How to Use Reviews to Boost Your Local SEO

Third-party reviews are critical as they can influence the potential consumers’ next move and boost the search engine rankings on Google. So if you are looking for ways to use reviews to help you grow your local SEO, you are at the right place.  

These reviews offer valuable ideas from an unbiased perspective, essential to growing and improving your business. Positive and honest reviews can also attract potential customers to buy your products. In comparison to first-party reviews, third-party reviews are way more credible to a buyer. 

Be it converting searches into sales or improving your ranking by enhancing the SEO; you can get help for both aspects here. So let us look at some of the ways by which you can improve your ranking with the help of third party reviews.

1. Improve Your Review Score

The local search results are based mainly on relevance and prominence. Prominence determines how popular a business is, and it is directly related to the number of reviews it gets.

To improve the review for your business locations, you can ask satisfied customers to write positive reviews. If they are happy with your service, they will do it readily, which will further help you build trust. You must make it a point to respond to all reviews, whether positive or negative.

The review velocity tells you how frequently your business gets new reviews. Besides providing SEO value, buyers prefer to read recent and honest reviews before making up their minds to buy your goods or services. 

More than 30% of consumers have said that they only check out new business reviews no more than a week or two older.

So, you must somehow encourage your happy customers always to leave positive reviews. All such tactics will request new reviews and fall within the review guideline of Google.

You can further print the QR code on each sales receipt. Mail a follow-up text after the appointment and then ask for an honest review during the transaction.

2. The Volume Of Third-Party Reviews

Say, for instance, you are looking for a hotel in a new town to stay in; which hotel would you choose? 

A Hotel with ten reviews or one with 20 reviews? Despite having the same stars, you choose the latter. Like other businesses, review volume can help legitimise the company with search engines.

3. Respond to both Positive and Negative Reviews

It is essential to respond to your customer’s queries and reviews; this shows that you not only have a responsibility towards your customers, but it also plays a role in SEO – as is confirmed by Google.

Though responding to every review may sound like a daunting task, you can easily do that with the help of technology and templates. The templates should be based on the brand’s guidelines and promote the good name of the business house.

4. Content of Your Reviews

Google keeps updating its guidelines to meet the daily requirements of searchers. The goal is straightforward- to deliver accurate results real quick. And for this, they are dependent on the information provided by you- the business houses.

Reviews where customers mention the city of your store or the street are critical. Such things send strong signals to Google that help your business improve its relevance. Some information is collected from the reviews as well. If the task seems daunting to you, contact SIMBAA to ensure that you build a robust online reputation for your businesses with our ORM Services.