Online customer reviews Vis-à-Vis local SEO – The collaboration unveiled

Why Online Customer Reviews are Significant for Local SEO

What users love is also admired by the Google. Users are more interested to see and read customer reviews before actually making any purchasing decision. You usually optimize your website and online presence for Google, and Google makes perfect your website for your users. Let’s have an insight what other things you must consider about SEO and customer reviews:

• Roster of Reviews – How many customer reviews you got is of the utmost importance. Google is more interested in viewing a good chunk of reviews, which could ideally be ten to twenty. It is important that you should get a decent amount of reviews but not too much that can clutter your website.
• Keywords Optimization – In case you happen to get reviews that contain your product name and/or keywords, it becomes dear to Google bots and they are more prone to find your site relevant and can place your website in top place. Of course, keywords are necessary for better SEO in all strategies and aspects of your online presence, and customer reviews can play a role in making it possible.
• Mobility Presence – Mobile is being used by the majority of the users and they all seek reviews when looking for a local business for purchasing products or services. Hence it becomes more admirable by the Google if it gets reviews in collaboration with responsive or mobile-friendly websites. This will ultimately drive more traffic thus ranking your business in top position.
• Competition – If your competitors have many customer reviews on their websites, they will surely get an edge over others in the local SERP. You must not lose hope and keep striving for getting reviews of quality because your competitors got the reviews first cannot make them will the game. You can have sufficient time to earn reviews with a strategy in place and have time to outrank your competitors.
• Ratings Works- It is necessary to understand that the ratings that are obvious from the reviews matters but placing and displaying only perfect reviews are not all you should rely on to make it perfect. You can also put some not so perfect reviews on your website to make it more reliable and genuine. Because it is not always the best that your business will get. Google does look for the quality but it cannot neglect the quantity too.

How to get more customer reviews for your business

It is not that difficult to acquire quality and quantity of customer reviews in the first place. It is just a matter of right strategy and time you can spare to execute it. Here are some tips and tricks that matter to get more reviews for your business:

• Be Fast – You must be quick to seek people for the reviews. You must not wait for customers to do it themselves. Ask your customer for the feedback and review right away. It will help get it fast. Make it a point to ask your customers to leave reviews right after they interact or make any purchase. You may lure them by offering incentives, like discounts on further purchases, in exchange for their online reviews. This will actually work most of the times.
• Make it Easy – Do not make the review process complicated by getting it through complex forms or procedure. You can ask them when they are before you and about to leave your business. If you cannot do this, you may also send a survey form or email with a link to your Facebook or Google page that can help your customers to leave their reviews.
• Follow Up – Keep following up for getting a review often brings results. You can send a follow-up email after a lapse of three or four days seeking feedback on their experience with your business.

Keep it in mind that awesome reviews are the result of great service / products. Do not expect a great review out of your users by offering not that good service and never attempt to fake it. If your customers are not ready to give a positive review, go back and make constructive changes in your service or you can to also request to get feedback on how to improve your services and to know what went wrong. It will not only help you for a better local SEO, but it will also enable your business to perform better and generate the much-needed users’ base to be successful.

How online review help consumers?

Prior to coming to this point how consumers use online reviews for their benefit and how it can influence their decision making, let’s understand how it works while purchasing any desired products and services?

It is quite obvious that if someone has started searching for reviews of something, they are actually looking for the right business to purchase the product. The most critical aspect of this process is the time gap between reviewing a feedback and making a decision. This time is quite short which may or may not end with a purchase. This is where you can influence your customers by the reputation that you enjoy.

Do you know, as per a survey there are more than 80% users who read reviews online before actually making a purchase? More than 65% of the customers read nearly 6 reviews or less to make a final decision of purchasing.

Interestingly 90% of the customers said that the positive reviews can make them buy the product and 85% said that negative reviews influenced their decisions.

How to maintain online reputation

You may often get negative reviews! How to manage it? Before actually working on it, you must set up Google Alerts to get information every time you receive a review so you can take manage your online reputation management better.

Whenever you receive a negative review, do not panic by shooting up your blood pressure. You should contact the review platform and request if they can pull down the review. It may not be always possible. Better take a deep breath and try to grasp it as a negative online review like you might have observed any general criticism.

Consider negative review as a communication where you need to simmer down the situation, and consider whatever the dissatisfaction was. This will help you end with highlighting the positive ones whenever possible.

Just do not forget that negative reviews are the process of internal conversation and a reminder for improvement. It helps you getting to the depth of pitfalls in your existing business and products.

Hopefully, by now you’ve gotten a better insight on how your users use online reviews and how to get reviews along with how it can influence consumer decisions. So, it’s time start thinking about implementing all the above-listed tricks to initiate your online reputation management more seriously. You might have also understood how right reputation can help promote local SEO through online reviews!