Improving SEO through Customer Reviews

People always say how important it is to encourage customer reviews about your business, and they are right. Businesses have benefited from word-of-mouth marketing for years. Consumers trust reviews because they are reading them through the trusting words of their peers, which creates an enormous amount of value for your business. But did you know customer reviews can actually help improve your SEO?

Customer reviews can help improve your SEO in more ways than one. Let’s focus specifically on your Google+ Local page (formerly known as Google Place Page) for today. Google treats search results for Local pages the same way it treats organic search results, which means that Google will always display the most relevant content first. Think of Google+ Local as a prioritized listing of Google’s best recommendations for you. Google displays the pages in order of importance, and thanks to its new algorithm, reviews play a huge part in that.

Customers have the ability to describe your business in a way that you may have never thought of. When customers describe your business through online reviews they are creating authentic content, which means they are generating keywords to describe their experience. This helps Google be able to prioritize listings based on keywords provided by your customers.

It’s important to encourage customer reviews on your Google+ Local page, but it’s not realistic to assume all of the ratings will be 5-star ratings. As a small business owner, you have the opportunity to connect with each of your customers, so most of the reviews will be good. But what should you do if you get a few bad reviews? Respond! In fact, Google prefers that you do so. It only helps your page become more authentic.

Remember, it’s okay if you don’t get thirty reviews overnight, allow your page to gain reviews naturally. Let customers know the link to your page through your Facebook page, website, and email marketing campaigns, and encourage them to post. But don’t pay for posts, Google will catch on and won’t find as much value in your page.