If you’re a small business owner, Google My Business is your best friend! The Google Maps review system offers customers the chance to leave feedback for other Google users and that’s a great opportunity for your business! Word-of-mouth has always been great for small businesses to gain new business and online reviews are a great way to showcase what your customers think of you to potential customers!

However, getting new reviews is easier said than done. Unfortunately, you’re dependent on your customers to complete the process of leaving a review for your business. While that is a challenge, you do have options to help prod your customers!

Read On to Learn More About Local SEO!

Why Google Reviews Are Important For Your Business

Reputation marketing is a huge opportunity for your business to make a lasting impression on your customers & a positive impact on your bottom line!

Reputation Marketing is Cost-Efficient

• • Pay-per-click advertising, like Google Ads and Facebook Ads, is a great way to reach new customers, but it does require some ad spend budget, budgets that smaller brands often don’t have. Reputation marketing uses the quality and quantity of your Google reviews to prove that your customers love your business! While you can use other mediums to promote your Google listing to get your customers to leave reviews, it’s free to create a Google listing on Google Maps!

Reputation Marketing Uses Human Psychology

• • Advertising and self-promotion is a great way to promote your brand, but your audience will usually take everything you say with a grain of salt. After all, who doesn’t make themselves look as good as possible on their website or social media profiles? It’s only natural! Your customers and potential customers know this and are a little more guarded when viewing promotional materials. Remember, the average American sees over 1,000 ads in a day! Review sites, like Google Maps, Bing Maps, Yelp, Best Reviews, and Angie’s List, come across as more honest to your potential customers. These sites are sharing what REAL customers think about your brand, warts and all! You can build an amazing website, write perfect ad copy, and have a killer product, but if your business has more negative reviews than positive reviews, you’re in trouble. 

Reputation Marketing Improves Your SEO

• • Google uses a number of different ranking factors to determine where to put your website on search engine results pages and applies a similar process to ranking addresses on Google Maps. One of the best ways to show Google that your business is a valuable option for your customers is to have great reviews! Remember, Google wants to give their search users a great experience and the best way to do that on Google Maps is to provide the best options possible for those users’ searches! For instance, it’s better for Google to show a coffee shop with forty 4- and 5-star reviews at number 1 on search than the coffee shop with only three reviews. If you’re looking to rank higher on Google Maps, increasing the number of high-quality reviews your listing has is one of your best options!

How to Get More Google Reviews

If you’re a small business owner, you need to find a way to get more Google reviews to dominate the local SEO in your area. However, this can be easier said than done. Asking customers to leave Google reviews is one approach, but it’s one that leaves it up to your customers. 

That can leave a lot up to chance and we’d recommend the following over directly asking clients to leave you reviews.

Incorporate Review Requests Into Your Email Marketing

Let’s say you are running an autobody shop and have a new customer email marketing campaign running. You can design that campaign’s first email to link to your shop’s Google listing and ask for a review! This direct approach will drive customers to your listing while your business is still top of mind and will result in more reviews!

Backlink To Your Google Listing From Your Website

Consider making a dedicated webpage to showcase the testimonials you’ve received via your Google listing. This is a great way to promote the many happy customers you’ve served, but it’s also a great way to backlink to your Google listing! Make sure that you’re asking for the review with large text and have the right branding and visuals on the page, but this is a phenomenal way to both show your expertise and gain some reviews!

Ask Via Social Media

If you’re running your social media profiles and are seeing positive feedback in your Facebook comments or Twitter replies, don’t hesitate to ask! This approach is a little bit better than asking in-person customers since your social media followers have already demonstrated that they’re willing to leave you public feedback! 

Optimize Your Google Listing

Optimizing your Google listing won’t directly lead to more reviews, but it will help make your listing easy to find on Google Maps, which in turn increases the odds of more people leaving reviews. Contact a local SEO or reputation marketing agency that can claim your listing, ensure all information is correct across multiple review sites, and upload branded listing photos. This Local SEO help will keep you up at the top of Google Maps and visible to Google Map users!

Dominate Google & Local SEO with JSL Marketing & Web Design

Local SEO can be difficult, but rest assured that JSL Marketing & Web Design is a world-class SEO agency! We’ve helped countless clients climb to the top of local and organic SEO in their area and would love to help you do the same! If interested, we’d also recommend any of the following to help highlight your Google listing.

• Email Marketing

• Social Media

• Copywriting

• Photography & Videography

• Print Marketing 

• & More

Speaking of reviews, we don’t mean to brag, but we’ve received some great reviews ourselves over the years from our elated clients!

“During the redesign, we were in touch at least once a week, either by phone or email. Now that the site is live we communicate once or twice a month to discuss our SEO services. They’ve been wonderful to work with—they’re always on top of any task or correction, no matter how small.” – Melissa W.

“James and Sarah are great to work with! We were new to the SEO marketing and they were generous with their time in making sure we understood everything that was happening.”-Kate R;

“James and Sarah have done a great job for us. Our pages starting climbing in the search results almost immediately. The content that they have added has been top-notch. Because we are so satisfied with the work that they have done for us, we are having them redesign our website.” – Dickie H. 

Call Us Today at 855.458.2873 to Begin Your Local SEO Project!