People have written books about this, so it's rather difficult to cover in just a paragraph! The basics are that your site needs to be technically good, secure (https), fast and mobile friendly, ideally containing rich media. From a content point of view it needs to be relevant to the category ('keyword') you want to rank against, and also demonstrate engagement and authority as others link to your page. The whole area of SEO is hugely complex and constantly developing, but if these basics are properly in place, you will improve over time.

Listings in directories - sometimes called "citations" are really important. Being listed in many directories contributes to your business being seen as authoritative; however the business details MUST be identical or Google will think they are different organisations, and you'll lose the benefit. You can hire people to correct or add listings, but I believe that doing it yourself is a good way of making sure it's just as you like it. We can help by doing this for you.

There's no magic button to get rid of bad reviews, but by far the best way of minimising the impact is by having a steady stream of good reviews which will far outweigh the odd bad one. To achieve this you need to make asking for reviews a standard procedure in dealing with your customers. Our Reputation Management system attracts bad reviews offline so they can be dealt with by you or your staff rapidly to try and prevent the reviewer posting publicly (ie to Google or Facebook).

It's really important to make asking for a review a standard procedure with all customers, but also to do it in a way which will not offend or put off the customer. Making it personal and genuine is always a good strategy. Our Reputation Management system automates this in a way which can be customised to your business.

Having your business listed in these directories is fine, but listings only gain some real weight if you have some great reviews in these directories as well (not surprisingly Google and others only really pay attention to a directory listing if it has at least 5 or more reviews). It is therefore necessary to spread your reviews around directories, aiming for a minimum of 5 reviews in each directory - ideally more. Again, we can automate this, but whether you use us or not, you need to try and ensure that not ALL of your reviews go on just one or two directories.

We've already mentioned how video is important as a rich medium (remember Google owns YouTube). It can be really effective to turn your best reviews into videos which you post regularly on your site and YouTube channel as well as other social media. This is also a service which we offer.