Tag: local SEO

Research consistently shows a strong connection between keywords in reviews and improved rankings on Google. One study even called it the number one way to boost local search results.

So, should you ask clients to use keywords in their reviews?

Unfortunately, it’s not so simple. Asking clients to use specific words or phrases can make their reviews feel inauthentic or forced—which is never a good thing.

So what do we recommend?

Don’t Ask for Keywords. Ask for Details.

Simply asking your clients for detailed reviews can get them to naturally use keywords that will improve your local search results. It may seem foreign and a little awkward at first, but it will come naturally with a bit of practice.

When you ask your clients to leave detailed reviews face to face, you gain the opportunity to coach them on the type of review that would benefit you the most.

While you are not trying to influence their opinion, you should ask them to use specifics to clarify what services or products they liked the best and how your business went above and beyond to deliver exceptional quality and attention to detail. The more detail, the more your reviews will naturally incorporate keyword-heavy language, in turn boosting your search rankings.

Here are two examples showing you the difference between a serviceable review and a review that hits it out of the ballpark in richness and detail:

Example 1:

Exceptional work. Professional and fast.

Example 2:

John arrived on time and brought all the electrical equipment he needed to install my new panel box and do some re-wiring safely. John’s customer service and level of attention were very much appreciated when he explained how to check the breaker panel and why the old wiring was not up to par with local building and safety codes. As far as electricians go, John’s rates are very reasonable. The turnaround times were so reasonable. I would recommend this company to anyone!

The first example doesn’t provide enough information to give Google a good sense of which services the client liked the most. From a consumer’s perspective, it’s not the most compelling review, either.

By contrast, the second example includes specifics like the electrician’s name, a handful of the services they received, and what made this electrician stand out from the rest. Notice how the text naturally incorporates industry-specific keywords, such as breaker panel, wiring, and electricians.

It’s not hard to see why the second example is preferred. But it can be hard to get your clients to leave such detailed reviews.

Read on to learn more about how to ask for longer reviews like a pro.

Prompt Your Clients for Detailed, Long-Form Reviews by Asking Questions

Using a template to ask for long-form reviews is a great way to get your client’s honest feedback while ensuring a more robust and full review that attracts Google’s attention.

Instead of just providing your clients with a blank forum to fill out, why not ask them a few questions that prompt them to be more descriptive?

You can ask questions like:

What services did you receive today?
Which of our locations did you visit?
How did our technicians do?
Was there a specific technique that you’d like to recognize here?
What aspects of working with us did you like most?
Is this your first interaction with our team?
Have you experienced other services we have provided?
How do we measure up against the competition?
Do you have any tips for us?

Be sure to let your clients know that you’d still appreciate a short and to-the-point review if they don’t have a lot of time.

While long-form reviews are ideal, the quantity of positive reviews you receive also plays a part in your ranking success.

What Is The Best Way to Ask for a Review?

If a follow-up email is already a regular part of your business, why not attach a link to the invoice you’re providing that takes your client to your business’s review forum?

This can be the perfect opportunity to politely request a review without putting too much pressure on the client.

In addition to this, you can use your social media platforms to request reviews and have your technicians let your clients know that while not required, leaving a review would be the perfect way to show appreciation for a job well done.

You could also put together a direct email, which you can send to clients on your mailing list.

How to Craft an Email to Ask for a Review

Do you have questions about how to craft an email to ask for a review?

We have answers.

Below, you’ll find a list of pointers that will help you create the ideal template you can go on to send to all of your preferred clients:

Personalize the subject line with something attention-worthy
Ask them directly to leave a review
Provide a direct link to the review forum

Here is an example that will show you how each piece comes into play:

Subject: Hello Mark, we need your help!

Hello Mark,

It was our pleasure to complete your electrical panel box installation recently.

Thank you for choosing us.

Online reviews help us bring our reasonable electrical services to more households and businesses like yours.

Could you take a moment to leave us a review?

Follow this direct link to let us know what you liked about our services: <link>

Here are some things you could touch on if you need some inspiration:

Specific services or products provided

Location of services provided

Did we meet your expectations?

Did you work with a particular person who went above and beyond?

Would you recommend our company?

We appreciate you taking a minute to leave us a detailed review, but short thoughts are also appreciated if you only have a second to spare.

Thanks for your help,

John

Now that you know that robust customer reviews can boost your site’s visibility in SERPs, you can craft a strategy that aligns best with your business model.

Looking for More Review-Management Tips?

LinkNow to the Rescue!

Liked what you read? Feel inspired to rework your review-management strategy? Leave us a comment below and we’ll get back to you.

If you’re looking for more tips to manage your online presence, LinkNow’s here to help. We develop data-driven solutions to help you build your brand, grow your audience, and manage your reputation online.

Discover how we can help you in a free consultation. Contact us to website@linknowmedia.com at (888) 667-7186 to get started today.

4 Reasons Online Reviews Are Essential to Business Success

By Eve Mendelovitch

On February 11, 2022

In Blog

The internet has revolutionized the way we make purchasing decisions.

Thanks to tools like online reviews, consumers can access a lot of information about a product that answers questions in detail, better than any FAQ page ever could.

While recent statistics point to 90% of online shoppers having admitted to speed reading at least one online review before heading to their cart to complete a purchase, the figure we really want to draw your attention to is the 94% of consumers who have aborted a purchase that they had to have, due to a negative review.

Here’s an overview of the 4 ways fostering a large selection of favorable online reviews is paramount to the success of your business:

1. Peer Reviews Are Type of Social Proof

Let’s face it, you can say everything there is to say about your products and the services you provide, but you’ll never be able to anticipate every single question consumers have about what you provide.

That’s only one of the ways online reviews can come in handy.

When other people post their experience and say it’s a good idea to go ahead and make the purchase, consumers are more likely to take the leap. In this way, cultivating social proof from other consumers can be more powerful than the media you produce on your own.

2. Including Reviews on Your Site Helps You Build Trust

What’s so good about a consistent flow of positive feedback from your clients?

In a word, trust is the name of the game.

5-star reviews are the goal here since anything less will give your consumer a reason to pause and rethink their purchasing decision.

Don’t overlook this powerful resource when you want to build upon your brand’s online identity. Building trust is truly a fundamental strategy that ensures you’re creating positive visibility.

3. Reviews Have a Direct Impact on Purchases

Like we said above, reviews have been proven to impact sales directly, but don’t just take our word for it. This case study from Harvard speaks volumes about how a brand’s online reputation can affect sales volume over the short and long term.

As you work to improve your star ratings and begin to gain traction, you’ll see a corresponding jump in revenue.

It goes without saying that brands with the a large and consistent number of positive reviews are viewed more favorably by consumers and therefore benefit from increased sales.

Are you doing everything in your power to foster positive comments and higher star ratings?

There’s no better time to start than now.

4. Online Reviews Open Up a Direct Chanel of Communication with Your Target Consumers

The majority of people who post online reviews of your products and services will be expecting a prompt response from you.

This presents you with a handy way to quickly solve problems with unfavorable reviews, give thanks to customers who post positive feedback, and tip your loyal clients off with information on upcoming promotions.

Let’s Review

The takeaway?

You need an review-management strategy. Online reviews help you grow your web presence, build trust with customers, and drive traffic to your site. If you aren’t actively seeking reviews, you’re missing out.

Need help managing your online reviews? LinkNow has your back! As one of North America’s leading digital marketers, we offer all-in-one solutions to help you manage your web presence, and online reviews are no exception.

Get a free consultation by calling 888.667.7186, emailing website@linknowmedia.com, or commenting below.

How Online Reviews Affect Your Local SEO

By Eve Mendelovitch

On February 2, 2022

In Blog, Uncategorized

The importance of reviews is something that comes up a lot when discussing digital marketing. But how much do they actually impact your business?

It’s no secret that online reviews play a role in your search ranking and can influence potential customers. But you might be surprised to know that generating and managing reviews for your business can provide a big boost in traffic and sales.

Read on to learn more about the significance of online reviews and why you need to pay attention to them.

Local Search Engines Love Online Reviews

So how much do reviews matter to search engines?

As a ranking factor, review signals are huge. According to MOZ, online reviews make up 15.44% of how Google ranks you in local search results.

In other words, the more positive reviews you have on Google, the better you’ll rank. It’s as simple as that: Get more reviews, get more business.

This approach makes sense from a business perspective. Not only does it reward businesses that provide positive experiences. It also provides consumers with a reason to continue returning to the review website. Search engines gain traffic based on their ability to produce the most accurate and helpful information, so connecting people with highly-rated local businesses will make them more likely to use that search engine again.

Consumers Love Online Reviews

In addition to their role in search rankings, online reviews are often the deciding factor on whether somebody decides to contact your business. 93% of customers claim that their buying decisions are influenced by the testimonials they read, and 84% say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from people they know.

When someone is searching for a particular service or product, they typically already know what they need. Your audience will also usually have an idea of what their ideal business looks like, and testimonials can help reinforce that your company fulfills their needs. The time between reading reviews and making a purchasing decision happens almost immediately, so putting positive reviews in front of your audience will almost certainly bring more leads your way.

Managing Your Online Reputation Is Crucial

Although every business owner wishes they could maintain that 5-star rating forever, it’s hard to please everybody. That said, the way you deal with negative reviews can help highlight your composure as a business owner. It can show future clients that you value their opinions, and that you take customer feedback seriously, whether it’s good or bad.

When you receive reviews on Google (or any platform), respond to them. Keep a close eye on your review page so you can catch new reviews as they come in, and always leave a note of appreciation when someone leaves you some feedback. You never know what useful pieces of praise or constructive criticism you might find.

Looking for Help Managing Your Online Reputation?

LinkNow to the Rescue!

If you want some assistance with developing a review generation strategy or managing your online reputation, LinkNow Media is the name you can trust. We’ve already helped many business owners with their local SEO, and we would love to do the same for you.

Reach us 1.888.667.7186 or website@linknowmedia.com to speak with one of our digital marketing specialists.

Understanding the Yelp Review Filter

By Eve Mendelovitch

On August 24, 2021

In Blog, LinkNow Media, Reviews

In our last post, we looked at everything you need to know about Yelp Reviews. This week, we’ll look in more depth at Yelp’s review filter and how it works.

Yelp is one of the most popular online review platforms, with almost 100 million unique visitors last year.

It’s also one of the most notorious.

Why?

Yelp uses a proprietary algorithm to identify, filter, and remove fake reviews. The Yelp review filter removes scores of reviews every day. In theory, it sounds admirable that they go to such lengths to combat fake reviews. But in practice, it proves complicated.

Let’s look at how the Yelp review filter works, why some love it, and why others detest it.

First: The Power of Reviews

First things first: Why are fake reviews such a problem to begin with?

The reason’s simple: Reviews are a powerful tool.

87% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase.

The influence reviews have is enormous. They can compel shoppers to try a new brand, buy a new product, or look the other way. They inform customer decisions on a vast, global scale, leading some brands to soar and others to crash.

That power means review platforms like Yelp have some responsibility. It means they need to monitor their reviews and ensure they’re truthful and authentic, not fake. Otherwise, a slew of fake reviews could hurt the user experience—especially if those users get conned by a false word or two.

Fake reviews can put a brand like Yelp’s reputation at risk. But Yelp has a strategy to stop them.

The Yelp Review Filter

To filter out fake reviews, Yelp uses a proprietary algorithm it calls its “recommendation software.”

Yelp’s recommendation software filters reviews based on several factors, including:

The reviewer’s user profile
How active the reviewer is on Yelp
The content in the review

After reviewing that information, Yelp will make a decision either to recommend the review or not recommend it.

Recommended reviews automatically appear on a business’s Yelp page. They also count toward the business’s rating on Yelp.

Unrecommended reviews are not immediately visible. They’re hidden from most users’ sight, and they do not factor into the business’s Yelp score.

Yelp hides unrecommended reviews, but they never delete reviews. Instead, they hide those they deem unworthy. You can read unrecommended reviews by following the link at the bottom of a business’s Yelp page:

How Does the Yelp Review Filter Work?

Yelp’s review filter considers several factors to identify and hide potentially fake reviews. It’s overzealous by design, removing anything with even a hint of phoniness.

Yelp doesn’t release many details about its recommendation software because they don’t want people trying to cheat it. Still, we know the software considers several factors when evaluating reviews. Three of the most important are:

The Reviewer’s User History. One way that Yelp filters reviews is by identifying established users – users that review often. The software works to syndicate established users’ reviews onto business pages for the world to see. While reviews of less active users are never deleted, they may seem more suspicious to the algorithm and not pop up on the business’ site.

The Content of the Review. Yelp’s recommendation software examines reviews’ content, including their length and style Reviews that are shorter, overly glowing, or less detailed are often flagged as fraudulent and tend to be removed. Likewise, reviews that are overly combative, hinting at a conflict of interest, may also be removed.
Solicitation. Unlike Google, Yelp strictly forbids any sort of review solicitation. If they suspect a business asked a customer to review them on Yelp, they will hide that review. Yelp wants its review system to replicate “word of mouth” as much as possible, and according to them, solicited reviews diminishes that word-of-mouth experience.

The Yelp review filter is constantly evolving. The reviews it recommends (and doesn’t recommend) may change from day to day because it’s always evaluating new signals. As such, you may notice reviews “disappear” then “reappear” from time to time. According to Yelp, it’s not a flaw. It’s a feature.

Why Does Yelp Filter Reviews?

Yelp filters reviews to combat malicious reviewing and give the consumer a more genuine understanding of a business’s reputation.

Yelp and its competitors know how critical authentic reviews are to the overall reliability of their site, and it’s in their best interest to ensure they’re as genuine as possible.

What’s the Problem with Yelp’s Review Filter?

If you’ve read up to here, you might have already noticed some problems with Yelp’s review filter:

It hides real reviews as well as fake reviews
Removing genuine reviews can hurt a business’s reputation
The number of hidden reviews is constantly changing (and feels arbitrary)

Yelp says its review filter is supposed to capture the word-of-mouth reputation of a business. But there’s a problem with this:

Some industries feel the Yelp review filter’s effects far more than others.

Meanwhile, others are not nearly as affected.

Take the service industry, for example. Restaurants are one of the most regularly reviewed businesses on Yelp. They tend to acquire many reviews from dedicated Yelp users.

Those Yelp users might visit dozens of restaurants, leaving a detailed review for each of them. And because the Yelp review filter prioritizes reviews from regular Yelp users, those reviews will all look authentic and stay unfiltered.

But other industries can’t count on their customers to be regular Yelp users.

Consider the general contractor. A contractor might take on 1-2 jobs a month. Already, they’re at a disadvantage because they have far fewer customers.

Worse yet, the contractor’s clients are far less likely to be regular Yelp users. They might only write a review on Yelp as an afterthought. They might even have to create a Yelp account because they’ve never used the platform before. And because those reviews are coming from new accounts, they’re far more likely to be filtered out.

Plus, that contractor can’t ask clients to write a review: That’d be against Yelp’s policy. So, if you’re a service provider that targets a certain demographic—such as the older, not-so-tech-savvy crowd—you’re left in a bit of a catch-22: Your clients might not think to leave you a Yelp review, yet you can’t remind them, either. And even if the occasional one remembers to write a review, it’s at a much greater risk of being removed anyway.

We Still Have Much to Learn

Deterring fraudsters and making review pages more reliable is a worthy pursuit in the internet age. While we still have a lot to learn about navigating downfalls and ironing out discrepancies, using algorithms and communication analytics to monitor reviews is a step in the right direction.

Have you had a run-in with the Yelp review filter? Got a tip for how to overcome it? Leave a comment below! And if you need help managing your business’s online reputation, don’t hesitate to reach out to LinkNow at 888-667-71864 or by emailing website@linknowmedia.com.

3 Quick Tricks to Get More Google Reviews

By Eve Mendelovitch

On August 11, 2021

In Blog, LinkNow Media, Reviews

No matter the quality of your services, what your clients have to say about your business will always carry more weight than what you have to say about your business.

That’s why getting reviews is so crucial. Because customers place so much value on reviews, creating a space where clients can share their experiences should be a top priority.

With that in mind, here are 3 tips to get more Google reviews.

1. Provide Exceptional Services and Prioritize Customer Experience

If you’re looking to get more reviews, you want those reviews to be good. So, to get good reviews you need to be providing excellent services.

While providing great services may seem like a no-brainer, there is a bit of strategy to it.

Here are a few tricks to deliver a stellar client experience:

Take the time to listen to your customer’s goals
Reiterate these goals to them
Involve them in the process
Address concerns right away
Go out of your way to be friendly and communicative

2. Simplify the Process

Some clients won’t leave you a review because they don’t know how or simply don’t think of it. To counter this, make it super easy. At the very least, add a link to your Google review page on your website. We also recommend adding the link to the end of an email, on your social media, or on a physical business card.

If you cater to an older demographic, providing step-by-step instructions or screenshots of the process can also be helpful and increase the likelihood of participation.

3. Ask Your Clients to Leave Reviews

Don’t be afraid to ask your clients to leave reviews, in person, on the phone, or in a follow-up email.

You may be surprised to know that 86% of consumers are willing to write a review, and directly asking them significantly improves your chances of receiving one.

Let your clients know how valuable their input is and how sharing their experience could help customers just like them.

Respond to Your Google Reviews, Good AND Bad

That’s right:

Respond to all Google reviews, both good and bad.

At its essence, the Google review page is a conversation between you and your clients. Not only does it allow customers to share their experiences, but it gives you the space to respond.

It’s easy to respond to good reviews. A quick “thank you!” goes a long way. But bad reviews give you a chance to show off your professionalism and flex your conflict-resolution skills—an invaluable skill for any business owner.

Respond professionally and promptly with helpful solutions that invite them to contact you again. By doing so, you’ll impress visitors who see how much you care about all customers, satisfied or otherwise.

Get People Talking About Your Business!

The bottom line is this:

The more reviews you have, the better.

Providing great services is the first step to getting good reviews. But don’t forget to follow through. Ask your clients to review your business.

Send them a link.

Email a link.

Add a Google Review badge onto the home page of your website.

The best way to get reviews, is to ask for reviews. So ask away.

Found this post useful? Want more guidance? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

If you need help setting up your Google My Business or getting more Google reviews, contact us at website@linknowmedia.com to see what we can do for you.

LinkNow Media | Customer Reviews

The Web is Waiting For You

Tag: local SEO

Should I Ask Clients to Use Keywords in Reviews?

Don’t Ask for Keywords. Ask for Details.

Prompt Your Clients for Detailed, Long-Form Reviews by Asking Questions

What Is The Best Way to Ask for a Review?

How to Craft an Email to Ask for a Review

Looking for More Review-Management Tips?

LinkNow to the Rescue!

4 Reasons Online Reviews Are Essential to Business Success

1. Peer Reviews Are Type of Social Proof

2. Including Reviews on Your Site Helps You Build Trust

3. Reviews Have a Direct Impact on Purchases

4. Online Reviews Open Up a Direct Chanel of Communication with Your Target Consumers

Let’s Review

How Online Reviews Affect Your Local SEO

Local Search Engines Love Online Reviews

Consumers Love Online Reviews

Managing Your Online Reputation Is Crucial

Looking for Help Managing Your Online Reputation?

LinkNow to the Rescue!

Understanding the Yelp Review Filter

First: The Power of Reviews

The Yelp Review Filter

How Does the Yelp Review Filter Work?

Why Does Yelp Filter Reviews?

What’s the Problem with Yelp’s Review Filter?

We Still Have Much to Learn

3 Quick Tricks to Get More Google Reviews

1. Provide Exceptional Services and Prioritize Customer Experience

2. Simplify the Process

3. Ask Your Clients to Leave Reviews

Respond to Your Google Reviews, Good AND Bad

Get People Talking About Your Business!

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