Popular sites are well-trafficked sites and Google wants to display them on Page One for their customers. So their engineers have written code to determine in thousands of ways how popular your site is.
One way to determine your site’s popularity is by indexing your Google Customer Reviews. How do yours look to their machines? Are they:
- RECENT? Google tries to put itself in the place of your potential customer. That customer may want to see how recent your reviews are. This shows them that you have lots of customers; that your business is popular. They will feel safer in doing business with you.
- RATING? Is it in the “4s”? The high “4s” is where you want to be. A “5” rating is suspect. Nobody is perfect. But low ratings and your prospect may buy elsewhere.
- LOW OVERALL RATING? Don’t feature low-rated reviews prominently on your website. They are a major factor in prospects deciding to do business with you. Hide them until you have got them in the “4s”.
- DEVELOP A PLAN: You must have a plan in the office to solicit reviews especially if you are trying to bring up a low score. We automate it for our clients, and there are services out there that can help you if you’re stumped.
- SALES SHOULD TAKE THE LEAD: Emails or texts should go out regularly asking customers to leave a review. About ⅓ to ½ will. They must have a Gmail account to do so. Sales & Marketing should take the lead here in getting these reviews.
- NEVER PAY FOR REVIEWS: This is against Google’s policy. If they find out they may suspend all of your current reviews and you’ll have to start over. Seems draconian but they’ve done it.
There are so many variables in getting to Page One of Google that you can’t control, so be sure to jump on this one as it’s easy and it’s all in YOUR control!
Onward and upward!
