How Reviews Affect Your Business’ Search Ranking on Google
Google and other search engines value your customer’s
feedback and opinions. This makes online reviews critical to your SEO strategy
and business success. They can alter a customer’s
purchasing decision, rank you higher in search engines and therefore get you
more clicks and sales opportunities online.
If your brand has 4.5+ stars and more reviews than your
competitors, you’ll be one step ahead of the competition as Google will place
you above them in search as your business is deemed more trustworthy by them.
Reviews can influence your local SEO ranking
Map searches – Google Maps says the “highest-rated” results
will be displayed first when you search for nearby businesses. Google updated
its Maps to feature reviews more prominently and uses this data to determine
the relevance of the prioritised results.
Why is it important to feature highly on Google maps:
- 86% of people use it to find the local products and services they need
- 1 in 5 of those make a purchase within 24 hours of checking out a business online
- 58% use their smartphones to look up companies on Google every single day
Reviews help your site rank for long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are phrases with low search competition that are much easier to rank for if selected carefully. By looking at customer comments and how they are phrasing their concerns, you can use these phrases as keywords for your site’s optimisation. Using the words your customers use can help you rank higher.