It sounds overly simplistic, but it’s about 99.9% true. Top-ranking websites on Google generally have hundreds of Google Reviews.
In the past, various voices differed about how much, if at all, Google Reviews affected your website’s ranking position on Google. Now all the voices seem to agree that Google customer reviews do affect search rankings. Google even goes so far as to recommend that you respond to all of your customer reviews, as it adds trustworthiness. Google Reviews by your customers are the modern-day equivalent of “word of mouth” advertising.
RECOMMENDATION:
- NUMBER OF GOOGLE REVIEWS: Get as many as you can.
- DON’T HAVE AT LEAST ONE NEW REVIEW PER WEEK?: Start a program to solicit them. Be sure not to offer money, gifts or prizes. Google frowns on this.
- NO TIME TO GET THE REVIEWS? Hire a service or ask your SEO consultant to help.
- ASKING FOR A REVIEW BY TEXT MESSAGE: We find that this has a much better response rate.
- TYPICAL “PUSH BACK”: The customer does not have a Gmail account. They must have one to leave a review on what is technically your company’s Google My Business page.
BOTTOM LINE: Put your reviews on your Homepage, unless your latest review is over one month old. Old reviews are worse than no reviews in our experience. Make sure someone in your company, or at your SEO consultant’s, is managing this all the time.
Onward and Upward!