Many newly launched brands hesitate to get online reviews, and it’s easy to understand why. When you are just getting started, you think that you are the one who controls your brand.

But in reality, you can add brand value by allowing online reviews in the SEO strategy of your business in Orange County. Yes, this involves taking certain risks, but it leads to business opportunities. Let’s explore how you can benefit from online reviews and how to manage them well.

Based on the kind of services and target audience, you can choose from four main online review sub-categories and make them part of your SEO plan for business growth in Orange County.

Facebook comments

Facebook comments are a good starting point. Because they give you a quick control over your content, and it’s the easiest way of getting honest reviews.

The good news is that if you provide excellent content/service, it will help you improve your content without paying extra for sponsored posts.

Facebook comments are a good way of getting customer reviews because it follows the same model as your personal Facebook page. Many brands today take steps to prevent any possibility of negative reviews. 

You might think this helps, but reviews make you look approachable, legal, and fun. Don’t underestimate the importance of negative reviews, they can help you get customers’ attention too. Nowadays if something gets all the positive reviews, people will start to doubt it.

People don’t like to interact with brands that don’t listen to their customers. Because it provides a space for you to communicate directly with users. 

Custom reviews website

Custom reviews are the right choice, particularly for service providers. Unlike Facebook comments, which can only be posted by any visitor to a page with a Facebook account, custom comments are an option for people who experience the service, and they don’t need a third-party account to do so.

Custom online reviews are an excellent way for your future users to understand the experience. They are also great advertising tools that don’t cost a lot of money.

By allowing customized reviews, you can also get direct feedback from customers/users. It makes it easier to collect feedback and information about the customer experience and helps you interact with your audience and increase process efficiency.

Although reasonably easy to manage, the participation is not high. Unlike Facebook comments customers can not discuss with each other. 

CMS native reviews

CMS enables visitors to post comments on blog posts or pages of your site. If you manage a blog or clone your blog frequently, this may be the type of reviews that gives you the best overall results.

If your blog has a self-hosted comment system, usually there is a higher likelihood of conversation between the people who stay on it. The tiered arrangement provides a better place for future visitors and increases engagement with your content.

Like the other two types of reviews mentioned above, CMS native reviews allow modification. As a moderator, you can control CMS native comments to make them viable for your business. Based on the quality of the comments you can either choose to approve or unapprove them. Once approved, comments will appear below your content.

Third-party online review software

If you own your website but don’t have the resources to hire someone to develop a custom comment bar, your best bet is your third-party review software.

Disqus is a multi-featured platform which you can use for both mobile and regular desktop versions. The function of Disqus is that it displays the comments in real-time.  You don’t have to refresh the page.

However, you have the option to pre-review comments to ensure that the comment section looks clean, engaging, and spam-free. If you don’t want to review the comment section, you can leave it to the user.

This unique software allows other users to increase or decrease the reputation of each review, so the reviews section can look attractive even if you are not interacting with anyone. You can also choose to block someone or add them to the list of trusted commenters.

Third-party review software has more features than the above. You can choose to link to another article or other product near the comment section of the page. Incorporating third-party tools can improve the SEO plan for your Orange County business. So if you have the resources to invest in these extra features, they will make your website more attractive.

No matter which model you choose from these options, online reviews can bring many benefits to your business.

In most cases, each platform of the discussion gives you control over the comment section, while still allowing the conversation to evolve naturally.

So if you haven’t used online reviews to promote your business, now is the time to reconsider and add one of the above strategies to your strategy.