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.

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.

If you are a local business you need to have this! You want to make it as easy as possible for consumers to find you and get to you.

In addition to your website your business is also on tens or even hundreds of other maps on online services, blogs, apps and more.

Have you taken the time to check these for accuracy?

Map Location Audit

A wrong map location can be a big problem for your business.  Especially if it is on a major services where is likely to be seen and used by lots of your potential customers.

One of the first things I check in myPresences when I add a new business is the Geolocation variations in their profile.  This shows the map point for every service where a business has a presence and allows you to see exactly which services have an incorrect map location for your business.

This can often be surprising, more often that not there is one or more services where the map point is not even close to the location of the business.

The above image shows all map positions for a business on a single map.  Most of the map positions are clustered around the correct location but two services are not even close to the correct location.

These should be fixed, people who find this business on these services may either:

1. Not consider the business because it appears to be too far away.
2. Use the directions and go to the location and find that your business is not there. You are very likely to lose their business in this case.

The above example is a lot better but some improvements can be made, this shows how much variation exists from service to service.

How Incorrect Map Locations affect your Business

Having an incorrect map location on an online service can lead to a loss of business for you depending on how incorrect the location is and how the service uses this information. Some ways this may affect your business are:

• Consumers may go to an incorrect location and not find your business.
• Your business may not appear when consumers search for businesses based on location or near them.
• Your business may not rank as well for proximity searches performed near your business.
• The directions feature may direct consumers to the wrong place.
• Local consumers looking at your map may get the wrong impression about where you are actually located.
• An incorrect map location on a major service may feed through to other services as they share data, this may lead to an incorrect location on many other services.

Fixing Incorrect Map Locations

To fix this problem or even determine whether you have a problem can be complicated and time consuming.  Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Make a list of all the services where your business has a profile.
2. Prioritise them so you are concentrating on the most important services first.
3. Check them in order and find the map in the profile.
4. Check the map location for your business (there might be competitors on the same map) and make sure you are happy with the location.
5. If you think the map location is not accurate enough you should be able to edit your information on the service to update your map location.
6. If you are not able to update the map location yourself then try contacting the service and letting them know your map location is incorrect.

While you are checking your map locations why not do an audit of your business information and make sure it is accurate, consistent and complete. This will help people find you and may also help your business rank better in local search.

You can do this automatically in myPresences for free and see exactly where the map markers sit for all of your profiles in less than 10 minutes.

Create a free account at https://app.mypresences.com/signup/ and then add your business. After a few minutes click on profile in the left menu and then choose Geolocation. You will see a map like above for your business showing all your map pins in one place.

Online is not just about individual businesses however,  there is a collective advantage to improving the overall online presence and reputation of a group of businesses in a localised area.

Improving the online presence of the businesses in a local area will not only benefit those businesses but the community around them and will likely have many other benefits.

Local Chamber of Commerce are a great example of organisations that should be embracing the Online Presence of their constituent businesses. However, there are many other groups that can benefit from a stronger focus online.

When I talk about raising the collective online presence & reputation of a local community I mean things like:

• getting a large proportion of local businesses to be listed on major online services
• making sure their profiles are accurate and complete so they rank better
• ensuring profiles stand out more by including photos and videos
• managing reviews and trying to have reviews on as many sites as possible, trying to manage negative reviews
• ensure ratings are as high as possible
• ensure photos and videos are inviting and properly showcase each business.

With a little initial effort you can create an online presence that not only improves your chances of getting found in search engines but gives you a diversified network of places where consumers can find you. Some may only bring you a small amount of direct business each year but combined they can make a noticeable (and potentially large) difference to your bottom line.

Listing your business in more places online can improve your Local SEO.  If you are a local business Local SEO is vital to your business.  Local SEO helps you get found when people search with Local Intent, such as “Plumbers in Brisbane” or “restaurant in camp hill“.

When you perform a local intent search a special section appears on the first page called the Google Snack Pack.  Your ranking (and even whether you appear here) is based on your Local SEO efforts.

It’s not enough to just list your business, your business data needs to be as consistent as possible across all of your listings.  Ensure your NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) are as close as possible across all listings.  Getting your business to appear in the Google 3 pack (shown below) for the keywords relevant to your business is gold for your business and conversely dropping off can make a big difference to your ability to be found online.

The free Online Services Explorer at www.mypresences.com/services/  is the best way to find the online services where you should list your business.   It recommends the best services based on the type of business you are and the country your business is in.

Over 2000 online services and apps are supported worldwide. This is the world’s most comprehensive source of information on online services for small businesses.

There are lots of places you can list and many of them are free! You should list on as many of these services as possible to get your business found online more often than your competitors.

Follow these tips to get the most from the Services Explorer.

Select relevant Business Type and Location

We link services to business type and location so that only relevant services appear.  If you don’t select the correct business type or location you will miss services that are relevant to your business.

The Services Explorer works globally. You will find services for most countries especially Australia, USA, UK, Canada and New Zealand.

Recommendation Level

We categorised all services into 6 recommendation levels based on how important that service is for your business.

Focus on services that are Must List first and work your way down the list, do not add your business to any Services below Suggested unless you have researched the service and feel there is an advantage.

Engagement and Popularity

Services that are popular tend to have better engagement online,  this will be reflected in the number of connections they have on social networks and how much traffic their site gets.  This is not always the case however and it is possible that numbers may be inflated based on other factors, sometimes numbers may be inflated because a service has purchased social media favour but this is far less likely the more established a service is.

A great number to watch is Talking About on Facebook, this is an indication of the number of people who have engaged with their Facebook page in the last week.  The Talking About number will changed from day to day based on the previous week and is a great way to see how engaged a services users are.

We also track the Talking About % which allows you to level the playing field and see how many people are engaged as a percentage of the total likers, this is a great way to see those services that are getting a lot of attention from their users right now. This will change every day so checking who is at the top of the Talking About % for your business is a great way to find trending and interesting services to keep your business ahead of your competitors.

Once you have selected a set of services you can then sort them by the following engagement metrics to see which are most likely to be effective for your business based on engagement.

	Company	Models
	OpenAI	GPT 4o, GPT 4, Chat GPT
	Google AI	Gemini 1.5 Pro, Gemini 1.5 Flash, Gemini 1.0 Pro
	Meta AI	Llama 3 70B, Llama 3 8B
	Anthropic	Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3 Sonnet, Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3 Haiku
	Perplexity AI	Sonar Small Offline, Sonar Small Online, Sonar Large Offline, Sonar Large Online
	Mistral AI	Mistral Large, Mistral Small
	X.ai	Coming Soon. Grok-1.

Delivery Channels

In the last few years we have seen a big move from desktop to mobile computing on phones and tablets. This trend will only continue and the most innovative companies are moving their focus to mobile.   If a service has a mobile option then they are more likely to be forward focused and your business is more likely to be found by consumers looking for businesses around them when their ready to spend.

You should look for services that have a mobile option and make sure your business is listed on their platform.

Free Services

You can’t beat free right!  A lot of services are either free or provide a free option.  Look for free services by selecting the Free filter  and listing on all Suggested and above services.

Filter on SEO to find services that support a follow link to your website to improve SEO. (to help you rank better in search engines).

Business Type Specific Services

These services are only relevant to a specific business types.  Look for services that are specific to your business in your location by using the Specific filter button.  These services are worth listing your business on because some consumers will rely on these niche services when looking to find a particular type of business, they will also allow you to showcase your business better as they will be tailored to your type of business.

Claims

Services are making claims about their performance all the time, but it can be hard to remember which site claimed what and then to know if the claim is relevant anymore.

The internet changes so quickly that quoting traffic numbers from over 5 years ago can be meaningless and often a telling sign that things are not going well.

We collect claims made by Services so that you can see them side by side, we tell you when the claim was made and show you the source of the claim.

The older the claim the less relevant it becomes, if it is quite old it may indicate that the claimed value has not improved since.

In the above example you can see that Styleseat (www.styleseat.com) users have booked over 5.5 million appointments. If you are a hair or beauty salon then this is a good indication you should be listed on this fast growing niche service. On their profile page you can see this claim was made in January 2014 and link to the source.

Always check for recent claims when comparing services.  Some of them may surprise you, that service you had never heard of may be serving millions of customers a month.

Go Deep

Looking for more information on a service?  Each has its own profile page that can be found by clicking on the Full Profile button on the service (or by clicking on a service).  Here you can find very detailed information on each service that can help you determine its popularity and user engagement.

On the service profile page you can:

• Track the trend over the last 60 days on statistics for the service.  This will tell you where the service is improving or whether it is falling away.
• Add your Business to the Service.  Clicking the link will take you to the business signup page .
• Login to the service as a User.  This can also be used to login and access a backend management service if supported.
• See search trends for the service.  Google Trends for the service name over the last 4 years is a good way to gauge popularity.
• See the types of information the service supports and the countries where the service is available.

If you have a myPresences account you can store your access credentials securely for each service.  This is especially useful when an agent is managing your online presence for you and they need access to login credentials.  All access to your credentials are logged and reported back to you.

Check Back

We are always adding new services and updating details for existing services.  To keep on top of the best services for your business check back periodically to see if there are any new services or changes to existing services that make them worth listing your business on.  If you have a free account on the myPresences platform you will be automatically informed when new services launch or there are significant changes on existing services.

Good luck with promoting your business online! Most small business owners are doing very little to promote their business online. A little bit of effort will put you ahead of the majority of your competition.

As more and more consumers are looking online first when finding a local business it will only pay off more and more as consumers continue to move online.

If you are looking for a better way to manage your business’s entire online presence and reputation, please try a free trial at www.mypresences.com.

Managing your business’s online presence can be a big job, and it is complicated when you are inheriting a mess of existing accounts with forgotten passwords and incorrect information.  One of the biggest reasons businesses don’t manage their online presence well is that they have no process and their online presence has been created by different staff members in the past who may have left and regaining control of their lost profiles becomes too hard. Don’t let this happen to your business!

Here are a few tips to make it easier, and once you have everything setup managing your online presence going forward will be quick and simple.

1. Create a single email address for all online profiles

You should use a single email account for all of your online profiles and accounts. Ideally this email address will be on your corporate domain and you should be able to give people access to this email account as needed.

Something like online@yourdomain.com.

A problem a lot of businesses face is employees may create new accounts associated with their own email address or a corporate address that is not appropriate. When they leave the business nobody knows how to access the accounts and recovering them can be time consuming.

If your business has many locations (eg. a restaurant chain) then create a seperate email address for each location. You can use this for services that do not allow more than one business to have the same email address.

Having a single email address also ensures that all correspondence from your online accounts will be recorded in one place and is not being sent to addresses that are not being monitored.

2. Prefer creating an account via email when possible

Many online services allow you to signup with social media accounts which in many cases will be associated with a personal account.  When you have a choice you should signup via the email address you use for the business so that you have full control of the account.

3. Use Google Chrome’s profiles

Google Chrome has an awesome feature where you can use it as a particular user that is seperate from other accounts. This means that when you need to work on the business’s profiles you can switch to your business profile and have much easier access to your business accounts with auto login and other features.

If you try to use your main account you are likely to have conflicting logins, cookies and settings for your personal accounts which will make managing your profiles more difficult.

If you are managing multiple business locations you can setup a seperate profile for each location and switch between them when working on each business.

This article tells you how to setup profiles and switch between them.

If you are not using Google Chrome as your browser it can be installed here.

4. Use your email address for user names

When asked for a username just use your business email.  This makes it much easier to manage all of your accounts without having to remember different usernames. It also helps to improve your chances of having a consistent username across all the online services that you use as it is unlikely that your email address will already be taken.

5. Use a password manager

Use a password manager like LastPass or 1Password with a business account.  This allows you to create strong passwords for all of your accounts and then provide your team members with access to your accounts without them getting access to the passwords.  When they leave the role or the company they can be removed from the password manager and all accounts with one action.

6. Create a single point of truth

When you are creating profiles and listings for your business you want to be sure the profiles created are an accurate, complete and consistent representation of your business.   If you create profiles that contain information that is not optimal then you will be hurting your overall online presence and giving a potentially bad experience to your customers. You may also hurt you rankings in search engines by not sending a consistent message.

You should create a simple list of information for each business you manage that includes things like below and keep them up to date:

• Business Name
• Address
• Phone Number
• Web URL
• Logo
• Tagline
• Descriptions
• Social Media profiles
• Map Location
• Photo and Video links
• Business Categories
• and anything else that may appear on your online profiles

This is also especially important when your team members are creating and updating your online profiles for your business and do not know what they should add to your profiles. When your team can go to a central repository they do not have to find the information themselves or spend time verifying information with other staff members and can be far more accurate and efficient.

With the above measures in place you can:

1. Make it much easier to manage any of your listings in the future.
2. Manage staff transition by not having any of your online accounts associated with an individual.
3. Make it easy for future staff to manage your online presence.
4. Easily remove exiting staff from access to your online accounts.
5. Define a process for the management of future online accounts.

myPresences helps you manage and grow your online presence & reputation, try a free 14 day trial.