Reviews from customers have always been a trust-building factor for business and its importance is even greater.
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The three main benefits of getting customer reviews are:
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To acquire testimonials that can be pretty useful for both online and offline marketing.
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To better understand and analyze the do’s and don’ts of any business
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For better visibility of the business on Google, it is important to gather genuine and honest reviews of the services used and it should be ever-increasing and must be taken care of all the aspects of local search strategy and not underestimating the review data
One of the undenying power of any customer testimonial is its impact on the minds of the potential customers and leads. When a third party says the same, people are surely gonna believe. According to a study, it has been found that customer reviews are one of the fail-proof way to influence purchase. Around 88% of consumers consult reviews before a purchase is done out of which 63% of consumers are likely to purchase from a website that has positive customer reviews.
Businesses generally face a dilemma in commiting to online reviews because of the vulnerability in receiving a bad review. But few realize that a few odd bad reviews aren’t bad at all and instead define a situation to your new visitors that you actually care about your customers and that can increase conversions upto 67%, according to a recent study.
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Are these testimonials important for an SEO strategy? According to Google’s latest algorithm, these are the very first thing that you would see first in case of local searches and your customers would know how well your business is received in the market. By doing this, in the large part would make things smooth for you as seeing the reviews make you have an average review by adding it to the new Google Maps features. Updating its map search layout, Google show ratings and reviews prominently and with Google, the content is everything. And if that content, is contributed directly by the users it holds a special place for Google and is ranked fresh, new and unique in nature.
Now the quality and quantity of reviews on Google is another of the factors that is relevant for ranking on local SEO. When a person conducts a search, the results for local products and services and the business listings would include customer reviews, thus showcasing more of authenticity and credibility of your products. If you have a 4.5 star rating with 18 reviews and is a strong proof that whether or not the product or service is trustworthy.
In recent times, the clients would review products and services and are posted on the website. Though there are plenty of websites like Yelp, Trip Advisor and other social media sites where the reviews would appear. In order to make the most out of reviews, it is important to maintain control over the same and making your customers to leave reviews about their experience on Google+ Local page.
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Yes, the relevance of customer reviews is quite high, specifically online reviews. But how exactly can you ensure of a good reviews for business. First things first, it is important to deliver overwhelming customer service, since happy customers automatically means happy reviews. Secondly, you need to chart out the working strategy that would encourage reviews rather than waiting for it to happen on its own. It is an easy way to collect online reviews by starting with friends and families. After the strategy is put in place, you can ask both the existing and new customers about their purchase and the more quickly it is done it is easy for your customers to leave reviews and can include links right off your website to leave reviews.
However, be aware of paid reviews since it includes product incentives in return of the reviews. While it may seem as a good way to go, it is against Google’s terms of services. Once you’re caught, it would damage your brand reputation to the maximum.