There's no denying that earning and encouraging consumers to submit keyword-rich evaluations has local SEO and general company benefits. Customers will often submit reviews whether or not you want them to.
Even bad evaluations can be beneficial if they are addressed quickly and in a favorable manner. The worst thing a firm can do is fail to respond to a review in order to demonstrate that it is paying attention to the customer. In addition to their conversion impact, reviews are a local ranking component that, depending on a variety of criteria, can help or hurt your rankings.
Customer reviews are an important measure of a local business's reputation in the community. After all, who better to tell Google how valuable a company is than its customers? The events of the last two years have pushed an increasing number of people online. They will undoubtedly continue to seek advice from their peers on which companies to buy from or collaborate with in the future.
In fact, according to a BrightLocal local customer review research issued in December 2020, 87 percent of consumers read online reviews for local companies in 2020, up from 81 percent in 2019. According to a new local consumer study conducted by BIA/Kelsey and ConStat, 97 percent of customers now utilize internet media to investigate products or services in their area. "90 percent use search engines, 48 percent use Internet Yellow Pages, 24 percent utilize vertical sites, and 42 percent use comparison shopping sites," according to the survey. Businesses with a higher volume of good ratings tend to be rewarded by Google and other search engines since they appear in the coveted Map Pack at the top of organic local search results.
It shows up in search results more than 30% of the time, and its links receive up to 70% of organic search traffic. The Map Pack (or Local Pack) includes three Google Business Profiles, each with a star rating, customer reviews, and contact information, as well as their star rating, customer reviews, and business data. SEMrush recently conducted research of the Local Pack for 5,624 businesses and discovered that the average star rating was 4.1 and, more crucially, that the business in the first position had more favorable reviews on average than those in positions 2 and 3.
Whitespark’s polled SEO experts also point out the importance of reviews to Google Business Profile conversions, which represent customers taking action (i.e. clicking, calling, etc.).
In this case, the following review characteristics were deemed to be most important with the top 2 being the overall top factors in GBP conversion:
High Star Ratings.
Positive Sentiment in Review Text.
Quantity of Google Reviews.
The recency of Reviews.
Presence of Owner Responses to Reviews.
Quantity of Positive Review Attributes.
Another advantage of customer evaluations is that they provide keyword-rich material related to the local business as people comment on the company (brand), products, or services they've used. The business owner/managers do not have to develop this information. However, there is a responsibility on the firm to respond to evaluations, which we'll address later. Based on this, whether you own or run a local business, you should take advantage of the benefits of client feedback.
Google reviews given through a Google Business Profile page are the most valuable sort of reviews for many local businesses. Google reviews account for 57.5 percent of all online local reviews, according to ReviewTrackers, with Facebook reviews accounting for 19 percent. Obtaining reviews on industry-specific or locally focused websites may be beneficial to specialized firms. Reviews from these sites will, by definition, carry less weight in organic search rankings, and hence should not be sought out in advance.
One thing that has never changed, regardless of the media, is that people prefer to do business with people and businesses they can trust. They frequently enlist the help of family, friends, and neighbors to verify the legitimacy of the company they are contemplating. Online reviews are merely an extension of this process to the relatively new medium of the internet, where current buyer journeys are increasingly taking place. Google acknowledges this and rewards businesses with increased organic search visibility for acquiring, monitoring, and efficiently responding to their client base.