In the business world, reputation is everything. Making a name for your company is the one and only way to establish yourself as a relevant member of your business field. However, one must not forget that business is cruel and unforgiving. They say all’s fair in love and war and the same can be said about business, in that, your competitors do not only wish to be better than you, they wish for you to fall. It might sound a bit presumptuous and even arrogant to assume that there are companies out there who would profit from going explicitly out of their way to damage your reputation, but this happens all too often and the problem is, sometimes it happens regardless of their personal relationship with you. In other words, people will ruin your reputation regardless of what they stand to gain from it.
At this point you must be wondering, why would anyone do so ? Simply put, people are selfish and they have selfish motivations. Let’s take the case of a simple restaurant reviewer, reviewing your new hypothetical eatery that you are very proud of. That particular reviewer holds a lot of credibility. If he so much as has the slightest mishap within your restaurant, you can count on a downward spiral in your popularity. Again, it might sound presumptuous, but it isn’t. It is a fact. Assuming that everything he remembers about your restaurant is that he tripped on your doorway on the way out, that is what will flood search engine results when anyone looks up your eatery.
This relates to SEO on a larger scale. While people might not be discouraged from using your service simply because of one bad review, search engines might. One way, or rather, the best way to deal with this problem is to ensure that your service has employees ready and waiting to resolve any issues that your customers might have. In other words, what starts out as a bad review can end as a resolution to a bigger problem. Customers’ bad reviews are not necessarily detrimental, or rather, they do not have to be. In fact, it is far better that your company’s faults are visible and public as well as followed by a solution than pretending that you are infallible.
