Yes, Google Reviews Matter for Local SEO because of all kinds of things you would have probably done if you were the marketing manager. They launched Google AdWords and Facebook campaigns, completed a massive website overhaul, but mostly they focused on SEO—organic keywords, keyword rankings, and content marketing.
SEO Isn’t always enough, they concluded that SEO wasn’t enough. The one thing that mattered just as much wasn’t a key priority—online reviews.
They analyzed their poor performing locations, a trend started to emerge. Poor customer reviews (less than 4.0/5.0 average score) and/or were lagging behind one of their nearby competitors. An average Google review of 4.7/5.0 with more than 50 reviews compared to their score of 3.9/5.0 with only 5 reviews.
Why your business should care about Google reviews?
Say you’re doing a search for Dallas Web Development Agency the first few search results always include paid search, followed by you guessed it, a Google Map shows the agencies in the area. As you can see in the example below, many agencies appear on the map, but only those with glowing high-rated reviews show up as part of the primary listing.
How Reviews Work?
Reviews is the power of social proof. People need reassurance and confirmation that their actions are the right ones.When people are thinking about buying a particular camera, seeing an average review rating of 4 stars, or reading positive reviews may provide the extra push they need. For local searches, if you see a restaurant with an average score of 4.6 from 465 reviews, like the Girl & the Goat above, then it looks like a safe choice. The bottom line is that they are used a lot and relied upon by many web users.
How to attract reviews?
To increase conversion rates and revenue, first need to focus on web design and offers, and overlook the power of customer reviews. There are many benefits of reviews, not only to your customers, but also to your merchandising and purchasing team. But attracting reviews is a challenge — even Amazon’s average sales-to-reviews ratio is 1300 to 1.
The benefits of customer reviews:
1. More content: Customer reviews reveal insights about the product that do not appear in the manufacturer’s description or even your own copywriting. This is very important in online shopping, as there is not a salesperson on hand to discuss the product.
2. Trust: Consumer surveys consistently show that people prefer shopping on sites that show customer reviews because it reduces their risk of purchasing a bad product. Emarketer found that consumer reviews are trusted nearly 12 times more than manufacturers’ descriptions. Consumers actively seek out sites that offer a wealth of reviews. 81% of consumers consider the availability of customer reviews to be “very important,” according to iPerceptions.
Even negative reviews create warm fuzzies about the merchant – it shows transparency and honesty. Research by Forrester has shown that after reading a negative review, 26% continue to shop for the product anyway.
3. Product discovery. You’ve heard of the “paradox of choice,” the more results you offer, the lower conversion. Sort by star rating is a powerful tool for shoppers to make informed decisions with minimal effort.
4. SEO. When reviews are added to a page, they use “customer speak” that other customers also type into search engine (including misspellings and specific problem/solutions, e.g. “socks good for diabetics.”) Make sure your review solution does not use frames that are not crawled by search engines.
5. Feedback. Reading customers’ reviews help you to understand what customers like/dislike about products and how they use them, to decide whether to restock items or discontinue products, and what to merchandise as featured products on home pages and in email campaigns (e.g “customer favorites”).6. Backup. If a product is really poorly made, reach out to your supplier and use customer reviews as evidence that the product is shoddy.
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