reputation and customer perception of your brand, and it is exactly what disciplined social media management is for.

Why does your online existence matter?

Just like a brick and mortar store, where your physical presence matters, your online presence matters too. Is your website as attractive as your physical store? Can customers find what they are looking for easily? Are things clearly visible on your site? Do you actively make changes to your site with every update in technology and algorithms? The landing page is the piece you should consider enhancing first.

How do you know if your landing page needs changes?

Have a look at your bounce rate in your Google Analytics account, for every landing page. A low bounce rate indicates that customers spend a reasonable amount of time on your site, which is good for your business, because you have their attention on that specific landing page. A high bounce rate indicates the opposite: customers do not spend enough time on your landing page because they do not find the content engaging enough.

Why should your website have a blog?

Not only should you fix the landing page, you should also have a blog on your website. Blog about relevant topics, products and services, because a customer will spend more time reading your views on a subject before engaging with your site. Ask your readers to give feedback at the end of the blog.

Blogs not only improve your reputation in the customer's eye, they also improve your domain authority. Consistent blogging for 3 to 4 months will land you in the top 20 SERPs in Google, and every page you own that ranks is one more result a negative page cannot occupy.

What should you fix first?

Start with the factor that is visible in your search results right now, which for most businesses is reviews. Then bring your social media posting and reply times to a steady rhythm, because that is the fastest signal to repair. Then work on the site and the blog, which take the longest to compound but hold their value the longest as well. If your results already carry damage that no amount of new content will outrank, that is the point to bring in a specialist. Call us on +91 8700 450 757 and we will scan your results and tell you what can actually be removed.