Appearing in organic searches, reviews are increasingly important to your search rankings. Not only does it appear that Google is giving greater weighting to businesses that are receiving reviews, it seems that star ratings from third party review sites are taken into consideration.
TrustPilot has seen that:
- Star ratings in Google ads have a 17% higher Click Through Rate (CTR) than ads that don’t
- The star rating rich snippet in organic results can lead to increases in CTR up to 30%
- Websites that include TrustPilot reviews can see increases in conversion rates up to 58%
This means you can get found faster, generate more leads, and convert prospects quicker.
Top Tips to Getting Great Reviews
- Make it easy for your customers to leave reviews.
It is now possible to create a unique URL that allows your customers to leave a Google review straight away - get the instructions below.
- Ask your customers for reviews at the right time.
Find out when in your customer journey is the most appropriate time to ask for a review. This could be following a successful implementation, follow up for a service desk call or after an event.
- Be responsive.
Not every review you receive will be positive, but you can neutralise these by responding to these effectively. If there are false reviews, you can report these to Google.
- Stick to the rules. Not only is it unethical, it is also against Google’s Reviews Policy to offer incentives, or to leave a review where it is a conflict of interest – such as business owners or employees.
How to Create a Google Review URL for Your Business
1. Retrieve Google Place ID for the business: https://developers.google.com/places/place-id
The Google Place ID for Secret Source Marketing is ChIJr1dcWMf-d0gRHyjlxd9lW04
2. Append to URL: https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=<place_id>
For example, the URL for Secret Source Marketing will be: https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=ChIJr1dcWMf-d0gRHyjlxd9lW04
3. We recommend that you make your URL more user friendly by either:
- Creating a 301 redirect to a vanity URL on your domain such as yourdomain.com/review (recommended for print)
- Shortening the URL using a provider such as goo.gl/ or bitly.com/ (recommended for use on third party sites as you can add query strings)
Got the reviews? Now grow your business, with a repeatable, scalable process to turn a trickle of income into a steady, predictable revenue stream. Download the free ebook to and start selling better today!