What Are Google Reviews?
Google reviews are a way for customers to leave feedback about their experience with your business. Reviews can include the customer’s opinions on their overall experience, how they were treated by you and your staff, and if they recommend your services to others.
Here are 5 reasons you need to be collecting Google reviews as a small business:
1. Google reviews are a ranking factor
As you may have heard, Google reviews are a ranking factor. This means that they have the potential to boost your site’s SEO and increase click-through rates by giving people more information about your business.
For example, if someone searches for “family dentistry,” then sees that one dentist has more positive reviews than another, they will likely choose the higher-rated dentist. It’s also worth noting that Google doesn’t display all of your reviews on its SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for each keyword; it chooses which ones to show based on their quality and relevancy as well as how recent they are (the fresher they are, the better).
Google has taken this into consideration when ranking local businesses in search results. According to research published by Moz, if you’re not actively managing your Google My Business listings, you could be losing out on up to 73% of potential customers who are looking for a business like yours online.
2. Getting more Google reviews helps you compete in your local marketplace
The most obvious reason for why you should be collecting Google reviews is the very simple, yet extremely lucrative, benefit of the increased visibility your prospective customers will get of the service you’re providing.
If you have lots of really positive Google reviews, you’ll not only rank higher than your competitors, you’ll also stand out from them if they have less/worse reviews. Reviews are one of the most important elements customers look at when they find your business online, so having even more of them can help to boost your exposure, credibility, reputation and eventually sales!
- More reviews = more exposure.
- More reviews = more credibility.
- More reviews = more trust and confidence in your business to potential customers.
3. Google reviews help small businesses gain trust
Building trust is vital to small businesses. In fact, in a recent study done by BrightLocal, they found that 71% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and that 78% of consumers read online reviews before buying.
Reviews help build trust because they show current, or past, customers how well you’re able to meet their needs and provide them with an experience worth writing about (or singing about). They also come with another important benefit: the ability for users to give feedback directly through the review system itself! This gives them the opportunity to voice any concerns without having to contact anyone at all.
4. Responding to Google reviews builds credibility and boosts SEO
When a customer leaves a review on Google, you have the option of responding to it. This is an opportunity to build trust and credibility with potential customers, as well as improve your brand reputation. Responding to reviews shows potential customers that you care about their concerns and are willing to go above and beyond to solve any problems they may have had with your business or product.
Responding to reviews helps boost SEO—in fact, Google uses the amount of positive and negative responses when calculating how relevant certain terms are for specific products or services, so that users receive more relevant search results (for example, if there are lots of negative reviews for “best locksmith near me”, but only one positive one, then it probably wouldn’t show up high on Google Search Results).
5. Asking for feedback helps you get more reviews
The best way to get more Google reviews is to ask for them. You can do that directly on your website, or on social media posts. If you have an email list of customers, you can also send out an invitation for them to leave a review about their experience with your business.
Asking your customers for feedback is a great way to get more reviews. When you ask a customer for feedback, they feel like they’re doing a good deed and it makes them think about the service or product in question even more.
In general, customers are happy when asked for feedback because it shows that you care about what they think, as well as how well your business is doing overall (especially if there are any problems).
How Can I Manage My Google Reviews?
As you can see, there are several elements of the review that you can choose to respond to. Here are some tips on how you should be responding:
- Respond promptly. This means within 24 hours of receiving a review or comment. If it takes longer than this, make sure you have a very good reason for the delay and let your customers know in advance that they won’t hear from you until later in the week or month.
- Respond professionally and politely when possible.
- Don’t get into arguments with people about their opinions; just stick to addressing factual inaccuracies in the reviews instead of engaging with angry customers over what they say about your business online!
- Responding works best when personalising responses so they feel more authentic and less robotic – use first names when possible! It’s important not only because it helps build rapport between companies/people involved, but also because it makes reading reviews much more enjoyable since there isn’t as much dead space between paragraphs or sentences (which happens frequently when there aren’t any personal touches like this added).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the role of Google reviews in search engine optimisation is only increasing. As such, small businesses must embrace this as a way to grow their business. By doing this, they can stay competitive and keep up with their competitors in their local marketplace.