Why Google sees reviews on other websites as important For a long time we have all talked about the importance of collecting reviews and some people actually work hard in order to achieve these reviews but the burning question has always remained about where you should have such reviews placed and just how much attention does Google pay to these reviews.
Recently we noticed that all of a sudden when we did a Google search on one of our customers to just check on how things were looking from Google's perspective, we noticed that not only was Google showing us the overall review rating score and number of reviews left on the client's own My Business page but the search result was showing the same information on 3 other review sites!
All of a sudden the work put in to encourage customers to post reviews on the platform of their choice was paying real dividends. Customers are looking for assurances when they buy product or service from a business with whom they have no prior experience. The most common source for such assurances are customer reviews. Not testimonials posted on your website but reviews posted on various social media platforms or business portals such as TrueLocal, Yellow Pages etc.
Traditionally every website had their "Testimonials" page where they listed all these glowing recommendation from people who only had single letter surnames. The inherent problem with these testimonials is that;
Placing reviews overcomes the above concerns and weaknesses of testimonials pretty well in most cases. Sure there is always the possibility of bogus social profiles being used to post bogus reviews (yes there are some who do this still...) but it is a far better system than the testimonials of old.
We strongly suggest that business owners encourage reviews by their customers however, in order to do so you must ensure that you have a claimed listing on the relevant platform. What you will find that quite often you have a business listing on say TrueLocal but it has not been claimed by the owner. This is something you need to do - track down all the citations you have and be sure you have claimed ownership as claimed listings offer the greatest value to your SEO.
Secondly, you need to have a process for managing the reviews being posted. Remember, yu may not be aware that reviews are being posted on some of these sites as they don't need your permission to do so. Your ability to monitor such reviews immediately they are posted and to then manage the reviews themselves is most important.
If you would like further information on how to put yourself in control of what is being said about your business then talk to us and we can explain the options available to you. The best starting point is to call us or if it is more convenient complete your details with a brief comment as to what your reputation concerns are via our Contact Us form.
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Written by: Greg Tomkins
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