- So, Just How Does Google Reviews Impact Rankings?
- So, Just How Does Google Reviews Impact Rankings?
Google reviews are both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, they are simply amazing for engagement, and for helping to sway potential buyers to actually make that purchase that they have been thinking of, while on the other hand, they can open up a channel for abuse.
As such, many companies forgot the use of a Google business account, the kind that allows Google reviews, but by doing so, they are actually missing out on a huge opportunity, especially if they are running a local SEO campaign.
What is local SEO?
Defined as SEO which is designed to reach a local community, such as a suburb or a town, rather than a province or the entire country, local SEO is one of the most effective and useful forms of SEO that you can invest in. With local SEO, you can quite instantly reach the very people who are going to help you grow your company, by growing your internet exposure.
Local SEO can also often be a more personalised form of marketing, as you are almost certainly going to be forming relationships with your customers, or perhaps because you are a local business, you might actually know the people who end up becoming your biggest supporters.
Do Google reviews affect rankings in your SEO campaign?
When Google recently stated that they do in fact take Google reviews into consideration when ranking websites, SEO practitioners the world over breathed a justified sigh of relief.
Google just about never gives away clues as to what works for SEO and what doesn’t. So when they confirmed suspicions, SEO companies could finally, safely, include this ranking factor when talking to clients.
Since we now know that the reviews are important, the next thing to figure out is just how important these reviews can be.
In research done by the Local Search Ranking Factors survey, Google reviews are considered to be the 5th most important factor that determines just where a website is going to sit on the results page.
This is a huge discovery, considering that the importance of reviews has increased by 20% each year. When you think about it, the importance of reviews is quite natural, considering just how many customers will use these reviews to make an informed buying decision.
But reviews are about so much more than their ability to encourage buyers.
Google reviews are closely linked to Google Maps and when you have a well optimised Google review page, it can boost the company’s visibility and thus improve page rankings.
To give the site that boosts, Google checks out the number of reviews, the quality, how often the company gets a review, and the age of the reviews.
When a business is consistently receiving a high number of 5-star reviews, the search engine is going to consider that company an authority, and place that people want to be able to easily find online.
High star ratings are also going to be more trusted because if a company can rake in this many good reviews, it must be doing something right.
Google rates content as the most important thing for search engines.
And when new content is constantly added, Google will give the site more preference. But the downside of any content strategy is that it is incredibly difficult to keep the content flowing, especially since you need to be on point every time.
Having user-generated content can be greatly beneficial, firstly because it is new and fresh, and secondly because it is not promotional material coming from the company.
While Google has no problem with promotional content, web users who see unique reviews from other buyers often trust those reviews more than generic content that they know is being used to sway them. Remember, customers are really savvy these days and they like to have another perspective before they buy.
In a nutshell, Google pays a lot of attention to what others are saying about the company and not just what the company says about itself.
We’ve already said that the more reviews and the higher the ratings of the reviews, the more likely the website is to rank higher up on a search engine.
But while Google likes the unique content on reviews and while the search engine values those good reviews, there is another reason why Google reviews boost rankings, and it all comes down to keywords.
Most Google reviews often feature keywords that are either exact matches to those used on the website or are closely related. And when people are expressing their opinions they also tend to use long-tail keywords in their reviews, which further helps the SEO campaign to grow.
With the inclusion of keywords, when someone Google’s a keyword even slightly related to the company, the user is going to see the Google Business pages pop up first. This will help any company on the web and naturally, once the user sees the reviews, they could well be pulled in by the information they see, causing them to head over to the website.
How do we know reviews matter?
Customer reviews are far from the first thing to come to mind when you think about SEO. After all, most SEO work is done on the actual website or through backlinking, neither of which come close to the reviews that you will collect on your Google Business profile.
But today we know for certain that reviews matter, and, before Google confirmed the importance of a review for SEO, we knew it mattered thanks to a few researchers keeping a close eye on reviews.
A few years back, Google went after anonymous reviews. Being a search engine dedicated to providing clients with an authentic, genuine experience when they are looking for a new company to support, Google went out of its way to give preference to anyone who is committed to providing that highly valued experience.
To achieve this goal, Google started removing any reviews which were posted by people who chose to stay anonymous. When these reviews were removed, researchers noted that the website would start to slip off of its position and this clearly meant that reviews mattered to SEO.
And it is not just local SEO that can benefit from being reviewed.
If you have no physical shop presence, you could benefit in the same way, as the moment your keyword is searched for, as long as you have a Google Business page, you stand a chance of being seen far sooner than if you didn’t have such a page.
How can businesses manage their online reviews?
If your business is well established and you are giving your clients amazing service, or really fantastic products, then you can probably get by with just relying on the reviews that you get. Often, these reviews will come in with no need to do anything from your side, which is a huge plus.
If you are not having luck this way, then you need to look at the various options that you have at your disposal. There are many ways that you can naturally generate reviews, and one of the easiest ways is to just remind people to leave one.
There are various tools out there that you can use to pull your reviews from your Google page to your website. Seeing the reviews on your website can be a trust signal for those who are looking at your products and/or services, and trying to decide if they should support you. And it helps to have the reviews on constant display when you are trying to remind people to support you by leaving a review of their own.
Respond to reviews
It is not enough to have reviews displayed on your Google account. You should also make sure that you respond to the reviews, both good and bad. By doing so, you are showing your customers that you are willing to put in the effort to engage with them, while it also shows customers that there is an actual person behind the company they are reviewing.
Engaging with reviews is also great for SEO because it shows the search engine that you are trustworthy and willing to be a friendly face.
Responding to your reviews can also help greatly with customer retention. When you have worked so hard to find people to support your company and when you have attracted so many reviews, you should want to do as much as possible to make sure that those customers come back to you in the future, rather than go to one of your competitors.
If you decide not to reply to reviews you can stand to lose as much as 15% of your customers, so it is so important to make sure that you change the way that you understand and approach your reviews. This form of communication is no longer a one-way street, so open the channel and be more engaging.
No matter what type of SEO strategy you are running, it is so important that you include reviews in your approach to online marketing.
