Online Reviews and SEO

Did you know your company’s online reviews or lack of online reviews can affect where your business ranks on search engines? How your business is reviewed by online users on Google, social media and online directories can have a major impact on how people are finding your website. In fact according to MOZ’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, online reviews are thought to make up 10% of how Google and other search engines decide to rank search results.

So Why Does Google and Other Major Search Engines Care if Your Company’s Website Has Positive Reviews?

Because users care about positive reviews. This is backed up by a significant statistics found by Dimensional Research in a survey they conducted, that found out that 90% of consumers say that online reviews influence their buying decisions. If reviews matter this much to users then Google has decided it is going to give an advantage to sites with good reviews on their rankings pages and penalize businesses with bad reviews.

It is not just bad reviews that can affect your website’s SEO, reviews that are out of date can give users the impression that your business is not active. Also a complete and utter absence of reviews can have a negative effect. This is actually a pretty simple concept, if your competitors are gathering positive online reviews they in turn are then receiving SEO benefits from search engines. If your business is not gathering any online reviews then your website is not receiving any of the SEO benefits that come with it. This means if your competitor is receiving positive reviews, their website is receiving an edge that your website does not have, and they are most likely ranking ahead of you on search results pages.

My Business Has Bad or No Online Reviews

If your company is currently suffering from bad reviews or a complete absence of reviews there is still hope to reverse any SEO damage that has been done. All you have to do is start actively engaging customers to leave positive online reviews for your business. There are several ways to do this and the whole process is called reputation management.

What is Reputation Management?

You may have heard of something called reputation management but did not know what it actually is. Reputation management is when various strategies are deployed to make sure your customers are positively reviewing your business online. This can include engaging customers in-store, developing email campaigns and various different marketing automations. A great way to determine if your business is in need of reputation management services is by conducting an analysis of what is being said about your business across different online sources such as Google reviews, social media websites and online directories.

Ask for Reviews

This is the simplest and most effective way of gathering more positive online reviews. If you have a positive interaction with a customer ask them to go online and leave you a review. Just asking someone can be the difference between a happy customer and a happy customer that lets other users online know why. If you are asking for online reviews it is also best practice to tell your customer exactly how to leave a review for you online. Having a simple handout or sending an email that explains how to leave a Google review for your business can go a long way.

Trust the Experts

Of course there are more complex strategies to increase your company’s positive online reviews, and the experts at Konstruct Interactive know how to execute them. We have experience engaging customers through in-store initiatives, email campaigns and marketing automations. We also can improve your online reputation on various sources such as Google, social media and online directories. Our brilliant SEO team can work with your business to maximize the positive online reviews your business receives. For more information on how our experienced SEO team can help your business just give us a call at (587) 331-6223.