Are Google Reviews Important?
Are Google Reviews Important?
In today’s digital age, how would you feel as a small business if you found out that 90% of customers say that their buying decisions are influenced by online Google reviews?
I’d imagine that you’d perk up and either pat yourself on the back if your business already has a strategy in place for acquiring reviews and managing your online reputation, or you’d scratch your head and think ‘snap, I better get on this.’
Regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, online reviews are important for a number of reasons, and have major implications through their ability to affect:
- Your Search Engine Rankings (SERPS)
- Which search results actually gets clicked on
- Consumers purchasing your product or service
For the majority of businesses, the first point of contact between them and a customer is a Google review. People will choose to be a customer of a business based on positive reviews, and decide to avoid a company altogether because of negative ones. Today, the vast majority of people get their information from the internet, and as a result rely on services such as Google Reviews and Yelp as a way to decide where to take their business. For small companies, it has never been more important to have positive reviews on these services than ever before.
At A Nerd’s World we put an emphasis on customer satisfaction and are proud of our rating on Google reviews. It brings me a feeling of accomplishment to see that a customer is happy with our work. We always make an effort to do the best work possible, and it is incredibly meaningful when a customer makes a note of this and recommends someone else to use our service.
As a small business owner, if you haven’t already, I would strongly recommend that you register your business on Google’s ‘My Business’. This will allow you to put your location, hours-of-operation, and contact information. It is incredibly important for you to focus on the way your business is viewed in the public eye. If someone were to search for your business on Google, the first thing they would see is reviews. One way you can improve your online review presence is incentives for patrons of your business to review you online. If you are a coffee shop, perhaps you should offer a free latte for anyone who leaves you a review. You should set goals for yourself every week and try to achieve them, two reviews a week may be a reasonable goal for your business.
There is complete anonymity in online reviews, that means there is a real possibility that competitors will leave fake reviews to try to hurt your business. It is definitely frustrating to have someone post a fake review, lying about your company, but it is an unfortunate result of the high level of accessibility. No-one is immune from this — Even we’ve had a fake review, but it is just as important to respond to the good reviews as it is to respond to the bad ones. There is not much that can be done other than responding to the claims the person wrote, but in most cases the damage has already been done to your rating. My advice to businesses who’ve received fake reviews would be to continue to get more reviews to reduce the effect of the fake review has on your average rating and not to spend too much time worrying about it.
Since the word is out that we’ve helped hundreds of businesses achieve high-levels of Toronto SEO success, our referrals are higher than ever in 2016. We choose the clients we work with carefully based on a reasonable criteria for selection. We only work with a limited amount of clients at any given time to ensure maximum attention to detail and your company’s ultimate success.
If you would like to speak with me personally about the incredible results we can get for you, then call (647) 726-2020 or email nerd@anerdsworld.com today!
Chris A. Hughes