88% of potential customers read online reviews of local businesses to determine if they are good. Not including an opportunity for people to review your business, or ignoring them, has the potential to upset an overwhelming majority of potential buyers. Online reviews are extremely significant to making a sale and improving the public opinion of your company.
Receiving online reviews has a positive impact on your SEO efforts. Search engines look for unique, relevant, updated content and reviews provide that. If you have a lot of reviews, your company will be viewed as a high authority provider, thus your pages will be ranked higher. There is also a feature to microformat the reviews on your site, in order to be better indexed by Google.
It’s important to note that it is okay if not all of your reviews are positive. In fact, it makes the product seem a bit more genuine. Bad reviews show that you aren’t trying to hide anything and it makes people believe the good reviews a bit more. That being said, if the majority of your reviews are negative, that is very bad.
Ensuring that your company has reviews is becoming increasingly important, as Google has recently added reviews from the web to local search results. This means that when someone is looking at your business in a Google search, they will see reviews from sites such as Facebook and Foursquare. If you haven’t received reviews on other sites, now’s the time. Reach out to past clients and ask if they would be willing to provide a review for you on different platforms.
Curious about best practice tips for handling online reviews? Kraus Marketing specializes in digital marketing and search engine optimization. We serve companies in the New Jersey and New York City area. P.S. feel free to leave a review for us on Google and Facebook.