It is a fact that customers rely heavily on reviews before making a purchase decision. You’ll struggle to acquire clients if you don’t have positive reviews. Some SEOs may even suggest that Google will favor other businesses over yours if they have more reviews, especially for local searches.
If you’re like most business owners, you’ve made the connection between reviews and search engine optimization. Especially if you’ve looked into budget SEO services or online review management services. The two industries are intertwined, and one frequently refers to or incorporates the other.
Customer reviews certainly improve SEO, as you’ve undoubtedly surmised. They can help you increase your bottom line owing to Google’s algorithm, and they can help you a lot.
Customer Reviews and Revenue go Hand in Hand
When you’re looking for a product, what do you do?
A majority of people would go to Google, type in what they’re looking for, and check at the first page of results. They would then hop on to a product page, and if they like the product pictures and the description they go on to check out the reviews and ratings.
And, before spending their money, they make sure that they compare shops and go with the highest star ratings.
Here are some statistics suggesting this:
- 95% of customers read internet evaluations before making a purchase
- 72% of individuals read reviews before taking action
- Each one-star rating on Yelp results in a 5-9% increase in the revenue.
- Before trusting a company, the average customer reads roughly 10 reviews online
Reviews Have a Strong Effect on Your SEO
When you examine how favorable reviews can help your company rank higher in search engines, you’ll see how valuable they are. Because Google trusts your consumers more than your site, having more reviews is beneficial to your SEO strategy.
More reviews with a positive word about the company means that your brand has a liking and affinity. This helps you to increase your authority in the eyes of search engines which has a positive impact on your rankings and traffic.
It all comes down to luring clicks with better ratings and then converting those clicks into sales.
If you don’t prioritize reviews, even if the rest of your plan is flawless, your business will suffer.
Your Organic Marketing success is determined by a number of criteria like, Google considers reviews, backlinks, click-through rates, bounce rates, and a variety of other variables. It uses these variables to rank websites and determines which ones will appear and where they will rank on search results pages. Therefore, when users search for similar terms, more reviews might help your site rank higher in search results.
Did you know that 40% of customers only read reviews submitted within the last two weeks? This number has gradually increased in recent years, and it is projected to continue as customers become more discerning.
In an ideal world, you’d like to future-proof your organization before that 40% becomes 80%. You want to build a system that gathers reviews, manages them, and keeps your customers satisfied.
4 Ways to Get More Customer Reviews
Here there are 4 ways to enhance obtain more client reviews and thus enhance your SEO:
1. Request Feedback from Customer
When requested to lead a review for your product or service, a surprising amount of customers will agree.
- Send a simple request to your previous customer mailing list.
- Set up emails to ask loyal consumers for evaluations at the time of purchase.
- Include a request for a review on your receipt so that it is visible to all customers.
Thank your consumers for their loyalty, and tell them how important favorable reviews are to your business. This genuine engagement increases brand loyalty and can lead to amazing results!
2. Make Giving a Review Easy
Customers will be more likely to post reviews if you make it simple for them to do so. If your clients make purchases or schedule appointments online, giving them a simple opportunity to leave a review immediately on your website boosts your chances.
You can do the same thing with emails, allowing your consumers to provide feedback without even having to leave their inboxes. This reduces the likelihood of them forgetting to write the review later.
Source- https://www.greengeeks.com/tutorials/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/reviews-plugin-search.png
3. Encourage Customers to Provide Reviews
Consider rewarding your consumers if you ask for reviews, and they don’t respond. A tiny discount on a future order can go a long way toward persuading someone to review your website, products, or services.
Source-https://www.connectpos.com/wp-content/uploads/encourage-customers-to-write-reviews-4.jpg
4. Engage the services of a review management firm
Online review management systems are a cost-effective and simple approach to collecting feedback. Most low-cost SEO services also include review management, and these can produce spectacular results.
Top Tips to Get Customer Reviews
- Follow a strategy—do your homework, figure out how you want to distribute your evaluations, and prioritize which platforms you want to focus on first. The more prepared you are, the better your results will be.
- Make the review procedure as simple as possible for your customers, and they will be more likely to submit comments. If you want to get results, you must adapt to the ease of today’s consumers.
- Offer a little discount or reward points to use in your store in exchange for each review. You don’t want to give away things in exchange for reviews, but offering a tiny discount or reward points to use in your store is a good option. Customers demand something in return for their compliments of your organization.
- Follow up with an email. After each purchase, follow up with a request for a review. Then follow up with a thank-you note or a reminder to your customer to post a review. The more follow-up you do, the better.
- Request evaluations as soon as possible. You don’t want a popup asking for feedback after you’ve completed your purchase, but the sooner you make your request, the better. When the experience is still fresh in their memories, customers will feel more compelled to post a review.
- Do not get involved in malpractices about review generation. It can backfire at any moment.
Conclusion
Reviews will impact both your bottom line and your SEO. Now that you’re aware of your possibilities, you can begin devising a strategy to take advantage and start generating more reviews.
Unless you’re doing everything yourself, you’ll undoubtedly want to look into budget SEO services to find the finest package offer for your small business. Examine the services provided by these companies to get a sense of what you want to do, and then design your own plan. What Role Do Customer Reviews Play in SEO?
Make a list of top websites like Yelp, Google, and Facebook, as well as industry-specific review sites. These top platforms will help you increase organic traffic, particularly if you choose local keywords.
The success of your ecommerce business largely depends on how your customers feel while using your product. If they share their happy experience on Facebook, Twitter, or on a high-traffic consumer forum on the web, it will up your brand’s credibility and with that, the number of people willing to become your customer.
But what if they feel awful using your service and they decide to post their feedback on any of the aforementioned platforms? It could be disastrous for all your marketing efforts.
Negative reviews discourage the herd about your products. And if there are so many negative remarks about your brand on social media, then you are in trouble. It could be an earthshaking experience for your overall profitability.
You, in that case, will need to put your efforts to persuade and regain the trust of your audience.
Customer Reviews Are Important!
An increase in one star in your Yelp rating can lead to a 5% to 9% increase in your revenue.
Reviews increase the profitability of your ecommerce business, apart from giving you a chance to identify your happy customers – who are your largest marketing channel. They promote your brand without charging you a single penny.
Contrarily, dissatisfied customers give your brand negative publicity, which can have an adverse impact on your sales.
Customer reviews also reveal several facts, which you don’t know, about your brand. They work the same way audits do – they disclose the most liked and disliked aspects of your products.
If you hire an auditor, it would cost you thousands of dollars to get insights into the performance of your brand. Customer feedbacks give you that information for free!
Here are some of the biggest reasons why leading organizations (and you should too) encourage customers to rate and review their service –
- Helps understand customers and their expectations from your brand
- Shows scope for quality enhancement
- Boosts credibility
- Gives your brand social proof
- Makes consumers feel more powerful while using your brand
- Increases customer loyalty
- Enhances engagement
- Improves engagement
- Enables word of mouth
- Attracts more reviews
Reviews Impact Your Ecommerce Sales
Customers’ buying decision relies on how others feel about your product, service, or offering.
Trends suggest that customers like to research and read about a brand before they buy. They visit your website and social media to dig facts and deepen their knowledge about your brand. This makes the customer take an informed buying decision.
Positive Reviews Generate New Sales!
iCustomLabel.com, a website that custom designs stickers and labels, saw an 8% increase in sales in March this year; most of that traffic came from their Google My Business page.
Conversion Rate:
Apart from that, the availability of reviews on your Facebook page or Google My Business, or on any other industry specific review site can increase your conversion rate by 270%.
Conversion rate is the percentage of leads or visitors on your website converting into customers. If this metric goes up, your revenue goes up. If you fail to convert your leads or visitors into customers (or if the conversion rate on your website decreases), it will have a negative impact on your overall sales process.
Reviews have the potential to attract or distract the buyer sentiment. It is a major factor that helps prospects decide whether they will buy from you or not.
Trust Building:
57% of customers will use a product, only if it has 4 or more stars. Moreover, about 91% of customers take online reviews as a personal recommendation. Whoa!
Estimate unveil that positive reviews boost your sales by 18%. They can help built trust and helps increase your credibility – the two factors that convince people to take an action in your favor.
In your total ecommerce sales, the customers who trust your brand have a grand part to play. If they are happy and trust you, there are chances they will buy from you.
But if they don’t trust you, they will hesitate investing in your brand. If the trust of loyal customer gets broken, they would not consider your brand again. Even worse, they could spread the negative word about you.
Reviews work both ways. Both positive and negative reviews encourage users to take an action – whether in your favor or against.
Negative Reviews Push Your Customers Away:
While positive reviews bring you new customers, negative reviews can distract the ones who you think are your loyal customers.
Just one negative review can cost you about 30 customers! Imagine how many customers you would lose if there is an issue with the quality of the product or service. So, always focus on the quality of what you offer.
How to Monitor Reviews –
To make the most of it, you will need to track the reviews and take strategic actions on them.
If you receive a positive review, the customer who has posted it should be appreciated. You could give them a shout on your timeline as well. This might urge others to post their reviews too. The more positive reviews you have, the better it is for your authenticity and sales!
If there is a new negative review, then also, the reviewer should be appreciated – for bringing the concern into your knowledge. You can look into what didn’t work for them. Each negative review gives you a chance to fix an issue that you don’t know about, and eventually, upgrade the quality of your product.
So, how do you monitor the reviews about your brand? You can task your customer service team to monitor the reviews posted about you on different platforms and channels.
In addition to that, you can integrate the social listening tool in your CRM and program it to alert you whenever there is mention of your brand on the web and social. Using this tool, you can address the reviews in a timely manner.