By BERNIE HARSEVOORT

Getting reviews from your customers has always been a beneficial exercise for business organization, only today its importance is even greater.

There are three main benefits of getting customer reviews:

  1. To acquire testimonials you tin utilize in marketing your business
  2. To better sympathise what you are doing right and/or wrong as a business
  3. To improve the visibility of your business on Google.

In regards to the latter, the importance of accumulating 18-carat and honest reviews of your services online is ever increasing. Although yous may accept all the other elements of your local search strategy covered, the power of review data should not be underestimated.

First, the ability of the customer testimonial cannot exist underestimated in its influence on other potential customers. You can tell me you are nice, and I may believe you. Nonetheless, if an unbiased third political party tells me you are nice, I'd be much more inclined to believe it. In fact, one recent report suggests that customer reviews are the most powerful purchase influence. Another study found that 88% of consumers consult reviews before making a buy, and yet another study indicated that 63% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a site that has customer reviews.

One hesitation businesses have in soliciting online reviews is the fearfulness of receiving a bad review. However, receiving the odd bad review is not necessarily a bad thing. Actively replying to bad reviews and looking to resolve a situation illustrates to your new potential customers that you care near your clients. A study actually plant that bad reviews can increase conversion by 67%.

So, why are testimonials and then important in an SEO strategy? In Google's pursuit to deliver the most relevant and beneficial results for local searches, they non only want to know what your business does but how your business is perceived. They do this, in big part, by seeing how many reviews you have and what your average customer rating is. Desire proof? The tour illustrating the features of the new Google Maps states outright that the "highest-rated" businesses near you will be returned when you search with local intent. Google also recently updated its map search layout to show ratings and reviews much more prominently. Additionally, with Google, content is king;  adding user-generated content on your site or your Google plus folio is a peachy manner to add new, fresh, and unique content.

The quality and quantity of reviews on Google is one of the most important ranking factors for local SEO. And, when a person scans the search results for a local product or service in Google, the business organization listings that include customer reviews present greater credibility and, naturally, receive more clicks. If your search result listing shows a iv.5-star rating with 18 reviews (and your competitor listings evidence less), that's strong social proof that your product or service is trustworthy.

Another fact to be conscious of is that, in today'south day and age, your clients will review your products or services whether yous want it or non. Fifty-fifty if reviews are not posted to your site, in that location are numerous websites such as Yelp, Trip Advisor, and social media sites where reviews will appear. To maximize the effect of your reviews, and to maintain as much control over them as you can, prompting your customers to go out reviews about your company on your Google+ Local page should be your first priority.

Now that we've established the importance of customer reviews, specifically online reviews, how practise yous get your customers to write reviews for your business?

Start, and most chiefly, have great customer service. Happy customers mean good ratings and reviews. Secondly, you demand to have an agile strategy in place to encourage reviews rather than waiting for it to happen naturally. An easy way to start collecting online reviews is to enquire family and friends to review your business concern. Next, put a strategy in place for request both existing and new customers following their purchase; the more immediately this is washed, the more likely yous are to review a review from them. And, make information technology equally easy as possible for your customers to get out a review, including an obvious link right off your own website to leave a review.

1 warning – never pay for reviews. That includes offering product incentives in exchange for reviews (eg. free pizza slice for showing a completed review). While information technology may offer the all-time incentive for soliciting reviews, information technology is against Google'due south terms of service. If you are found out, it will profoundly harm your Google ranking.

How easy information technology is for your customers to leave reviews well-nigh your company? At Rocket Digital, nosotros can help you lot found and execute an constructive strategy for encouraging more client reviews to greatly benefit your business concern, especially as office of an overall SEO strategy.