Social Reviews...Which Ones?

[Mike Pedersen]

I have several clients and I am working on their reputation management. Yelp and Google+Local are a big pain in the "you know what"!

What other sites are nearly as strong SEO-wise, but easier to get customers to post reviews and have them stick?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Mike:

That's a tough one to answer because any review site that has authority is going to be difficult to work with. Having said that, there may be some authority sites that are easier when you drill down to specific niches. For example, I was just asked to leave a review for an auto dealer I dealt with recently. He provided a link to Cars.com. It took me literally one minute to leave the review (because I didn't even need to have an account) and it was live within 24 hours. I was blown away by the ease of the process and how quick my review showed up.

The point is, you may find some sites like that in specific niches but in general I don't know of any such review sites that exist (that have a lot of authority anyway).

Travis Van Slooten

 

[Mike Pedersen]

Okay.

Just frustrating for clients to work so hard and not get results.!

Mike

Mike:

That's a tough one to answer because any review site that has authority is going to be difficult to work with. Having said that, there may be some authority sites that are easier when you drill down to specific niches. For example, I was just asked to leave a review for an auto dealer I dealt with recently. He provided a link to Cars.com. It took me literally one minute to leave the review (because I didn't even need to have an account) and it was live within 24 hours. I was blown away by the ease of the process and how quick my review showed up.

The point is, you may find some sites like that in specific niches but in general I don't know of any such review sites that exist (that have a lot of authority anyway).

Travis Van Slooten

 

[Linda Buquet]

I don't really specialize in 3rd party reviews, so take this as just my impression.

I don't know about ease of customers posting reviews or approval/stick rate. But 2 authority sites that have reviews that in the past I thought Google held in high regard are Insider Pages and City Search. (Speaking in terms mainly of Google pretty consistently counting them in the 3rd party review count.)

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I'll second Insider Pages and City Search. Getting reviews there is really easy because you don't have to create an account or anything, you just need a Facebook account (which almost everyone has these days).

 

[Jim Froling]

I can also endorse Citysearch and Insider Pages. I have some clients whose reviews on Insider Pages are included in their G+ profile, though it takes a while before they show up. Citysearch feeds Bing & Yahoo.