Reviews play a significant role in securing social proof for your brand. When customers are choosing whether to trust in a product or a service enough to pay for it, it’s usually the reviews that most influence their final decision. Your SEO optimization efforts will bring customers to you, but reviews will make them consider a purchase.
Of course, every business wants to have mostly positive reports. In the eyes of a business owner, a negative review usually is viewed as a huge problem, especially for a recently launched product. However, both negative and positive reviews can have a positive impact on SEO. Local SEO, in particular, can benefit from reviews. Let’s take a look at how reviews impact SEO:
The More Reviews, The Better
Whether the reviews of your business are positive or negative, it can benefit your ranking efforts. While we don’t know precisely how much reviews can help SEO, it’s certain that the number of them affects your local SEO visibility – not to mention social proof.
And negative reviews won’t hurt you that much, as long as they aren’t the majority. Having a few negative reviews among the good ones increases your credibility because customers tend to think that overly praising reviews are fake. Additionally, they rarely ever read every single review – most people base their decisions on a business’ average rating rather than individual assessments. With increased credibility and a good reputation with customers, they will be more inclined to spend time on your website, which helps with ranking.
Reviews as An Opportunity to Manage Reputation
Of course, even if you do get negative reviews, it’s an excellent opportunity to do some reputation management. Google My Business support suggests that businesses respond to negative reviews and address the customers’ concerns to improve the service or product. As long as that response is appropriate and respectful of the customer’s opinion, your local SEO ranking is likely to thrive.
SEO and Content Marketing Insights from Reviews
Any SEO consultant or a marketer will tell you that you can glean plenty of useful insights from your reviews, especially negative ones. You can analyze what kind of searches brought these customers to you, and improve your SEO optimization using those insights. If they have questions, you can answer those through your content, which helps your marketing efforts by keeping your content relevant. Moreover, customer complaints from negative reviews help you realize what customers may want that you aren’t providing them. Reviews can be the light in the darkness for your business, helping you navigate the problematic parts of communicating with your customers.
Even though SEO optimization is a great way to enhance your digital marketing strategy, it might take months or years to see results. An SEO consultant could help you reach those results faster. Don’t hesitate to contact me so we can discuss how we could speed up the process and get to the fruition of your digital marketing efforts more quickly. I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.
Rob Dunford is a Marketing Consultant in the Great Toronto Area with over 20 years of experience in implementing marketing plans for small businesses.