Will obtaining more business reviews help our businesses SEO?

Will obtaining more business reviews help our businesses SEO?

Introduction

As most business owners are aware, there are quite literally hundreds of things that you can do to improve a company’s SEO.

That’s to say a business could instruct an seo agency to build backlinks, or to write content marketing for example.

Yet a lot of this can seem quite complicated to some business owners, yet with that said, all business owners will agree on one thing, and that is positive business reviews can go some way to helping a business.

After all, within most business sectors the levels of competition are now often fierce. This means that digital marketing businesses will be constantly looking to gain an edge over the competitors.

One way an advantage can be formed is to have tons of glowing business reviews. Yet, with that said, there is a right way about going about obtaining business reviews, and there’s a wrong way.

So, grab yourself a cup of coffee, and have a read over this rather informative article, and yes you will be all the wiser.

Why are Google My Business reviews so important?

If you’ve ever tried looking for a local business, you will spot that normally there will be three businesses listed, and that’s just above a map.

To keep things simple us SEO’s refer to these as being “Map Listings”, yet sometimes they are also referred to as Google My Business listings.

Now if your businesses is ranked among the other businesses listed, then this can be a great opportunity to obtain more customers. The reason being is this, the map listings appear above the organic business listings.

This just simply means that if your business is listed in the map listings, well your business will be nearer the top. This can mean more clicks, and more people visiting your company’s website.

Now to get to the point, one of the way’s that you can optimise your businesses Google My Business listing would be to obtain real customer reviews.

Plus, there’s other major benefits as well, for example, a listing that has loads of positive reviews, will most likely attract more clicks, meaning the CTR will be higher.

For those that do not know, CTR stands for click through rate, its something that your seo agency should be working on to improve.

 

So, are you saying that business reviews are a ranking factor?

Yes, as an agency we believe they are. With that said, no one except Google knows how the algorithm actually works.

This means all digital marketing agencies have to use their experience in order to work out which seo methods bring the best return for their clients.

We believe that positive business reviews, that are genuine, and that are left on a Google My Business account can have a bearing on where a business is ranked.

But, please note how we state the word “genuine”- that’s because so many businesses have written reviews themselves, only to find that this can get their business removed from the local business listings.

The reason being is Google’s algorithm, and the other search engines, are able to detect when a marketing agency or a person is trying to fool the algorithm. This means that it’s really important that business reviews are only left by real customers.

How should our business be requesting that our customers leave a review?

If you run a local business, then quite often customers will be touch via e-mail, or over the phone to state that they have received a great service.

Now, for some businesses an opportunity is lost at this point, reason being is it is all to easy to reply, and thank the customer for their business, and that you are pleased they are happy with the service.

Yet, to really make the most out of the opportunity, why not ask if the customer would be willing to leave a business review? Make it easy for them, write detailed instructions of how to do this, and then paste a link to your businesses Google My Business account.

This is a great way of improving your businesses seo.

We wont fake business reviews help our business?

Sometimes a business owner will want to improve their local seo themselves, so in an effort to do so, they may well write the business reviews themselves.

Thinking that they are saving time, and helping their to achieve their marketing goals, they may write one or many business reviews.

However, our digital marketing agency, as well as many other leading agencies would say this, that fake business reviews will damage your businesses seo.

The reason being is that Google’s algorithm is really clever, and if a marketing agency, or a business tries to fool the algorithm, well its more than likely to end up with a penalty being dished out.

Now a penalty is no laughing matter neither, and the reason being is that a business could see its website removed altogether.

How we can help

No matter if your business requires help with its local seo, or its link building, we can help. We offer cost effective solutions, why not give us a ring?