Did you know that 90% of customers read your reviews before visiting your business? Among those, reviews on Google My Business are some of the most trusted.
Additionally, 85% of customers don’t trust reviews that are more than three months old and 40% of people only look at reviews from the past two weeks.
It almost goes without saying that having a thoughtful strategy to boost your Google My Business reviews is integral to your brand reputation, the growth of your company and your local ranking.
At Digital Shift, we understand it can feel overwhelming to create a strategy that not only gives your business more reviews, but more positive reviews. That’s why we put together this blog post, so you can learn how to grow your Google My Business reviews—while growing your business as well.
Why You Need to Have a Google Reviews Strategy
Google My Business reviews have the power to impact your business on multiple levels. Before we dive into how to increase reviews through implementing a thoughtful strategy, it’s important to understand why you need a strategy in the first place.
Convert More Leads into Customers
We already know that the vast majority of prospects are reading your reviews before visiting your business. But why are Google My Business reviews so powerful?
Reviews act as social proof, meaning that Andorra Email List 24290 Contact Leads people are more likely to trust the experiences of others who have already used your service. The more favourable, recent, in-depth and plentiful your reviews are, the more trust you build with potential clients. The more credibility you create with prospects, the more clicks your website will receive.
Improve Website Ranking
Not only are Google My Business reviews integral to converting more leads into customers, but the quality and quantity of reviews on Google is one of the most important ranking factors for local SEO— in fact, customer reviews impact 9% of Google’s search algorithm.
Online customer reviews signal to search engines that your company is trustworthy—which is important to search engines and consumers alike. After all, Google’s purpose is to answer queries as accurately as possible. It follows that the more trusted your site is, the more likely the search engine will rank it as useful to consumers.
Additionally, your business is more likely to be noticed by Google if you have a higher quantity, quality, and diversity of reviews.
What to Avoid
There are a couple of review-garnering tactics that go against Google’s terms of service and that should be avoided at all costs—if you breach the terms of service, it will irreparably harm your website’s ranking.
Paying for Reviews
Google states directly on its Google My Business review guidelines: “Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. (For example, business owners shouldn’t offer incentives to customers in exchange for reviews.)”
Paying for reviews or offering incentives like discounts for your services skews the validity of your reviews. If Google finds out what you’ve done, your business will be deemed as less trustworthy and your ranking will be negatively impacted.
Review-Gating
Review-Gating is when a business “cherry picks” customers to provide Google My Business reviews. It works in two steps. First, a business will send customers a feedback form—via email, text, landing page or social media. Then customers are either asked to post their review on Google (if the review was positive) or to share their feedback privately (if the review was negative).
While this practice was often used by businesses in the past, it goes against Google’s updated guidelines. Once again, a lack of transparency can cause negative impacts on your business’ rankings should Google find out you’re review-gating.
Now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, let’s move-on to our strategies for increasing your Google My Business reviews.
1. Provide Outstanding Customer Services
The most organic way to get positive Google My Business reviews is through providing truly excellent customer service. Through consistent service that puts your customers at the centre of your business, your clients will feel more compelled to leave your business a genuine, positive review.
