Why Employee Reviews Matter

Employee reviews offer a transparent window into a company’s culture, work environment, and leadership. They are a powerful tool for prospective candidates who rely on authentic feedback to make informed decisions about where to work.

• Building Trust and Credibility: Positive reviews from current and former employees signal a supportive and engaging workplace. According to a 2023 Glassdoor study, 86% of job seekers read company reviews before applying. Authentic, positive feedback builds trust, while addressing negative reviews constructively shows a commitment to improvement.
• Attracting Top Talent: High-quality candidates are more likely to apply to companies with strong review ratings. A consistent stream of positive reviews can differentiate your organization from competitors, showcasing your commitment to employee satisfaction.
• SEO Benefits: Reviews contribute to search engine optimization (SEO). Platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed rank higher in search results when companies have active, up-to-date profiles with frequent reviews. This visibility ensures your company appears when candidates search for opportunities.
• AI Benefits: In the same way reviews and recruitment profiles contribute to SEO they also help you get found on AI.  Prospective employees ask AI about good places to work or they may ask about working at your company specifically.
• Feedback for Improvement: Reviews aren’t just for candidates—they provide valuable insights for employers. Constructive feedback highlights areas for growth, helping companies refine their culture, benefits, or management practices.
• Helping the Sales Process: Prospective customers will also look at your Employee reviews to determine what your employees think of you.  Bad employee reviews can be a red flag and an indication of a company not being run well.

The Power of a Strong Online Presence on Recruitment Platforms

A well-maintained presence on recruitment-focused websites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Indeed is more than just a digital storefront—it’s a strategic tool for talent acquisition.

• Showcasing Company Culture: Recruitment platforms allow companies to highlight their mission, values, and workplace perks through detailed profiles, photos, and employee testimonials. A vibrant profile with regular updates creates a compelling narrative that resonates with job seekers.
• Wider Reach to Diverse Talent: Platforms like LinkedIn have global reach, connecting you with candidates from diverse backgrounds and skill sets. A strong profile ensures your job postings are seen by both active and passive candidates, expanding your talent pool.
• Engaging with Candidates: Many recruitment platforms enable direct interaction with candidates through messaging, job alerts, or Q&A sections. Engaging promptly and professionally demonstrates that your company values its applicants, fostering a positive candidate experience.
• Competitive Advantage: Companies with outdated or incomplete profiles risk being overlooked. A polished, active presence signals that your organization is forward-thinking and invested in its workforce, giving you an edge over competitors with lackluster profiles.

Best Practices for Leveraging Reviews and Online Presence

To maximize the benefits of employee reviews and recruitment platforms, consider these actionable steps:

1. Encourage Authentic Reviews: Motivate employees to share honest feedback by creating a culture of openness. Avoid pressuring staff for positive reviews, as authenticity is key to building trust.
2. Respond to Reviews Professionally: Acknowledge both positive and negative reviews with thoughtful responses. Thank employees for praise and address concerns constructively to show accountability.
3. Optimize Your Profiles: Regularly update your company profiles on recruitment platforms with current job openings, employee stories, and high-quality visuals. Ensure your branding is consistent across all platforms.
4. Monitor and Analyze Feedback: Use analytics tools to track review trends and sentiment. This data can guide improvements in employee experience and recruitment strategies.
5. Promote Your Presence: Share links to your profiles on your company website, social media, and job postings. Encourage candidates to explore reviews and learn about your culture before applying.

Types of Recruitment Platforms

Recruitment and job platforms are not just limited to Job sites like Indeed or Monster.  Some platforms have a focus on what its like to work for a company or focus on a particular niche such as IT Jobs. Some of these platform types include:

• Jobs.  LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster .
• Reviews.  Glassdoor, Blind.
• Company Culture.  Great Places to Work, FairyGodBoss, Comparably.
• Industry. VentureLoop.
• Australia. Seek.
• German.  Xing.

See more about the best Online Recruitment Platforms.

Conclusion

In a world where candidates have access to a wealth of information, employee reviews and a strong online presence on recruitment platforms are non-negotiable for companies aiming to attract and retain top talent. By fostering authentic reviews and maintaining an engaging, professional presence, businesses can build trust, enhance their employer brand, and stand out in a crowded job market. Investing in these areas isn’t just about recruitment—it’s about creating a workplace that employees are proud to endorse and candidates are eager to join.

myPresences helps you manage your Online Presence and Reputation on 30 top recruitment focused websites and apps in addition to the hundreds of other review platforms we work with.

Try a 14 day free trial today and start building a strong employer brand online.

You also have to compete with the big websites like Yelp, Tripadvisor, Houzz and many more depending on your niche who rank very well and have large teams of SEO professionals behind them.

These websites are optimized for the very same keywords that are important to your business so they can send traffic to their own profile or search pages to benefit businesses on their site.

They also have large advertising budgets and quite often buy ads that appear at the top of search pages for competitive keywords.

Maybe it is impossible for your business to get on page 1 of Google for these highly competitive keywords, but there is a very good chance your business could get to page one on one of these third-party services.

You will then get traffic when people click through to a third-party search page that you are listed on.

What is Barnacle SEO

Barnacle SEO is a search engine optimization technique where businesses and individuals leverage the authority and traffic of established websites to improve their own online visibility. The name “barnacle” is aptly chosen, as it reflects the idea of attaching oneself to a larger, stationary entity in order to benefit from its position in the online ecosystem.

Instead of relying solely on building and optimizing their own website, Barnacle SEO practitioners identify high-ranking, authoritative websites and platforms in their niche or industry. They then strategically create and optimize content, profiles, or listings on these platforms, effectively “riding” their coattails to gain exposure in search engine results pages (SERPs).

This strategy allows your business to gain exposure on page 1 for very competitive keywords when the searcher clicks through to a search page on one of these websites.

You should then aim to be ranked as highly as possible on these websites so your profile or listing is as high as possible in the search results for each service.

Is Barnacle SEO useful for my business?

Barnacle SEO can be utilized for any business.  You just need to determine which websites are important to your business niche and optimize your presence on these services.

This strategy is particularly effective for local businesses as the search pages typically cover one location. You just need to work on making your profile better than your local competitors on each service.

Barnacle SEO for local businesses

Barnacle SEO can be a very powerful strategy for local businesses like electricians, plumbers, doctors, accountants, lawyers, restaurants, hotels etc.

Each of these niches has its own list of powerful websites designed to help people find and connect with businesses in these industries.

These websites have large advertising and search marketing budgets and quite often have an Advertisement or well-ranked search page for important keywords relevant to your niche.

Barnacle SEO for online businesses

You can also use Barnacle SEO if you are an online business.  There are plenty of services that support the ability to list online businesses.

How to implement Barnacle SEO

Barnacle SEO is easy to implement and the steps involved are things that you should already be doing for your business.

1. Identify your most important keywords

What are the most important search keywords that people use when searching for a business like yours.

Identify a list of at least 20 keywords and use a search tracking tool to determine which are most important.  Use Search Volume to determine which keywords get the most traffic.

Focus on these keywords in order of the ones with the most traffic.

2. Determine which third party sites rank on page 1

For each of your keywords do a search on Google and make a note of any services that allow you to create a listing or profile.

Record which services appear the most and at what position along with the search volume for the keyword.  You can also determine the Domain Authority of each websites as a guide to which websites may rank better.

Once you have made your list you will be able to determine which websites are the most important for your business.

These are the websites you should focus on for your Barnacle SEO strategy.

3. Have a presence on each site

Before you can appear in search results for each site you need to have a presence.

Check each website to see if you have an existing listing, If not add a new listing or profile.

Some sites will be free to list or will require you to pay for a premium listing.  You should decide for each site if you feel a paid listing is worthwhile depending on how much traffic the listing may bring.

There may be other advantages to a paid listing. For example, if a paid listing also includes a dofollow backlink this would be an added bonus.

Creating listings on these niche websites is also valuable as they are additional citations for your business to boost local seo and gives your business another way to be found by people who go directly to these niche services to find businesses.

4. Optimize your presence on each site

Once you are listed you need to optimize the listing as much as possible and generate high quality content so that the service ranks it as high as possible in relevant search result pages.

Each service will have their own ranking algorithm.  Look at the search results page for each service and determine the factors helping each business to rank.

Some common ranking factors include:

• Ratings
• Number of reviews
• Quality of reviews
• Whether the listing is premium or not
• Completeness of listing
• Photos and Videos
• Engagement of the page
• Inclusion of products and services
• Specials and offers

If the service supports ratings and reviews a good strategy is to start getting good reviews on the page.

5. Increase Engagement with your presence

One of the best ways to get your presence or listing on a service to rank well is to get user generated content and engagement on your page.

You can do this by:

• Getting more reviews on your listing
• Improving your rating
• Getting more photos and videos from customers on the listing
• Including questions and answers

You can link to your profile from your website or use review generation tools to get more reviews on your listing.

6. Link back to your website

Whenever possible, include links back (backlinks) to your own website within the content you publish on these platforms. This can help drive traffic from the authoritative platform to your site.

7. Monitor Third Party Rankings

Check how you’re ranking on third party sites every so often to determine if you are improving or holding your rank.

Even when you have made it to position one it is possible that the ranking will change due to changes in ranking factors or your competitors improving.

Keep a list of all the search pages relevant to your business and check each one periodically.  Record your ranking position and the date so you can track changes over time.

Managed Barnacle SEO

Managed Barnacle SEO is not possible with traditional rank tracking services such as Semrush, Ahrefs, Majestic or any other service.

This is because these platforms are not designed to track the information necessary to properly manage and track Barnacle SEO.  These tools only know about your website and have no knowledge of which websites can be used for Barnacle SEO or the ability to help you rank on each of these websites and track your ranking position.

myPresences is the only online marketing tool with specific support for Barnacle SEO.

This is because myPresences is also an online presence management platform . We track all the websites that allow businesses in each niche to have a listing so you know where to list and whether you already have a listing. Once you are listed we help you optimize each listing and get reviews to help the listings rank better on each service so you have a better chance of appearing on page 1.

Coming soon, we will also be able to provide rank tracking for search pages on major third party websites so your rank can be automatically monitored in the same way that you track your google business profile rank.

Try myPresences free for 14 days and start implementing a Barnacle SEO strategy for your business or agency clients.

Even more valuable than your website.

This is what people see on the right when they search for your business on Google.  The quality of your profile has a big impact on whether your business will rank when people search for businesses like yours.

If you search online you’ll find lots of advice on why optimizing your Google Business Profile is incredibly important.  And a lot of people who will tell you they are gurus on getting the most from your profile.

Typical advice includes:

• Optimize your listing and include as much information as you can
• Set your Primary category correctly and set all your applicable categories
• Get regular new natural reviews
• Maintain a rating at least in the low to mid fours
• Reply to your reviews
• Post good content to your profile regularly
• Answer questions posted by customers on your profile
• Add your products and services

The good news is Google Business Profile management is now included with myPresences on all plans.

Even better, our multi location and agency features allow you to manage multiple profiles from one place with ease.  It’s never been quicker and easier to manage multiple Google Business Profiles!

Let’s dive into the new features.

Profile status

We now let you know the status of your profile,  and when it changes,  we alert you on the timeline.

Google has been known to suspend profiles or put them in review for legitimate changes!  Now when any of your locations are not fully claimed you will be alerted and can see it one place which of your locations are affected.

Some of things that may happen to your profiles include:

• Suspension
• Disabling (the above screenshot shows 2 disabled profiles)
• Notices that profile quality does not meet guidelines
• Being placed in review
• Profile ownership disputes

If any of your locations are affected we provide help to get it resolved directly in the interface.

Verification

Before you can take full control of a profile you need to be verified.  This verification process involves contacting you at the business to verify ownership.

This commonly involves:

• A postcard sent to your business address with verification steps
• An automated phone call or sms
• An email to your business address

myPresences now supports this verification process and will:

1. Show you which verification options are available.
2. Allow you to initiate the most appropriate verification process.

Once you have started verification we will update you on your profiles status.

Photo & Video Management

You can see all of the photos and videos on your Google Business Profile in one place.  This is a great way to see if you are representing the business well. Do you have old photos or videos? Can some be replaced with better ones? Do you have bad quality and low resolution images?

With myPresences quickly and easily upload new ones and manage the existing ones.

The best part! Because we have access to every photo and video you have used online you can use them to quickly upload new images from your library. No having to find images and upload them from your device.

Question and Answer Management

When people post questions on your Google Business Profile you will be notified in myPresences and you can answer them directly through the interface.

You can also add your own questions and answer s to seed common questions that people ask about your business.

Posts Management

See all your past posts in one place and easily create new posts.  Ensure you’re posting to your Google Business Profile regularly with good content.

Reviews Management

See all your reviews together and quickly and easily reply to google reviews. This also includes reviews that have been removed from google so this is a great way to see those reviews google has decided to remove from publication on your profiles.

Profile Performance

Check how your profiles are performing in seconds.  See all your most important profile KPI’s in one place and optimize your profile to keep them improving.

Agency and Multi location

Now that Google Business Profile has a dedicated place in myPresences, make the page available to your clients or region managers so they can quickly and easily see how their pages are performing and manage their pages.

With multi location groups you can give regions the ability to manage their pages only and see how they compare.  Select a location to work on that location.

Try Google Business Profile management in myPresences today with our 14 day free trial. or book a demo to see it in action.

Review gating is the process of controlling the generation of public reviews so they are mostly positive.

This may be as simple as only asking for reviews from people you know will leave a positive review or controlling the flow of reviews via software so that only people who rate you highly are redirected to leave a public review while anyone with a negative sentiment is directed to leave private feedback.

Some online review services have made Review Gating against their terms of service and your account may be banned or removed if you are found to be using review gating with these services.

Review gating examples

Businesses have been gating reviews since reviews were a thing. It’s only natural to want good reviews over bad reviews.

Some way you might gate your reviews are:

• Asking for a review after first checking if a customer is happy
• Sending review requests via email or text and asking the reviewer to rate you before sending you to leave a public review only when your rating is higher than certain value

Why review gating is prohibited

Review sites such as Google, Facebook and Yelp want their users to feel they can trust the reviews they are reading.

While the reviews that you receive when gating reviews might be genuine, they are overwhelmingly positive.

This leads to a biased view of your business on the review site.

If reviews on a service cannot be trusted users will not return when looking for more businesses.

Which review services prohibit review gating?

Some of the major review sites have started prohibiting review gating in their terms of service.

These include Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), Yelp, Trustpilot and Tripadvisor.

Service	Policy	Link
Google Business Profile	Prohibited	Prohibited and restricted content
Facebook	No Policy
Yelp	Prohibited	Don't ask for Reviews
Trustpilot	Prohibited	Best Practices for creating review invitations
Tripadvisor	Prohibited	Content Fraud FAQ

Will review gating get me in trouble?

If you are found to be using review gating the most likely outcome is your reviews will be removed or suppressed on your profile.  However, in some cases your profile may be banned or removed.

Do you need to gate your reviews?

All of your reviews don’t have to be positive. In fact, most people don’t trust profiles with a perfect 5 star rating, they think the is something suspicious and there usually is.

Many people prefer businesses with a good but more natural rating of between 4.2 and 4.6.

People also want to read your negative reviews, to see what was said but also how you responded.

Tools like myPresences allow you to request reviews from your customers and then gate their responses, but you should only use it when generating reviews on sites that do not prohibit its use.  We encourage you to leave it off and allow all users to leave a public review.

Try a free 14 day trial of myPresences and see how easy it is to get new authentic reviews on autopilot.

Have you considered adding your SaaS to App Stores or Marketplaces from existing established SaaS platforms which your prospective customers already use?

Shopify has over 1,000,000 businesses using their platform and 87% of these businesses have installed an app from the appstore with the average business using 6 Apps.

And that is just one appstore!  This is a huge opportunity.

What is an App Store or Marketplace

When you think of an App Store you probably think of the ITunes App Store or the Google Play Store for mobile apps.

But did you know there are hundreds of app stores and marketplaces where you can list your software and gain access to thousands of new prospects and generate new revenue.

Some of these marketplaces are from other products that your ideal customers use every day.

A SaaS Marketplace or App Store is usually run by larger organisations with a large established customer base that you can target.

Marketplaces usually consist of a place where users of the product can search for apps and each app has a landing page where they can read more about the app to start a trial or purchase.  The marketplace may be a seperate area or subdomain on the main website or incorporated into the user interface of the product to make app discovery even more seamless.

Quite often a marketplace will require an integration with their platform. When considering a marketplace you should decide how your product can extend the capabilities of the platform and choose the platforms where your product can provide the most benefit.

Why list on SaaS App Stores and Marketplaces

Get found by your ideal customer

Choosing the right app store will get you seen by businesses that are more likely to be your ideal customer. If you already know they are using a platform you can tell a lot about the type of business they are.  You can also tell they are more serious than the average business as they are actively looking in the app store for software to help solve a problem.  If they are looking for a solution you provide you have a very targeted prospect.

Make your product extra sticky

Once a business has integrated your SaaS in another platform it makes your product more valuable to them.  It also makes it harder to stop using your product as it may mean something in the other platform needs to be changed or will stop working.

Once your product becomes part of the workflow of the platform your clients are more likely to continue using your software.

More business by Association

Some businesses processes are built around certain products (eg. SalesForce).  These businesses will only be interested in other software that integrates into the SalesForce platform.  By being integrated with these platforms and being discoverable in their marketplaces you are far more likely to be chosen by these businesses over your competitors who are not integrated.

Co-marketing Opportunities

Many of the marketplaces offer co-marketing opportunities. Imagine having your software mentioned in a newsletter that goes to millions of business owners. When you listing goes live on the app store it may be featured for a period of tine, this can be a great way to get your SaaS in front of thousands of businesses.

Additional Revenue Streams

The obvious one. Marketplaces can be a great source of additional revenue.  This marketplaces will bill for you and provide a monthly revenue stream that grows as their platform grows.

You benefit from their marketing

The companies that run marketplaces spend millions on adverting every year for their own software.  Being listed on their app store means that you get increased exposure for nothing.  As these platforms grow they bring in more users who are likely to use their marketplaces and discover your SaaS.

Development can be outsourced

Most marketplaces will require some level of development to integrate your SaaS to their platform.  The good news is this can be done by outsourced developers who specialise in integrating specific platforms. You don’t need to switch the focus of your core development team, especially if you already have an API.  Even if your core developers have to become involved it will most likely only need to be for the first integration as other integrations will be similar.

Top SaaS App Stores

These are some of the best App Stores and Marketplaces for a SaaS but there are hundreds of others. If you know of  software platforms not listed here that your ideal customer uses then focus on those platforms first.  Do a google search for that platform and “app store” or “marketplace” or check their website.

Shopify App Store

WooCommerce Marketplace

Square App Marketplace

Wix App Market

Zoho Marketplace

Salesforce AppExchange

Weebly App Center

Slack App Directory

Zapier App Directory

Atlassian Marketplace

Google Workspace Marketplace

Chrome Web Store

InfusionSoft Marketplace

Github Marketplace

Quickbooks Apps

Zendesk Apps

Constant Contact Marketplace

Mindbody Partner Store

At myPresences we have the worlds only free tool to search these App Stores and Marketplaces to show where you are listed and your ratings and reviews on each.

Try a scan for your software product https://www.mypresences.com/scan/appstore/

myPresences is the only platform where you can manage and grow the presence and reputation of your Software Company on over 50 websites important to Software Companies.

To see all the Software App Stores and Marketplaces you can list on and where you are currently listed go to the Services page in myPresences and select Software App Stores in the service dropdown.

Try us free for 14 days for your software company to see more.

It can be hard to remember to post to all your channels, to make life a little easier we have a new widget to help you monitor and manage the Post Age for each of your social media accounts.

Post Age is simply the number of days since you have posted to each service (if you have more than one account on a service this will show the age of the most recent post).

This shows you at a glance which accounts you have not posted to for some time and whether you are above or below your average posting cadence. If your last post was below or equal to your usual cadence then it will be shown as green otherwise it will be red.

On the left side we display:

1. the average posting cadence over the last 90 days (37.45 days above)
2. average number of posts for the last 90 days across all your social media channels (11).

myPresences currently supports monitoring your Post Age for:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google Business Profile
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Youtube
• Vimeo

How to use Post Age

You should use this widget to ensure you are publishing content regularly to your most important social media channels.  It is also important to make sure your channels are not becoming stale, if customers are only seeing old content they may feel your business is not doing well and choose one of your competitors who is more active online.

If your business does not post to a channel then it might also be better to remove it rather than having stale content.

With the Post Age widget you can see when you last posted to each service and the average number of days between posts for each service so you can see your usual schedule.  Check your dashboard next time you login to myPresences to see how you are performing.  If all of your social media channels are not showing either add them to myPresences so that we can track them or if they are added remember to connect them so we can monitor them for you as some services require you to connect them before they can be managed.

Go to your presence dashboard to see your business’s post age for all of your social media channels.