Steve Wyer | Managing Director
Reputation Advocate | Steve Wyer

Google is a valuable digital search tool for business owners looking to increase traffic and expand their customer base, says Steve Wyer of Third Coast Interactive, Inc. However, it must be utilized correctly and combined with other tools in order to be most effective. Here, Steve Wyer lists the top five ways to make a listing more visible.

1. Claim all third party listing profiles and ensure they are up-to-date and maintained.

Steve Wyer reports that many business owners who claim a Google My Business profile fail to do the same for other third party listings, such as YP, Trip Advisor or Yelp, and those offered by local community sites. Google sees these listings when an internet user is searching for that particular business. According to Steve Wyer, the search engine results pages (SERPS) will offer more valid results for users if business owners have a consistent presence across all sites.

2. Maintain an active social media presence.

Facebook and Twitter act as valuable “signals” to Google. As explained by Steve Wyer, “Social media is a way for customers to interact with a business, which strengthens that business’ visibility online.” Regular engagement with customers, by means of a Facebook post or Twitter status, lets Google know the business is active, says Steve Wyer. Fresh content makes the listing more relevant and also more interesting to those searching for information.

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It’s official, says Steven Wyer. Google Authorship has succumbed to the same fate as Google Health, Google Dictionary, and Google Page Creator–all failed attempts to improve user experiences. Here, Steven Wyer answers questions about what, if anything, this change means to content creators.

Q: What is Google Authorship?

Steven Wyer: Google Authorship was a webmaster tool developed by Google that allowed for a digital watermark of sorts.

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Steve Wyer has helped hundreds of businesses manage their unique digital brand since 2006, well before Google took over the world. Through Third Coast Interactive (3Ci), Wyer offers a range of services including review monitoring, digital branding, online reputation management, and more. In the following question-and-answer session, Steve Wyer discusses 3Ci’s menu of digital branding solutions.

Q: How did you get into online reputation management and content marketing?

Steve Wyer: I actually became my own first customer when I found out the hard way that while the Internet never forgets negative information it often disregards when that undesirable material is found untrue.

Q: What is The Review Solution?

Steve Wyer: The Review Solution® is our company’s SaaS-based application that allows business owners the opportunity to capture reviews at the point of service and post them across the web.

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In this brief question and answer session, Third Coast Interactive’s Steve Wyer answers questions about Yelp and its ever-feared Consumer Alert banner.

Q: What is the Yelp Consumer Alert banner?

Steve Wyer: This is a banner which helps consumers identify businesses which have possibly posted their own reviews. It is an indication that the automated software has identified potentially biased information in favor of the listed business.

Q: So, as a business owner, I cannot write my own reviews?

Steve Wyer: Absolutely not! The whole purpose behind a review site, such as Yelp, is to allow consumers the freedom to choose a business based on the experiences of previous customers. Writing your own review is in violation of Yelp’s Terms of Service. And while there is no detailed information available as to how Yelp identifies these reviews, the banner indicates that a number of positive reviews originated from a unique IP address.

Q: Do Yelp users respond to the Consumer Alert?

Steve Wyer: Absolutely. Even if you don’t read the warning all the way through, it serves as a cloak of shame in a matter of speaking. It is designed to be an instant indication of potential deception and customers are definitely turned off by that.

Q: Does Yelp filter reviews by customers who have been given nonmonetary compensation for their time?

Steve Wyer: Recently Yelp began to crack down on reviews written as part of a customer reward program. There is a strong belief that these types of reviews create an unfair partiality toward the company and don’t necessarily reflect the reviewer’s actual experience. If a business is caught soliciting reviews from customers, they are tagged with a Business Alert which stays on their Yelp page for three months.

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Reputation Advocate’s Steve Wyer delivers Violated Online book as online attacks escalate

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Steven Wyer learned about reputation management the hard way.

The respected businessman saw his online reputation marred, literally overnight, when two of companies he owned endured litigation. Steven Wyer watched helplessly as misinformation took over search results, leaving him no recourse. Whether the information was true or not was irrelevant, Steven Wyer’s business was irrevocably damaged.

At the time, Steven Wyer had built two impressive businesses out of collecting consumer debt. With clients including General Electric, Chase, and H&R Block, Steven Wyer’s Wyer Creative Communications, Inc. was named the fastest growing company in Middle Tennessee for five years in a row before the litigation changed it all.

“It was shocking that people from the other side of the world asked questions that had nothing to do with the professional relationship I had developed with them,” Steven Wyer reflects. “Both businesses ended up shutting their doors because of information I had no control over.”

The information continued to haunt Steven Wyer in 2006, when he tried to diversify his professional interests. The entire experience showed Steven Wyer now negative information that shows up in search results can impact a person’s business, financial outlook, and even his personal relationships. Steven Wyer is alarmed to see how often such negative information comes from a competing business, an angry former employee, or an unhappy customer in the throes of a bad day.

Because the Internet is unfiltered and unmanaged, Steven Wyer says, there is no way to control such misinformation. People who have worked a lifetime to build a business can have it all wiped away in a matter of hours, with no recourse.

Through his business, ReputationAdvocate.com, Steven Wyer works to help those whose reputations have been marred online. Additionally, Steven Wyer has published a book, Violated Online, that details what can happen when a person’s reputation is attacked. Offering more than fifty tips to prepare for such an attack, Steven Wyer’s book has put him in demand on the speaking circuit, and he now works hard to juggle a thriving business and his work on his next book.

In the book, Steven Wyer details how the very laws that protect our rights to free speech have backfired on us in the internet age. The government will rarely step in when someone has been defamed online, Steven Wyer says, leaving companies and individuals with nowhere to turn. Violated Online arms readers with the tools necessary to survive in the digital age, outlining specific steps everyone can take today to protect against an online attack.

Violated Online is available from Amazon in softcover and e-book format, with downloads available for the Nook, iBook, Kindle, and PDF.

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