Want to Improve Your Ranking? Positive Reviews Can Help

SEO, PPC and SMO are not the only ways that can influence your ranking in the SERPs. You need to have a good reputation to grow your brand image and that can be done through ORM (online reputation management). Being a process of monitoring and improving your reputation online, it is a great way to boost other digital marketing techniques.

As most visitors are prone to read online reviews before they go for a purchase, Google tries to place websites having positive reviews on top of the SERPs. Thus, reviews not only influence buying decisions but also leave a great impact on the rankings.

How Reviews Affect Rankings

When customers trust you, they fill up forms, subscribe newsletters and visit your site again. As you gain the trust of more people, you get an increased number of visits which is a key factor to earn a good ranking. The more people purchase, the more they recommend you and it results in more traffic to your site. It confirms to Google that your site can be a good match to the users’ searches. Reviews are also the prime factors for local business search as Google counts your reviews and scores.

How Interactions Affect Rankings

Getting your company recommended by the customers of the review sites is also instrumental in getting you backlinks. But, your task doesn’t end here. To make full use of the reviews, you need to spend more time to respond to the reviews and communicate with customers. It will increase your engagement and brand awareness. Consequently, the authority of your site will improve and Google will start preferring you when people’s search matches with your business.

How to Earn Reviews

It is very important to have an effective plan to earn reviews. You should also give some thoughts on the basis of which the review platforms will work for you. But before that, do some research. Just go to Google and search “industry+reviews” and check the sites on the first page. Declaring some attractive offers, posting new videos and publishing infographics on your products and services can also help you earn more reviews.

Review Platforms

What you should be aware of is that there are some review platforms that show their reviews exclusively on their sites. You can also have platforms that syndicate their reviews to other search engines. Therefore, before you choose your platform, check how they are going to benefit you.

As there are a lot of online review platforms, it is really difficult to choose the suitable ones for your business. Here’s a list of some platforms that are popular for being effective.

Google Local Reviews:

It is one of the most popular review platforms that come up on the right-hand side of the Google’s search results. Listing your business here can be a mighty move for your website’s presence on local directories. You can also respond to reviews through a verified Google+ page. The reviews and comments that you get through GMB can effectively boost your search rankings. Added to this, your information and reviews are displayed on Google Knowledge Graph.

Amazon:

Amazon, renowned as product search engine is also very effective as a review platform. Getting shiny gold stars and customer reviews on this platform adds great value to your products.

Yelp:

Yelp has gained a reputation as a free review site where customers rate businesses. Here, both businesses and consumers can register themselves for free. It also allows you to respond to the comments of your customers.

Yellow Pages:

Yellow Pages has a huge authority as a business listing site. It’s been providing helpful information to the users from a long while and thus, has also gained the trust of people. In case of local business search, printed yellow pages get additional importance from viewers. Therefore, you should consider Yellow Pages if you want to collect some positive reviews for your business.

Facebook:

The sphere of Facebook is not limited to social activities. It’s more than that. Due to its immense popularity, numerous businesses use this platform to design online marketing strategies. And now it has also become one of the most effective platforms to get reviewed. You can find the review and rating option on the left-hand sidebar on your Facebook page.

Twitter:

Although there isn’t much probability that a user searches Twitter specifically for reviews, what is exceptional about the platform is that Google crawls and indexes tweets. It means there is a chance that reviews and comments on your products and services can appear in the SERPs. Therefore, Twitter is going to be effective if used properly.

Above all, you should have a review acquisition strategy to generate positive reviews and make them work properly to get good rankings in the SERPs. Besides, you need to set a fixed time to respond to the queries and comments regularly and build a relationship with your customers. This would make them feel that they are valued by you and their words do not fall on deaf ears.