Google Reviews 101

Before the internet, marketing was more art than science.

A banner ad was something you printed out and hung up in front of your business. Getting customers meant actually going outside and getting them.

Things have changed a bit since then. If you knocked on a customer’s door now, they might call the police. Even a phone call can feel intrusive. And email isn’t much better. The average open rate for email is 18%, and the average click-through rate is only 2.6%.

Today, you get found online. If you want customers, you have to top the Google Map Pack. And that starts with Google reviews.

We started in 1995 and grew an office from no customers to the largest in the city. We did it the old- fashioned way—knocking on doors and advertising in the Yellow Pages. Today, if you can’t rank on Google, you’re in trouble.

Ted Byrt, Owner – Ted Byrt Insurance

It’s true that most searches start online, but where do they end?

Is it on your website or a competitor’s? When it comes to getting found and chosen by your customers, Google reviews are crucial. Approximately 97% of consumers use online search to find a local business or service. Nearly 84% of those searches are discovery, and the vast majority are made in Google.

The top organic search result receives 25% of clicks, and the top three receive 75% of clicks from searchers.

If you don’t see your business featured on Google’s Map Pack today, read on. We’ll show you how Google reviews impact your visibility and what you need to change in order to outrank your competition.

What are Google reviews and why do they still matter?

Google reviews are user-generated comments that current or past customers can post about businesses on Google. They include a rating out of five stars that is calculated into a business’s average star rating.

Today, Google reviews impact the customer journey more than ever. Reviews influence 88% of consumers in discovering a local business. And Google currently hosts the most visible reviews on the internet. According to a recent interview with Neil Patel, collecting as many reviews as possible should be your main focus when it comes to getting found and chosen.

5 game-changing benefits of Google reviews:

01. Google reviews increase exposure and local SEO.

Google doesn’t openly share details about how they calculate local search rankings. However, Google has claimed that they give attention to (1) Relevance (2) Prominence and (3) Distance. Reviews impact the first of these, alerting crawlers that a business is relevant to the searcher. According to their site, Google also carefully analyzes businesses’ review recency, frequency, quality, and quantity when ranking. Moz suggests that roughly 10% of Google’s entire search algorithm is driven by review signals such as review quantity, velocity, and diversity.

Getting regular Google reviews is one of the fastest ways to improve local SEO and increase your visibility. While traditional SEO activities, (like keyword research and blogging), are effective, it can take months and even years to see results. With proper execution, Google reviews can be one of your most successful marketing tactics by getting you into the Google Map Pack.

02. Google reviews increase brand trust.

Transparency is becoming more and more relevant for consumers. 86% say it’s more important than ever, and 94% say they’re more likely to be loyal to a transparent brand. The growing relevance (and importance) placed on transparency can largely be accredited to the accessibility of in-depth information about any given business. The fact is that before engaging with you, online research is the first thing1 customers do. And the majority of them read reviews.

Positive reviews increase customer trust in a local business significantly. The way businesses respond to reviews, both positive and negative, also impacts customer trust. 89% of consumers read business responses, and 56% say a business’s responses have changed their perspective on the business.

03. Google reviews create a valuable feedback loop.

One of the biggest advantages of Google reviews is the feedback loop and customer intelligence you can utilize. Every Google review you collect can serve as a customer survey response. Each Google review generally includes a few key insights:

• Whether or not you delivered a positive customer experience
• Where you excelled or under-delivered
• How you can improve

Reading positive and negative Google reviews can tell you exactly what you’re doing well and where there’s room for improvement.

04. Google reviews improve click-through rate to your website.

Any business knows how vital it is to get customers to click on their website when it shows up in a search. You may spend all the time and money in the world to improve your SEO strategy, but if people aren’t actually clicking on your site, all that effort is pointless. Luckily, Google reviews increase the click-through rate to a business’s website. And the more clicks a site receives, the higher it climbs in Google’s rankings.

05. Google reviews increase revenue.

Through their direct optimization of a number of factors (visibility, SEO, feedback, trust), Google reviews increase the revenue of local businesses significantly. They have a direct impact on purchasing decisions and the way customers find and choose which businesses to buy from. And because methods of collection are so much cheaper than other forms of marketing, a Google reviews strategy is one of the most cost- effective campaigns you can undertake, delivering maximum ROI.

Why are Google reviews so important for your business today?

Google reviews do much more than improve your local search ranking. They impact the entire customer journey.

Awareness. Google reviews are not just about getting noticed and staying top of mind. Online reviews are also where consumers go to learn about new products and businesses.

Consideration. According to recent research, the minimum star rating an average consumer would even consider is a 3.4. Approximately half of consumers are willing to travel farther and pay more in order to patronize a business with higher reviews.

Purchase. Online reviews play a huge role in whether or not a consumer ultimately chooses to buy from a business. 93% of consumers say that online reviews influence their purchase decisions. 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a trusted review.

Post-Purchase. After the purchase is made and a review is left, reviews give businesses valuable insights into their operations. Reviews and subsequent improvements attract more customers, starting the journey all over again.

Now that you know how Google reviews impact the customer journey, let’s look at real businesses that are succeeding with reviews.

Local businesses are benefiting from online reviews in significant ways.

1. Ambiance Design Windows has gathered 165 Google reviews with a 5 star rating, resulting in a huge increase in web traffic and inbound leads. They are able to spend less on other marketing efforts because of their online presence.
2. The Smile Studio has a spot on the Google Map Pack thanks to all the patients who choose them because of their positive online reviews.
3. RPM Alamo has increased their revenue by 20% and significantly increased their website conversion rate with their 1,200+ online reviews.

How to get Google reviews step-by-step.

You might be wondering how to get started. The first step to collecting more reviews is setting up Google Business Profile. Below is a step-by-step process for setting
up your Google Business Profile listing and optimizing it to collect online reviews.

STEP 1 Go to https://www.google.com/business.
STEP 2 Sign in to your Google Account, or create one. Then, click Next.
STEP 3 Enter your business’s address and create or claim your listing.
STEP 4 Fill out basic information about your business.
STEP 5  Submit for verification.

Optimizing your Google Business Profile listing for more reviews.

Businesses must work to ensure their listings are complete, updated, and filled with relevant information that will entice searchers to click on them.

Google reviews are vital to making listings stand out by bringing real customer feedback to the forefront. And good listings increase reviews. According to Google, “businesses with complete and accurate information are easier to match with the right searches.”

At the very minimum, businesses need to:

• Add relevant information. Businesses need to ensure that their business name, address, and phone number (commonly referred to as NAP) are consistent across the web so customers and crawlers can identify them. Business descriptions and any customer-facing content should include all of the information that customers might find relevant. Businesses should employ keywords but avoid using these fields as opportunities to stuff keywords. Oftentimes, Google views this as spam and local search rankings can suffer as a result
• Upload high-resolution photos. One thing many businesses neglect to do is upload enough photos to make their listings stand out among the competition. Photos help businesses gather significantly more interactions with online searchers. Google has found that listings featuring photos receive 42% more requests for driving directions from Google Maps and 35% more clicks through to a business’s website. Before uploading any photo, businesses should ensure that size is optimized for the platforms customers are using to find them. It’s also important to optimize for various devices. Consider that nearly 68% of consumers are likely to engage with a business using a mobile device compared to 32% who would engage via desktop.
• Include up-to-date hours of operation. One piece of information customers are looking for when they Google a business is whether or not they are open. Because of this, you should take the time to update hours of operation whenever a change occurs. It’s also important to include any variations, such as special holiday hours. You should include updates on safety measures, changes to your location, and any other relevant information.

Start collecting Google reviews and interacting with customers.

Once you’ve claimed and optimized your business listing, it’s time to get started.

The vast majority of consumers leave a business review once a quarter, or less. And a fifth say they’ve never left one. One of the main reasons customers who are more than willing to leave a review fail to do so is because the process is usually inconvenient. Some businesses send an email with a link, but there are too many steps and customers often give up before completing the process.

Local businesses need to rethink how they ask for reviews and make the process as frictionless and convenient as possible. The key? Text.

Over a third of consumers who receive a text review invite leave one, and approximately 41% of consumers prefer text to communicate vs. 18% who prefer email. The right platform can make collecting reviews as easy as sending your customers a text with a short review link.

Using text review invites can result in significantly higher response rates and enables businesses to collect as many as 15x more Google reviews than traditional email-based platforms. After switching to text to collect reviews, Paul’s Pest Control jumped half a star on Google within 24 hours and gathered more reviews in one month than they had in five years.

How Ambiance Design Windows Rose to #1.

“We decided to bail completely on print advertising. We put all of our marketing dollars into Google campaigns…we really focused on reviews.”

At first, Ambience Design Windows was getting just two or three reviews per month. Through text review invites, they were able to become the top-rated provider of window treatments in their area.

“Podium helped cohesively pull everything together for us in one tool that was simple to use, easy to access, and readily available on multiple platforms, which drove our reviews up 500% month over month.”

5 tips to get more Google reviews.

Implementing text is a great way to start. But to open the floodgates, you should also do the following:

1. Determine the right timing of the invitation. When is the best time to invite customers to leave a review? In our experience, the best time to ask is when there’s some downtime in the sales process. For example, in the auto industry, a good time might be after the sale is completed and the customer is waiting in finance.

2. Set expectations for the review. After you’ve determined the right time to invite the customer, you need to set expectations. When setting expectations, you should let the customer know:

• Why online reviews are important for your business
• How they will be receiving the invite
• When they will be receiving the invite

3. Manage reviews. If you want to collect reviews, it’s crucial to show your customers that reviews matter to you. That means managing them. Businesses should respond to negative reviews within 2 hours and positive ones within 24 hours. Showing customers that you are responsive and open to taking feedback will make customers more willing to leave you reviews. Google’s GMB support page explicitly says responding to reviews “shows that you value your customers and their feedback” and helps “build consumer trust.”

4. Change according to reviews. Another great way to increase collection and demonstrate responsiveness is to implement changes according to the feedback. Griffin Fast Lube crushes the competition by continuously improving their business through the valuable feedback they get from their customers.

5. Use a reputation management platform. Responding to, collecting, and analyzing reviews can be quite a task for any team to take on. But the right platform makes managing reviews a breeze for any local business of any size. 94% of local businesses who use a reputation management software say it provides enough ROI to make up for the cost. After adopting Podium, Dunn Tire saw a 5% increase in rating and 41x increase in average monthly reviews, surpassing 4,500.

Local businesses are 1.4x more likely to have an average star rating of 4.5 or higher if they are proactive about their online reputation vs. if they are passive.

Google reviews should be an integral part of any business’s digital marketing strategy. They help increase visibility, build trust with consumers, and push customers through every stage of the buyer’s journey. If you take proactive steps to secure reviews, you will see both an increase in traffic to your website as well as your physical location.

Dominate your local market.

As you read this, people are searching for a business like yours. The question is, will customers find and choose you? Unless you have a competitive star rating with an impressive number of Google reviews, the answer will likely be “no.”

Become the top-rated option in your area by automatically sending review invites to customers via text, managing reviews efficiently, and providing a convenient, frictionless experience with Podium Reviews.