Reviews: more important by the day

 

Although they weren’t part of the initial release of Google Maps, reviews have been a fixture on Google’s local properties for over fifteen years. The reason is obvious: consumers love reviews.

A considerable amount of consumers use reviews to evaluate local businesses. Many of them trust reviews just as much as a personal recommendation! So it’s no wonder that Google features them so prominently.

It stands to reason that if consumers love reviews so much, Google’s ranking algorithm does too. Businesses with robust review profiles on Google – and beyond – tend to be rewarded with higher rankings.

Reviews create a virtuous cycle. More reviews lead to better visibility, which leads to more customers, which results in more reviews. Simply gathering and encouraging customer reviews is one of the most sustainable marketing techniques your business can engage in.

How Google evaluates reviews

Only the engineers know, but local search experts have theorized that Google primarily evaluates reviews across the attributes below for years. But what are they looking for?

Volume

Google designed its entire local algorithm to represent the offline world online in the most accurate way possible. In Google’s ideal world, popular businesses rank near the top of search results. Less popular businesses rank further down. Reviews are one of the easiest ways for Google to assess popularity.

All other factors being equal, popular businesses tend to serve more customers than less popular ones. But remember, Google can only “see” what’s represented online. So if your customers leave reviews of your business at a higher rate than your competitors’ customers, your business will appear more popular and stand a good chance at outranking the competition.

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