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Where we really would be worried is if a competitor took the time to get articles published on authoritative sites by paying for links from journalists, exchanging links with prominent bloggers, or doing other things that go against Google’s guidelines. The problem though, is that initially, this type of link has the potential to actually INCREASE your rankings if not detected as unnatural by Google. Also, this type of link is hard to get! A negative SEO campaign of this nature would take an incredible amount of effort.

We also have a theory that would negate a lot of negative SEO attempts. (So sorry for the bad pun.). We think that it is possible that Google is only passing PageRank through sites with good E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trust). If this is true, then most links on the web, including the vast majority of negative SEO links are simply being ignored. Also, the only links that a competitor could place that would cause Google to distrust the site, would be ones that conversely could end up being fantastic links that have the potential to improve your rankings.We still think that this type of sneakiness is possible in some highly competitive, big money verticals. If you are noticing a large influx of links like this that really do look like sophisticated attempts to manipulate Google rankings, then, in some cases it may be a good idea to pre-emptively disavow those links. But be careful. You could do more harm than good!

Leverage content you’re already creating and posting in all the other places that customers find you.

Financial Services My number one tactic for reviews has always been to have an actual person ask for a review during key points in the customer journey. For example, an associate that helps someone open a checking account

Most home service businesses should not be displaying their address since they are a Service Area Business, but this doesn’t stop some from keeping their address up to rank in that city.  Google does tend to prioritize proximity in the home services industry, unfortunately. 

Reviews should definitely play a bigger factor than proximity for financial institutions.

With digital banking and the amount of trust we put into financial organizations, proximity isn’t a major factor when considering a financial service provider, but Google results don’t reflect that. 

Paragraph, table, and carousel featured snippets are typically the types that we see financial websites achieving most often.

I believe that featured snippets will become more and more regionally specific. If you do a search for “new water heater cost” you see a featured snippet for Home Advisor. If a company that is local to me published content around the cost and installation, why wouldn’t Google serve that snippet to me instead of what is shown nationally?

Review strategies should include offline tactics. Community outreach and involvement are crucial. I would argue that anyone who is consulting about online reputation management should focus on the company’s reputation offline as well.

provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review