If you want to have success online today as a business, it is getting more competitive by the minute. That is why it is crucial that you use the best practices to stand out from the competition and increase your conversions while controlling mistakes. Reviews are a powerful part of this puzzle, and here’s why:Improves Rankings
SEO works by rewarding good websites that have relevant keywords in a niche and ranking those websites higher than the others. Google has a variety of parts in their algorithm that determines this. And the good news is that it’s not just keywords, but Google reviews improve local search ranking as well.
Improves Confidence and Clicks
Having reviews does help with the SEO side of the equation by boosting your rankings. However, this aspect appeals to the robots and crawlers of the web. The secondary benefit of reviews on the Google search results is that they also show up underneath your results. The number of stars you have overall on your Google results will now display, from 1 to 5. So a bad review can affect you.
Identification
People want to buy from those they know, like, and trust. That’s because when someone feels like a person is more similar to them and they trust their opinion, they feel more confident in their decision. That is the power behind reviews and their relationship to identification. Your market will identify from other customers that are similar to them. In essence, the mind says “this person seems similar to me and thought that buying this product was good; therefore it would be good for me too.”
Social Proof
If you read any persuasion or sales books, you will quickly learn that social proof is one of the most popular and most effective ways to increase your sales. Your business needs to leverage this every chance you get. Testimonials on your site are great. But imagine how much more you can use social proof when it’s one of the first factors entering the searcher’s mind as they discover your site in the Google search results pages.
Improves Your Paid Ads
SEO is a powerful business approach. It allows you to get more eyeballs on your business without spending as much on paid ads. Still, the marketing world is changing quickly, and SEO should not be your only strategy.
The great thing about reviews is that while they improve your organic ranking, they can also show up in your paid ads as long as you turn those settings on inside your AdWords account. You end up killing two birds with one stone.
More specifically, there is something called a “three pack” that has taken the Google marketing world by storm. When your local business shows up in a paid ad, or in Google Maps, it will now have the chance to include reviews as well. The result is that you could gain an edge over your local competitors when they see that you have reviews (positive, not negative) and the competitors don’t.
Confidence in Your Product
One of the most powerful sales techniques is helping your customer research their options. In the steps of the sale, you go from qualifying them, to proposing your solutions in the form of a presentation, to trying to close.
A common objection is often wanting to think it over for a few days. To overcome this objection, you can show how confident you are by saying “well let’s take a quick look at the reviews” and pulling out your phone to show them how great of a reputation you have.
When it comes to your strategy as a business, focus more on reviews. This approach will allow you to get more clicks, have more social proof, and instill confidence in your market. If you don’t, you’re only leaving money on the table. So implement reviews in your company today and watch
as your profits soar.
