Do Local Business Reviews Improve SEO? [Infographic]

If you’re reading this blog post, we think you’re already a savvy local business marketer. You probably know that SEO helps consumers find your services. But you might not know whether online ratings impact your SEO, or how to best optimize your local business reviews for search engines.

Online reviews can help your local business show up when people use search engines. The more reviews you have, the more Google will know about your business and the more you will be optimized for search engine users.

Here are a few reasons why local business reviews are good for SEO, as well as a few actions you can take for more visibility.

Excellent Online Ratings Lead to More Clicks

Let’s say you’re looking up dinner options on your phone or laptop. You have to choose between two restaurants, neither of which you’ve been to before. You see that one has a 4.5 star average while the other has a 2.5 star average.

If you’re like many consumers, you probably don’t even consider local businesses with low average online ratings. You’re much less likely to click on the 2.5 star restaurant’s site, which harms your local business’s SEO compared to your competitors. This makes your site less visible to prospects.

On the other hand, local businesses with high average ratings get more consideration. This leads to more clicks and more purchasing, which in turn gives positive SEO signals to Google

Also, one of the most common sources of reviews is Google. These reviews and ratings are associated with your Google My Business profile, which is also where Google gets your location and business information. So, the more people engage with your local business page, the higher Google will rank your page.

To improve your local business’s clickthrough rate and SEO, take action to get more reviews from happy customers. A simple review management service (which you can get for free) will help you motivate more customers to leave a review, leading to a click-worthy star rating.

Reviewers Describe Your Local Business to Search Engines

When customers review your site, they often unintentionally do so in a way that improves your local business SEO. People frequently describe your products or services in their online reviews, which helps your site rank for the keywords they use.

Reviewers tend to use the same terms in reviews that they would use in search engines, so online reviews may fill in critical content gaps on your website. You may find yourself ranking for keywords you weren’t even considering.

Reviews on Google My Business give Google plenty of fresh, keyword-rich content to sift through to figure out what your company is all about. Similarly, you can bring customer reviews to your site to improve your SEO.

Ask reviewers to tell you what they liked and disliked about their experience with your local business. This not only gives you valuable feedback for future development but also improves your SEO right now.

Search Engines Trust Customers More Than They Trust You

Which do you trust more, a business’s advertisement or a recommendation from a neutral friend? Most people prefer to make sales decisions based on recommendations, and search engines do too.

If you’ve read a little about SEO, you probably know that links from other sites are important for your search engine rankings. That’s because Google trusts input from customers and other people more than it trusts what you say about yourself. That trust applies to online reviewers as well.

Local business reviews can function as word-of-mouth marketing to both consumers and search engines. When customers recommend your local business in online reviews, they help convince Google your business is real and fully legit.

Online reviews prove that other people have interacted with your local business and give Google that much more information about you. Get online reviews from as many customers as possible to improve your word-of-mouth marketing and gain search engines’ trust.

Get More Local Business Reviews for Free

The bottom line is that your local business needs plenty of recent online reviews to improve its SEO. If you aren’t getting many reviews, or if you feel that unhappy customers are overrepresented in your ratings, don’t worry: we can help!

Kudo is a free service that helps you get reviews from more customers, particularly happy customers who may not be as motivated to leave a review. Our tool lets you request reviews, link positive reviews directly to your customer’s preferred review site, and redirect unhappy reviewers to a private page so you can resolve the issue with minimal impact on your online ratings.

You don’t need to supply a credit card or spend a lot of time working for each review. All you need to do is enter a customer’s name and email address, and Kudo will do the rest automagically. There’s no reason not to give Kudo a try! GET IT FOR FREE >