I asked the best SEO Company Near me how to get Google reviews and in this article, we’ll discuss what they told me about why Google reviews are important, and some ideas how to get them.
Why Google Reviews are important?
Social Proof
For this article, we are talking about Google reviews in particular, but the big four online reviews come from Google, Yelp, Amazon and Facebook. Google is the king, but you should also consider watching your online reputation on those other platforms as well. Your Google reviews are crucial aspects of a business. Before investing money in a product or service, customers like to see if they’re investing in the right place, and reviews play a vital role in that process. According to a recent survey, 90% of respondents said that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions, while 86% said buying decisions were affected by negative online reviews. (Zendesk, 2020). Furthermore, 97% of the consuming public read reviews online to search for local businesses, and 12% do so daily. (Anderson, 2020). In other words, getting positive online reviews is important.
This is because online reviews act as something called “Social proof”. Social proof is when people, just like you and me, trust and believe the opinions of others so much that we copy their actions. Fully 90% of people look for social proof before they visit a business or purchase a product. In a recent study, 84% of participants trusted online reviews as much as a recommendation from a trusted friend. We want to read the review on the electric lawnmower to see what others thought of the performance, how long the battery lasted, etc.
One of the best ways to get social proof is from potential clients reading the Google Reviews that appear on the search engine results page (SERP) of your business. Right under the name of the business, it will give you the average rating of all the reviews and in parenthesis, the total number of reviews.
REviews can build trust
Google reviews help build trust in your company because they cannot be edited or manipulated by the brand. This builds trust because the people see these views as impartial, coming from people with nothing to gain, which makes these reviews trustworthy.
Good for SEO
Good reviews make it easier for people to find you in a search, especially ones that have the word “best” in the search query. For example, if I was searching on google for “The best web development company near me”, the only ones that will show up are ones that have an average 4+ rating on their Google Review! Also, don’t rest on your laurels. Consumers most trust reviews that are less than three months old. As a matter of fact, 85% of consumers think that online reviews older than 3 months are not relevant, and 40% care only about reviews that are 2 weeks old. (Andersonl, 2020).
What we do to get Google Reviews
To get Google Reviews, we do a couple of things on a consistent basis. First of all, as soon as a project is completed, we send a thank you email to the client. In that email is a link to our Google Review page. All the customer has to do is click on the link and they are are at the correct page to leave a review. This is an important step. we flatten the road and make it very easy for a client to give us a review. One click!
Once we get a review, we always respond to them personally, and write something positive about their business in return.
There is a growing trend to incentivize getting reviews. There are business that offer incentives such as discounts, products or gift cards. This can be a slippery slope, so if you are thinking about incentivizing, proceed with caution. Detractors of this practice claim that incentivizing may lead to biased or fake reviews, which can hurt the companies reputation in the long term.
While it is not illegal to offer incentives, the FTC has enough concern about the practice that they have issued
some guidelines, including these helpful rules of thumb for incentivizing to get reviews:
- Don’t ask for reviews from people who haven’t used or experienced the product or service.
- Don’t ask your staff to write reviews of your business, at least not without ensuring that they disclose in their review that you employ them and asked them to write it.
- Don’t ask for reviews only from customers you think will leave positive ones.
- Don’t ask family and friends for reviews, at least not without ensuring that they disclose their personal connection in the reviews.
- If you offer an incentive for a review, don’t condition it, explicitly or implicitly, on the review being positive. Even without that condition, the review should disclose the incentive, because its offer may introduce bias or change the weight and credibility that readers give the review
Customer service
Just remember, there is simply no substitute for quality. Getting positive reviews is a natural byproduct of excellent customer service and a quality product. To keep our reputation as best SEO company near me, we work hard and pride ourselves at 212 creative in providing unparalleled customer service. We really do. We respond to customers 7 days a week, sometimes far into the night for our international clients,. We keep them in the loop via email as to the stages of their project, and are always available via email, phone, or text.
The owners meet regularly to discuss what we can do to improve as a company, and to share anecdotes of how we went above and beyond. We do that because that is part of the fabric of what we believe as a company. Unparalleled customer service is part of our mission and vision. That is why we have all 5 star reviews, and over 65% of our current projects are from repeat clients. It pays to walk the talk and really care about your clients. We are not bragging, we are just saying we are walking the talk. Give everything you have to every client, every project, and the good reviews will come.
Make it easy for your clients to leave reviews, and walk the talk and provide excellent customer service. It’s as simple as that! If you are looking for what we proudly think of as the best SEO company near me, check out our SEO plans at 212creative.com so we can start getting your phone ringing off of the hook! Call us. Let’s begin.
References
Anderson, M. (2020, September 28). How online reviews impact trust and landing page conversion.
Dimensional Research, & Zendesk. (2020, October 6). What is the impact of customer service on lifetime customer value?
