In this post, we’re going to be talking about reviews and how they matter for local SEO. Reviews aren’t just important to potential customers, they’re a weighted factor in Google’s local algorithm. Remember, Google’s local algorithm has always been entity based and customer reviews are basically crowdsourced entity data.
Think about how you decide where you’re going to shop when you’re looking for a local business. One of the first things you do is read their reviews. You want to see what other people think and what experiences they had at that particular business. If a business has bad reviews, you’re much less likely to go there. Google’s algorithm uses reviews the same way. If a business has bad reviews, it’s less likely to show up higher in search results.
It’s not just about your total review score, the number of reviews matters as does the overall sentiment of what reviewers have said. In fact, if certain keywords appear in your reviews, you’ll be more likely to show up in searches for those keywords.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a perfect review score. In reality, one or two bad reviews helps you look more real.
In fact, several studies have shown that you don’t want a perfect review score. The sweet spot is a review score between 4.2 and 4.6.
In that range, you’ve got a good score overall, but a few bad reviews here and there. No one will think your reviews are fake and you’re more likely to attract customers.
Potential customers will actually seek out your bad reviews.
Think again about when you’re deciding on a local business or even reading reviews on a particular product, what’s the first thing you do when you look at the reviews? You change the sort filter so you can read the bad reviews. You want to read about the bad experience people had and how the business responded.
The most important step for getting awesome reviews is to simply care about customer service. If you’re providing an awesome customer experience, you’re going to get good reviews.
If you’re shady and don’t care about your customers, you’re going to get bad reviews.
Some business owners are scared because if they put effort into reviews and reputation management, they’re worried about getting bad reviews and they’re typically businesses that know they’re going to get bad reviews. If you fix internal problems and focus on great customer service, you don’t have to be worried about getting bad reviews.
It’s also important to acquire reviews on different sites. Google reviews are the most prominent since they show front and center when someone searches for your business, but you need reviews on other sites as well. It’s not natural for all of your customers to leave every review on Google.
Google’s algorithm expects your reviews to be spread among multiple review sites. Besides Google, you need to get reviews or recommendations on Facebook, any industry-specific review sites and whichever review site feeds Apple Maps.
In the US, that’s Yelp.
Even though Yelp is primarily used for restaurants and hospitality-type businesses, Apple made a deal with Yelp. So the reviews that show for businesses in Apple Maps come from the business’s Yelp profiles, not from Google. You don’t want to have a great score with a lot of reviews on Google only to show on Apple Maps is has a handful of reviews and a two-star rating. How many customers will pull up their iPhones for directions only to decide not to do business with you when they see your low review score.
Outside of the US, Apple Maps review stars could come from several different review sites. It’s different in every country and even different between verticals. So to find out which site matters for your business, search for a few of your important keywords on Apple Maps. Check out all the businesses that are listed and see where the reviews come from.
You might see Tripadvisor, Booking.com, Foursquare, or some other sites listed as the source.
Yelp will always be the default. So if you don’t have reviews on the site that typically feeds your business type, Apple Maps will show your Yelp score instead.