6 Practical Tactics to Improve Local SEO with Customer Reviews

Improve Local SEO with Customer Reviews

The Internet enables large companies to reach global audiences, but it also helps local businesses to win over new customers in the neighbourhood. While there are many ways to attract local clients, customer reviews remain the most powerful search engine optimization (SEO) tactic. Here’s why:

Over 90% of local consumers use reviews to determine if a local business is good or bad
Almost 75% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more

In other words, online reputation has the potential to make or break your on-site business, so you better do your best to improve it. Our post will show you six pro tips for boosting local SEO with customer reviews.

#1. Use Multiple Online Review Resources

You probably know that Google is by far the largest search engine, so it’s completely natural to focus most of your efforts on this platform. You should work on improving the company’s Google My Business account and try to obtain as many positive reviews as possible.

However, bear in mind that Google is not all there is. The most popular search engine takes into account other customer review sources when ranking your business website. For instance, Trip Advisor, Facebook, Zillow, and Yelp represent some of the main customer review websites.

Improving your position on these and other similar platforms, you will also improve the overall authority and Google’s search engine algorithms will rank you higher in location-related searches.

#2. Boost Your Average Rating

Both quantity and quality play an important role in customer reviews, but the average rating is slightly more significant. Your goal should be to make at least a 4-star rating on the 1 to 5 stars list. However, you should strive for more in case your competitors rate higher than your own business.

What makes the 4-star rating a genuine threshold? First of all, no one expects a local business to be perfect and earn a 5-star review every single time. But on the other side, going below 4 stars shows there is something really wrong with your company.

There is no shortcut toward improving your average rating. The only way to do it is by earning fresh 5-star reviews with the top-notch quality of products and services. All other activities, such as buying positive reviews or making fake testimonials, are considered illegal and can completely ruin your online credibility.

Ratings

#3. Mind the Review Quality

Online review quality makes the other side of the coin. After all, what good is a 5-star review if it comes from one or two customers only? Every customer review website or search engine rank profiles with more reviews higher than their competitors with only a handful of testimonials.

Generally speaking, you should get some 30 reviews to make the average grade fully credible. But if your competitors have hundreds of reviews, you must definitely inspire more users to engage.

#4. Encourage Customers to Use the Right Words

The world of online reviews is not only about the average grade but also about the keywords and sentiment analysis. Namely, Google analyzes terms and expressions to figure out what your customers really feel about the service.

For this reason, you should encourage customers to use the right words while assessing your business. If you don’t know how to find the most relevant keywords, we recommend you consult experts at:

A-writer.com
BestDissertation
BestEssays
College-Paper
Essaygeek

All these agencies employ SEO professionals and content creators who can quickly analyze your field of work and suggest you words and phrases that describe your company most adequately.

Use the Right Words

#5. Try to Keep a Steady Influx of Online Reviews

Search engines pay attention to every little detail, including the tempo at which you receive new reviews. Why is it so important?

Well, if you experience a sudden influx of positive user comment, Google and other platforms will consider it suspicious and probably lower your ranking. This happens because rarely anyone can get so many reviews all of a sudden after a long drought period.

That’s why you need to make a customer service strategy which leads to the steady influx of online reviews. Don’t go for one-time campaigns, but rather try to keep the same rhythm in the long run. For instance, it’s much better to earn a couple of positive testimonials each week than to suddenly acquire 20 after three months without a single review.

#6. Create Review Snippets

Websites with dedicated testimonial pages can use Google for additional promotion by displaying the average rating and the total number of reviews. This way, people who conduct location-related searches will see the so-called review snippet next to your result.

It’s a great way to prove professional credibility, but you have to be careful since spammers use the same tactic to achieve this goal artificially. In order to secure the highest level of authority, you must do the following:

Measure reviews coming from your website exclusively
Do not hide customer testimonials and ratings
Always use real names. Do not add reviews coming from suspicious users or organizations
Do not add an aggregate rating to the homepage

Review Snippets

Conclusion

The days when people talked to each other in order to learn more about a business are long gone. Today, users read online reviews to find out whether a company is good or bad, turning your professional reputation into a matter of public interest.

In this post, we presented you with six pro tips for boosting local SEO with customer reviews. These hacks won’t only make your SEO strategy more effective but also earn you a lot of new clients, so make sure to use our suggestions and build a more profitable business.

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Warren Fowler

Warren Fowler is one of the top writers from the marketing niche at BestEssays. He enjoys working on social media and content marketing campaigns. But most of all, he enjoys writing case studies, essays, and research papers. His main goal in life is to raise his kids in healthy, productive, and happy adults.

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