We're continuing on our series of videos about the 2023 Ranking Factors for Google Local Search. Today we are talking about the third rank factor and that is Online Reviews, which comes in at 16% of the formula.
Three major concepts you should think about with regards to reviews.
You should be gathering first and third party reviews. You should be aiming for a high quantity of reviews and keeping an eye on the velocity of your reviews. We'll go into this in a little bit more detail later, but a customer review is a text summary of their experience at a particular business left on some sort of an online platform. These platforms could be Google, a search engine, a review platform, a location based service, web apps, websites or social media sites. All those types of platforms can collect online reviews for you.
Online reviews are modern day referral but online. We're not as social as we used to be as people would just ask neighbors, who is the best, whatever in the area and go with what the neighbor recommended. Now people are going online and looking at reviews and you having the right structure, quantity and high rating is critical for you to succeed in this new era of referrals.
It is important to have a regular stream of reviews, not just a sudden burst. Google could suspend your account if it sees a sudden burst, it could see it as fraudulent, if a hundred reviews appeared on one day. That would not realistic for most businesses.
You want to be constantly soliciting reviews from your customers over a significant portion of time. This should be something that is always happening. Always be encouraging customers to review you and you in turn, responding to their reviews, both positive and negative. When analyzing their reviews, you want to use it as a way to find areas where your business needs to improve your products and or services.
It is not just about trying to boost your rank, but you should acknowledge the customer within a review as part your response. For example, "your review about such and such," we have gathered other feedback and we are in the process of improving our process or something along that line to address the concern that multiple customers have raised.
The third most important factor in getting yourself ranked highly on Google are Online Reviews at 16%.
If you are interested in seeing how your business is doing in the eyes of Google, click here to receive a complimentary SnapShot Report.
