Grade Us vs 5 Star Reviews?

[KempRugeLawGroup]

We need to get some more reviews, so we're looking at either getting Grade Us or 5 Star Reviews' services. Does anyone have strong feelings about either one? Or another service?

Thanks,

Ruben

[Grade.us]

Hi guys,

Jon Hall from Grade.us here. I stumbled onto this page from Google. Obviously, I'm biased, but I thought I should weigh in at least a little

Both Grade.us and GetFiveStars are excellent solutions, and the decision between them will come down to what you're looking for. Grade.us has an exclusive focus on marketers and agencies, and so may not be the best fit for the OP. But those who prefer Grade.us generally value our:

- Fexibility:  setup, configure and white-label campaigns on a per-client business

- Effectiveness at generating reviews on third-party sites:  create highly efficient, conversion-optimized review funnels targeting review sites like Google and Facebook (as opposed to internal “feedback”)

- Pricing:  we’re hard to beat

- Crawler-based monitoring:  we have the most comprehensive review monitoring platform in the industry covering not just major but minor and niche sites

- Review amplification/SEO tools:  schema-fied "Review Stream" Wordpress/Joomla/Drupal plugin that pulls in your latest and greatest reviews from around the Web into your website as SEO-friendly content and automates sharing them to social media

- Advanced, always evolving stuff:  SMS review invites, review email campaign tracking and automation, etc.

Hope this helps! I attached a short video demo, too. We're just starting to engage here at Moz, but we're always around to answer questions, demo the product, etc.

Jon

152476055

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Lance,

Just to clarify, I am not a getfivestars customer nor affiliated with them in any way. I know the owner, Mike Blumenthal, and did a test drive of the product and was very impressed with it. I'm afraid I have not tried grade.us. Perhaps if you do, you'd like to share with the community how you think it compares!

[Lance22]

Hi Miriam!

Are you still using getfivestars.com?  I have a solution now, but considering to swap.  I'm looking at getfivestars.com and grade.us.

Thanks!

Lance

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Ruben,

The review help site I am most impressed with is getfivestars.com. Have you checked that out? It's pretty cool, in that it helps you earn not just third party reviews, but also on-site testimonials. It was developed by Mike Blumenthal, and no one knows local better than Mike:) Hope you'll check it out!

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Well, I just want to get reviews to increase our local search results. I know there are other benefits, but my primary goal right now is to get our local SEO rankings higher. Reviews, from my understanding, are a big part of that.

• Ruben

[David-Kley]

I like the reviews that you can actually see on site. Even tho it helps the link to stand out, I dont like that most schema reviews are not displayed opn that page. /rant.

I think the five star approch is better than grade up, unless you have a clever way of getting the grade us "grade" to display.

Another option is to use this service. We did work for another SEO company as a consultant, and saw that they used a company called customer lobby. They also have code you can embed on the site in modules, sidebars, etc. 
https://www.customerlobby.com/

Here is an example of it in action. (not the site we optimized, but for example) Look in the right sidebar, and when you click it, it opens up a new window in the same page. http://www.abaaustin.com/ Keep in mind that although this displays stars on the page, it does not mark up the reviews.

My final advice would be to get people to go to your Google local listing, and leave the reviews there. Use another method to get the reviews placed on site, and have them marked up. I'm confused at if you are trying to create a conversion factor once they are already there, or get them to click your link when looking through a SERP. Depending on what you are trying to do, there are different methods for each. I think the best long term strategy is to get reviews that Google places value on, using their own product to do so. Meanwhile, having the link stand out by having rich snippets and mark up could help your click-through rate.