Customer reviews are comments and opinions left by customers about their experiences with your business.
In the online space, a customer review can be left as a star rating (1 to 5 stars), a comment on your public profiles, such as social media channels, business directories, like Google Business, or your website.
In the offline space, a customer review can occur through a customer survey, questionnaire or a direct call to ask questions.
Reviews provide valuable insights on how your customers like and do not like your business. How to improve your services or possibly insight on items to remove or add onto your service offerings.
Today, Let’s talk about the online space and how reviews impact your Local SEO.
Local SEO and Reviews
Customer reviews on Google Business, Bing Business and social media channels are helpful for local SEO. Here’s five reasons.
Provide social proof
Positive customer reviews can serve as social proof and help build trust with potential customers who are considering using your business. Think about, when you are looking for a local restaurant in a new town, would you try the poorly rated 1 star restaurant or the one with 4 or more stars? The quality of the reviews also matters as well. There could be things, out of a restaurant’s control – such as an outdoor seating area that suddenly had a torrential rain fall.
Improve visibility
Positive reviews can help improve your search engine ranking, making it more likely that potential customers will find your business when they’re searching for products or services like yours. Social proof and reviews are one of the items used by search engines to display your business at the top.
Enhance reputation
Having a strong reputation online, including positive customer reviews, can be a major factor in attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. .
How to Gain and Manage Reviews
Ask for reviews
The easiest way to get reviews is to simply ask your satisfied customers to leave one for you. There are several ways to do this. You can ask directly in person, send out an e-mail, or include a link on your website or e-mail signature. This is a great action item for your virtual assistant to handle for you through your e-mail list.
Make it easy
You do not want your customer looking for a way to make a review. When asking on your website or newsletter, use a clear and direct link to the review site. A custom button on your website works great for this.
For clients and customers, who may not use social media much, consider providing instructions on how to leave a review. The goal is to make this easy and not have your customer stop in frustration.
Respond to reviews
How you respond to reviews, both the positive and negative reviews, is critical. This is your chance to shine on how you value your customers and how you attempt to resolve issues. You want to build trust and show high level of customer service.
Gaining and managing customer reviews on all platforms is one of the key components of Local SEO. This is one area, that you can outsource to a virtual assistant. Business directories, like Google Business, Bing Business, Apple maps, and YELP are platforms, that require monitoring, just like your social media channels.
