What are online reviews and listings? Where do they come from?
- Search: “Winnipeg restaurants” on Google. Note the results with the map to the right. These are called Google Places pages or Google Local Business Listings.
- Click on one of restaurants reviews (They will have “88 reviews” or “64 reviews” beside their name). You’ll see these reviews are coming from sites like TripAdvisor, UrbanSpoon and Yahoo.com.
- Imagine these listings being as important and cornerstone to your marketing as your yellowpages budget was for all those years.
Sites like Yelp.com, Canpages.ca, TripAdvisor.com, LinkedIn.com, UrbanSpoon.com, Yahoo.com and more are constantly being updated and crawled by Google daily. Google is updating those Google Places pages that have an “Owner-Verified listing”. (Ask us about how to verify your listing)
How do I find these types of sites in my industry?
Finding the review and listing websites in your industry is important:
- Start by simply searching for your company name and watch what 3rd party directory websites come up in the top 30 results.
- Search your largest competitors and see what directories list them.
You want to get listed on these sites first and you want to push customer reviews to those directory sites second.
Encourage customers to leave reviews
There are multiple ways to encourage your customers to leave you a review and boost your rankings.
- Find your Google Business Listing or other industry review sites and obtain the direct link to YOUR listing.
- Use this link on your website to encourage reviews:
“Read our reviews or leave your own on UrbanSpoon.”
- Generate a QR code to direct customers instantly to review sites.
- Tell customers about it!Put the link on the bottom of their receipts. When you’re talking to them at check-out, tell them you’re on TripAdvisor and ask them to leave a review to enter a draw for a free dinner.
Conclusion
Reviews will continue to boost your rankings. Ensure you claim all of your listings out there, give your customers tools to review your business on them and monitor. By doing this, you’ll win in the local search world.
APPENDIX A - STEP – BY – STEP GUIDE FOR GOOGLE PLACES
The first key is to understand how it works yourself. Follow these steps. Once you're familiar with the process, send these steps to your favourite customers and ask them to do the same:
- Search for the business on Google.com or Google Maps.
- Click the Write a review link located above the address of the business.
- Give your review a title and rating.
- Click Save.
NOTE: You need to be logged in to your Google Account to write a review. If you're not logged in, you'll be prompted to either sign in or create a Google Account.
Your Google Account nickname will appear next to all of your reviews. To change your nickname, go to your Google account settings and click Edit profile.
View our Google Places listing here >>
They have even launched a beta service called Google Hotpot where you can leave reviews for many different companies at once.
Go to Google Maps and search your industry keywords right now. Get started and if you need help, call Hep Communications at 992-6400.
APPENDIX B - STATS TO CONSIDER
According to David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors 2009 Report in which 26 Industry Veterans were surveyed the following results were reported:
The scale was from -5 (can hurt your rankings / lead to a penalty) to 5 (very important to ranking well) with 0 (not having an impact on your rankings).
- General Importance of Customer Reviews 3.27 (high importance)
- Volume of Customer Reviews: 3.34 (high importance)
- Customer Reviews on 3rd Party Websites: 2.30 (moderate importance)
- Positive Ratings Associated with Reviews: 3.34 (low importance)