Are Google Places Reviews Really That Important?

You may ask yourself:

“But most people who leave reviews are angry in the first place, I mean, happy customers don’t leave reviews, right?”

And you could not be more wrong. Would you be surprised if you heard the average online review is 4 and a half stars? So maybe you need to start thinking of your online reputation. Combined with a well optimized Google Places profile, having great reviews can be a money stream for your business.

Warning: Don’t Buy Fake Reviews

Over the last couple years, a rise in reputation management companies have been coming on the scene. Some of these companies, as well as software out there, use black hat methods to get reviews. In other words, they generate fake reviews, and try to post them from many Google accounts, in order to fool Google, as well as customers. Google has full time staff who’s whole job is to find ways to catch penalize companies who utilize webspam in their online marketing efforts, and you can be sure they’re getting smarter and smarter at determining which reviews are fake. You may have short term results by buying fake reviews, but sooner or later, you’ll regret it when your Google Places profile is wiped from Google Maps.

How can they know if my reviews are fake?

Nobody knows the exact signals that Google’s algorithm uses to determine fake reviews, or what signals will be added in the future, but if I were given the task to investigate fake reviews, here’s a few things I would look at- and remember, Google is much smarter than me:

• Unnatural timing of reviews (ie. 5 reviews in 1 day, then none for 5 months)
• Unnatural or fake Google accounts (ie. review is posted from an account that was made that day, and leaves no other reviews or has any other Google activity whatsoever)
• Spammy commercial, non-candid review text copy that looks more like it was written by a car salesman
• Many reviews left for a local business from an IP that is in Russia or Nigeria (How would someone they know anything about Suzie’s Cupcakes in Provo, Utah?
• “Customer” leaves reviews for many of the same type of business:

Besides making Google mad, you could also turn off savvy customers, and even get in trouble with the law. Repeat after me: “No fake reviews. Ever.”

How to Get More Real Reviews

Now that you know what NOT to do, you’re wanting to get to the point:

“What are safe, legitimate ways to get more Google Places reviews?”

1. Place text links or image links on your website, asking for happy customers to leave a positive review if they get the chance. It’s a good idea to link to not just your Google Places profile, but also your Yelp, CitySearch and other profiles. Having reviews from many different local business directories goes a long way to helping your site rank in search engines.
2. Facebook – Post a status update asking fans to leave you a review. What better pool of people to leave reviews? They obviously took the time to find you and like you on Facebook, so they are the exact candidates that might take the time to leave you a review, particularly if their experience was superb. Tip: Entice with humor. (For example: “Every time a happy customer leaves a review for Jimmy’s Auto Repair, an angel gets its wings”)
3. Email Signature – In your business email signature, you’re certainly going to have your business name, address, phone number and website URL, but why not put a small link to your Google Places page with anchor text like “Leave us a review on Google”.
4. QR Code – QR codes are those square barcode things that you can scan with your mobile device that will take the user to a website. Generate a QR code that links to your Google Places page. Post that QR code on marketing materials, decals, business cards, or wherever practical. Sometimes, curious customers will click on the QR just because they need to know where it goes. The more customers you drive there, the more likely you’ll get them to write you a review.
5. Business Card – On the back of your business card, you can easily place your QR, as well as a small text line that simply says “Review us on Google Places“
6. Flyers – Design a postcard or flyer that has clear instructions on where to go to leave you a review. Include your QR code, bit.ly link, and make it personal. Hand these out to all your customers when they check out, or you can mail it to them in your promotional mailings.
7. Email – Do you have a customer that was particularly satisfied, and you know they’d review you if they knew you wanted them to? Send a personal email.
8. Friends & Family – Surely your friends and family have patronized your business and would be more than willing to give you a great review. Call your brother, sister, mother, father, uncle, aunt, cousin, grandma, grandpa and best friends, and tell them that spending 5 minutes telling the world how awesome your business is will help to skyrocket your sales.
9. Thank You Cards – Send a hand written thank you card to your customers, thanking them for their business. The customers are more likely to open the card if it is hand written. Short and sweet does the trick. Something like “I really appreciate you for choosing us as your family dentist! I look forward to your next visit. If you get You can go the comedy route, or you can go the sincere route. If your customers are truly loyal to you, they want you to succeed, and if they think it’s important to you to get online reviews, they’ll appreciate your honesty and be more than happy to leave you a review.
10. Signs at Business Location – Post your QR code, along with “Review us on Google Places” at your checkout, and near the exit on a sign. This will be the last thing the customer sees when they leave, and hopefully will be on their mind when it matters.

As always, Google won’t release the exact signals that will trigger these penalties, as they don’t want to give the culprits a means to ‘game the system’ or work around the methods of detecting the signals. But we can be certain it is in line with Google’s stated quest to deliver the most relevant and high quality pages for a search result.  If you’re goal as a webmaster is to appear to be the most relevant, without actually being the most relevant, you stand to lose in the long run.

How to Avoid a Penguin Smackdown:

1.  Don’t post hidden on-page text and links that are only there to boost SERPs.
2. Avoid deceptive link cloaking.
3.  For the love of pete, don’t use keyword stuffing.
4. Don’t post many pages about the same basic thing, topic with spun content for the sole purpose of ranking several keywords for the same content.
5. Don’t use content-poor doorway pages. The more unique, engaging and rich your content is, the more you stand to win in the long run.
6. Keep content original, fresh, and in-depth. Blogs are great for this. Update your blog regularly. It’s better to post one blog that is super rich in content less frequently, and over 1,000 words than to post a 50 word blog every day.
7. Rich content doesn’t mean just text copy. Google is looking for relevant content. That means text copy, images, videos, podcasts, quotes, bulleted and numbered lists (like this one), and other rich forms of media that are beneficial to your user’s UX (user experience).
8. Keep anchor texts as varied and natural as possible. If you get a new link from a great, legitimate source who is willing to link back to you, make sure that you have them post the link how they wish, and not with exact anchor text match that you want. This has been overused by black-hatters and is now a red flag to search engines.

Adapt to Survive

It’s now more important than ever that you choose an SEO company like Strike that is aware of such updates, and adapts their strategies to the ever-changing Google algorithms. Some of the things that have now penalized sites in the SERPs are tactics that were used for many years in the SEO community.  As with anything in business, you must adapt to survive.

Google Places allows searchers to find local businesses near their location or near a location of their choosing. It also has rich features like reviews, photos, videos and promotions. Typically if someone is searching a local term such as “Colorado Springs Chiropractor”, Google sees the city name in the search phrase and determines the searcher is looking for a chiropractor in Colorado Springs. So in the top results, you will see paid Google Adwords results, a Google Maps image with markings of chiropractors in Colorado Springs, and Google Places listings with local reviews highlighted.

You will notice that only a few results are highlighted with letters, such as “A”, “B”, “C”, etc. Google chooses what it thinks are the most relevant results to the top of these letter listings. Factors that determine relevance are the number of reviews for that chiropractor, relevant keywords in the Google Places listing title, in the website’s domain name and more.

Part of the science and art of search engine optimization (SEO) is to give Google what it is looking for. We want to make extra clear that your site shows up as one of the most relevant places that relates to your target keyword phrases. If your business shows up as one of those tiny, obscure red dots on the map, you’re not likely to get that customer to view your site or call you. However, if you show up in the “A” or “B” slot of the search, you will be much more likely to be seen. You will have your address, phone number, website, and reviews showing for all to see, right at the top. The more of the factors your listing has, the more Google knows your business is one of the most relevant, most serious businesses in your niche.

All of Strike’s packages include creating (if you don’t have one yet) and optimizing your Google Places listing, cultivating relevancy over time.  Ranking in Google Places is one of the quickest and most effective ways to get local searchers hungry for your service to see your business. If your goal is to get your phone ringing, you cannot ignore it.

7 out of 10 Americans use the internet rather than a phone book.

According to a Nielsen Online Custom Survey from WebVisible, Inc., only 44% of small businesses in America even have a website. Combine that with the fact that 7 out of 10 people use the internet instead of the phone book, and you can see why even for a local business, having a website is essential to standing out in the crowd.

But many small businesses have set up a static website years ago, and never do anything with their site. Rather than serve as a marketing tool to acquire new customers, their sites essentially serves as an online business card. Mainly, if someone knows where to go to see their website, they can go there. As you can see, the room for improvement for small businesses to gain ground in customers is vast. If you have a website at all, you’re already in the top 56%.

Now that you have a website, you’d love to just drive customers to your door with it right? Well this takes a good web marketing plan. You need to have a stable SEO program, as well as a local online advertising campaign.

According to seo.com, the good news for your small business is only 27% of small businesses have an SEO plan. This means if you get on top of it now, you will be in the top 4th of your competition!  Even though only 27% of small businesses have a current SEO plan, 52% of small businesses plan to increase their budgets for SEO in the next year or two. This means you need to get on top of it now. Unless you have the time to learn SEO yourself, or have the budget for a full time web marketing department, it’s a good idea to outsource this to a company like Strike.