GOOGLE REVIEWS AND THEIR BENEFITS

Everyone knows about testimonials, however in the past it was limited to just putting a few on your website or brochure. Now a review can mean so much more, it can create backlinks to your website, improve search rankings, helps you on Google Maps, allow people to get directions and give people searching online more confidence about dealing with you.

Google reviews in particular are helpful as the star ratings people give you will show on both Google search results and Google Maps. This could put you in a much better position than your competitors. A nice factor with anything you do on Google is that it seems to get indexed much faster than from other sources in Googles search results.

One downside to having people review you is, if you receive bad reviews it can be quite damaging. This is where responding to reviews is important, good or bad, especially bad. Some reviews are unfair and it’s important to explain why, always in a friendly way. Nothing worse than reading disgruntled business owners answering disgruntled customers.

Another downside is for someone to write a review, they must have an account with the review site. In the case of Google, lots of people have a Gmail account which is a Google email service. The need to create an account may put some people off, but there’s plenty that do. In the restaurant and accommodation areas there are numerous sites and forums to post comments and reviews.

Backlinks, which are websites that have linked back to yours, are invaluable. It builds credibility with search websites, so having reviews that link to you can help boost your exposure and search result rankings.

It helps if you prompt customers to write reviews, put a link in the signature part of your email or have links on your website such as “Happy with our service? Why not write us a review?”. The Internet has truly given the “power to the people”, so why not make use of it.

So to take our own advice, if you like anything in this and other articles, why not write us a Google review at https://goo.gl/maps/ixNJzsX72mR2 - click on the write a review link on the bottom left.

To see the other articles visit www.awe.net.au/articles