Local SEO - Review's Strategy
-
I'm trying to brainstorm some ideas for obtaining positive reviews for a my client who's a local business on Yelp and Google+.
I think it's best to capture a customer in the "happy moment" after a successful transaction with that business. I'm thinking integrating the option for customers to leave a review on Yelp or Google+ during the transaction process would be best.
Do you have any suggestions or experiences on the best way to integrate this into a transaction process where a customer physically walks into their business to make the transaction? (it's an Auto Body Shop BTW)
Also any other strategies for getting customers to give reviews?
Much appreciated!
-
Sure, good response. It is a waste of time as well with Yelp as if the reviewers are not trusted Yelp reviewers then the review will be at best ignored and at worst suspicious.
-
No worries! Glad it helped. Reviews are one of those things it is easy to overlook (or over think!). Get a solid process in place, be consistent and it will take care of itself over time.
-
Hi Steve,
You've received some very thoughtful replies here. I am just popping in to say that while the above suggestions sound good to me if applied to Google+ reviews, Yelp does not permit review solicitation in any form. In other words, your client should not be asking customers to review them on Yelp in any way. Not verbally, via email, via CTAs on the website, etc. Their policy is the most stringent in the industry - they want all reviews to be the results of spontaneous activity on the part of consumers. So, while I think you've received some excellent advice here, I would not recommend applying it to Yelp. Hope this saves you some headaches!
-
This makes 100% sense to me, and I think I'll be taking this approach to integrating review gathering workflow for my clients. Thanks a lot for the idea Marcus!
-
Hey Steve
It really can be fairly simple to generate positive reviews for the business and I find that all you really have to do is
A) Ask
B) Make it really, really easy for people to do soAsking at the point of sale in a bricks and mortar shop is not going to work AND it's important to note that asking people to conduct a review is okay but soliciting a review whilst that user is on your property is not okay and could cause problems down the road (all reviews from same IP address etc). It's also a bit mean to pressure people like that so not a good policy even if we ignore online.
A simple approach we have followed works like this:
- Obtain an email for your customer at point of sale
- Email the customer to ask them if they were happy with the service
- If the customer responds in a positive way then ask them for a review
Now, this tackles two important areas
- We ensure the user is happy who we are asking to place the review
- We make it easy for them by linking directly to where we wish the review to be placed and including instructions
You can also steer the ship a bit here (not in a manipulative way) and ask them to mention the location, service etc. This makes the content of the reviews solid for search purposes and useful for other users considering using your service. Win Win.
We go into more detail here with some simple email templates etc: http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/a-review-strategy-for-local-seo/
Hope that helps! Getting good reviews requires that folks are actually good at what they do (which I am sure your client are) and then asking people to place the review whilst making it as easy as possible to do so.
Refs:
-
If you have a great product then do not bring this up while they are buying from you because this way it looks like you are hungry about it. For one of my client what i did was I setup an automated email that will go after a week of their purchase and ask them to share their experience with others in the community.
Remember you have to have a great product or else this idea can kill your local business.
-
Hi Steve,
You should check out Customer Lobby. They solicit phone reviews from the clients and have different packages. One one of our team member's recent visits to a local medical clinic, the doctor's secretary actually handed out business cards with links to Yelp and Google+ review pages for the doctor and was encouraging everyone to leave their feedback on the sites... Something to think about.
Cheers,
SEO5..
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Considering Moving to New Domain and SEO
Hello, One of our sites has been using a domain since 2005 and is shown below. The domain is terrible for multiple reasons, hyphens and doesn't even reflect our actual company name. Not to mention its embarrassing when telling a customer to email us at support @ pro "dash, yes the hyphen" gift.... I wanted to change it long ago but feared it would hurt my SEO rankings. After taking Bruce Clay's training class back in 2004, we managed to rank top 10 for most targeted keywords. My ranking have slowly dropped over time due to neglect and decaying IBL's. We still rank for a few targeted keywords but it was just August of 2017 we were still top 10 but something happened and we dropped out of the top 100 right before our holiday season. We had to run Adwords and BingAds to supplement traffic this holiday season. So I am wondering before I restart my SEO efforts should I move the domain now before trying to build new content, IBL's, etc? I was always under the impression Google used domain trust a major factor which wasnt only IBL but also domain age. Our preferred domain I purchased from another owner and it has ZERO links to it. It was basically a parked domain with the "domain for sale" stuff. I am a little nervous about moving it over because Google didnt even have it in its index. I put up a coming soon page and hosted it on my server, same C Block, and requested a crawl from my webmaster console. I added some text to the new domain index page and it appears Google is showing results for our old domain! At first I thought it was duplicate content but its not Google obviously has deciphered current site is my old domain and is displaying the title and meta data from the old domain. I have never seen this before. Google cache shows the current domain the new domain url. A few questions: Will my site get sandboxed after 301 redirecting and going webmaster console move features etc? Does this reset the trust factors? I have read examples in my research where some people say it only took a few weeks and everything was back to normal and others that have said it took years. Any experience or insight is greatly appreciated. I am currently relearning SEO and going over the SEO tutorial articles provided on moz. Thanks again! New Domain - matches our company name, no hyphens, better branding http://www.giftbasketpros.com/ Google index https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.giftbasketpros.com Current Domain, since 2005, has ranked well for years until this summer http://www.pro-gift-baskets.com/
Branding | | DMAC441 -
The brand drop down doesn't seem to be appearing for any brands in google.com.hk. Is it something which needs to be set up and registered, or automatically rolled out by Google?
In google.com.hk SERPs the brand drop down doesn't seem to be appearing for any brands. Is it something which needs to be set up and registered, or automatically rolled out by Google? And if so is Google just slow rolling out in this part of the world? Thanks
Branding | | seanfhutchinson0 -
Best Place for Reviews in 2014
Honest, genuine & unedited customer reviews are something that I'm going to focus on for multiple companies that I work for in 2014. My question is where is the best place to push my customers to leave reviews for the company? On the company's website? Google+? Google Local? Bing? Yahoo? Yelp? Facebook? Obviously the answer is all of the above, but if you had to rank the top 3 places to get reviews that would help the company's SEO rankings & online visibility, what would your top 3 be?
Branding | | ajwyse0 -
Rebranding & Minimizing SEO impact
Hello everyone, One of my clients is undergoing a major rebrand, which will require some substantial changes to their domain / URL structure. Primarily, we're going to: Move from a high-ish DA site to a low DA site Change the subdomain URL structure (more on that below) Update the content (copy, design, structure) on www. site to match the new brand The content on the subdomains should remain the same 301 redirect all pages from old site to new site where applicable The current site architecture makes great use of subdomains, which are also going to be changing in terms of name. So, we're moving from oldsubdomain.olddomain.com to newsubdomain.newdomain.com (and not oldsubdomian.olddomain.com to oldsubdomain.olddomain.com). The content / structure of these pages is going to change minimally. We understand that we're going to take an SEO hit overall, but are there things we can do to minimize this hit? Anyway we can 'estimate' the hit? Anyway we can educate our client to as to what to expect beyond (it is going to be bad…). Please let me know. Thanks!
Branding | | 10SL0 -
'The Guardian' Is Moving to a New Domain
'The Guardian' Is Moving to a New Domain according to this article on Mashable - http://mashable.com/2013/05/24/the-guardian-dot-com/ Interested to see all the thoughts from SEOs to see how you would suggest they could implement this correctly, without dropping traffic / rankings etc...
Branding | | Webrevolve0 -
How to Merge Existing Google Local and Google Business pages?
Hey everyone, I'm getting a wee bit frustrated. I have looked at every blog post I can about merging Google Local and Google Business Pages and I can't figure it out. I already have a verified Google Local page here https://plus.google.com/107404063103285095864/about?gl=CA&hl=en-CA and a Google Business Page here https://plus.google.com/b/100116630212547145177/100116630212547145177/posts . Both are already verified. How do I merge these existing profiles which are already verified?
Branding | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Creative way to secure local addresses for Google Places?
For those of us that operate business in other areas that we technically dont have an "address" in... are there any creative ideas/ways anyone has run across in securing a physical address that you can use for local listing? I have already tried the virtual office type of companies, and their inventory is limited to major metropolitan areas.
Branding | | rhutchings1 -
Is adding SEO links within Clients Footer good?
With the Google Panda update craving quality, relevant content is it acceptable to place a targeted keyword within other customers websites such as " SEO in ......" ????? Cheers
Branding | | samr2170