Your reputation as an authoritative real estate website is the keystone to the ultimate success of the site. When your reputation diminishes, or becomes tarnished or damaged through the opinions of others, you could lose search rankings, visitors, and money. You must take a pro-active approach to keeping your reputation solid and fighting any negative postings found on the web.
Battling Negative Opinions
Since Web 2.0 became the new method of internet use, people have taken advantage of every possible way to express their opinion on the web through social websites. Why? Because the tremendous audience is eager to offer their opinion and this makes a difference. Some blogs have a wide readership and the opinions that the writer expresses has a keen effect on the subscribers. Also, readers have an opportunity to comment on blog and article postings. Through comments a reader can express positive or harmful and negative statements about anything since they can be made anonymously.
Unfortunately, there are web lurkers called “trolls.” Their main purpose in life, it seems, is to post negative comments and opinions about people and businesses on the web. Trolls are usually anonymous posters, or those who use alias names to hide their identity. Unfortunately, trolls can and do make a negative impact on business and website reputations.
Your job as a real estate website owner is to monitor and track any negative statements about your site. Use search engines like Google and Yahoo to perform searches on your website name. This should be done at least once a month. If you find a result that leads to you negative comments you need to react to protect your reputation.
You can create a counter posting about the negative comment and be sure to be professional in your response. Turn around negative statements and explain any actual events that may have led to an unsatisfactory experience.
You could also make a request to the webmaster that the negative comment be removed. Oftentimes if unsubstantiated negative statements are made by trolls, webmasters will have no problem removing them from their site if the statement causes reputation harm.
There are many additional strategies to keeping your reputation intact, including search engine reputation and managing negative press about your business on the internet. Be sure to make an effort to monitor and defend your good reputation on the web.
