Implementing an SEO strategy enables your business to reach a larger audience, convert more prospects into customers, and drive more traffic to your website, explaining why 14% of U.S. small businesses spend $5000 per year on SEO services.
There are numerous ways to improve your SEO strategy both on- and off-site, like increasing your site speed, publishing quality content, and putting a link-building strategy into place.
But does responding to reviews help SEO? And how can small businesses manage their reviews – and their responses to them – more successfully?
Read on to discover how responding to reviews can improve your local rankings and encourage more customers to choose your business over its competitors.
We'll also share three tips on responding to reviews more efficiently, plus answer some FAQs about SEO and review responses.
The short answer: yes! But how does it work, and why does it matter?
You already understand the importance of maximizing your brand’s online visibility, which is the goal of SEO. After all, less than 1% of people who perform a Google search check the second page of search results.
Google’s Map Pack, or “local pack” – the top three most relevant results for a local search – is especially crucial for small businesses.
That’s because the local pack attracts 40% of clicks – more than organic search (30% of clicks), paid advertisements (10% of clicks), and listings under “More Places” (8% of clicks).
Search engine optimization can help your business break into the Map Pack on Google Maps and rank higher in local search results – especially if your SEO strategy includes responding to reviews.
According to Search Engine Journal, “Reviews account for a 17% share of rank in the Map Pack,” along with “a 5% share in local organic ranking. And as Google explicitly states, “More reviews and positive ratings can improve your business' local ranking.”
In fact, there are numerous factors that determine Google local rankings. The three most important factors in determining local ranking are:
So, what role do online reviews play? Types of review signals that Google’s algorithm takes into account include:
Google also takes other signals into account when determining which businesses to display, such as:
Online reviews can help your business gain trust and establish credibility, which is crucial not just for SEO, but converting prospects into customers.
For example, positive reviews are an excellent source of authentic user-generated content (UGC). According to Tint’s 2023 State of Social & User-Generated Content report, “consumers trust authentic, unpaid reviews from real customers more than any other type of content,” including brand-generated content (like advertising) and content created by influencers.
Google reviews are only one piece of the puzzle: you also need to track customer feedback on platforms like Facebook, Yelp, Trustpilot, and the Better Business Bureau, plus any industry-specific platforms that are relevant to your brand.
Here are three tips to help you stay organized – and stay on top of your online reputation – when you’re dealing with positive or negative reviews:
Positive reviews are like free advertising for your business, providing your brand with an invaluable source of social proof. If you fail to respond to positive reviews, you risk losing valuable customers – not to mention the word-of-mouth marketing they provide.
If you fail to respond to a negative review, the consequences are no better: you risk being perceived as an untrustworthy business that doesn’t support its customers. And in both scenarios, the end result is that you lose opportunities.
By turning on automated notifications, you can avoid these outcomes and help prevent reviews from slipping through the cracks. Since there are hundreds of platforms where customers can review your business, notifications are essential for staying organized and up-to-date.
Turning on email or mobile notifications is easy for Google reviews: simply follow Google’s step-by-step instructions, which you can read here or view in the screenshots below.
For other review platforms, such as Yelp, the process is more complex. You’ll need to use a third-party tool, such as Boast or Edorsla, or save time by letting a full-service solution like ResponseScribe handle it for you.
Actively responding to customer feedback helps consumers trust your business and increases the likelihood that you’ll rank in the Map Pack. The challenge is that creating custom responses completely from scratch can also be time-consuming.
Templates allow you to accelerate the process by providing you with the outline or framework of a response. Your business can build on and personalize this framework by incorporating details from the review – or, if it’s just a rating with no comment, by varying the language you use in your replies.
We’ve already shared some example responses, along with templates for responding to both negative and positive feedback, to help speed up the writing process for you. Explore our templates for:
Notifications ensure that you never miss a review, while response templates simplify the task of replying to your customers. But for the fastest and most efficient approach to review management, consider a full-service solution that handles responding to reviews for you.
ResponseScribe empowers your business to respond quickly and easily to reviews by leveraging the power of AI, plus our expert team of writers. Responding to online reviews helps you:
Our service automatically monitors 50+ review platforms and generates personalized, on-brand responses to customer feedback, ensuring that every rating and comment receives a reply within 24 hours.
Learn more about how it works and compare our flexible pricing plans.
ResponseScribe makes monitoring and responding to customer reviews effortless. All your reviews are centralized in a convenient one-stop dashboard, including Yelp, Facebook and Google reviews. ResponseScribe provides a professional response in under 24 hours when customers leave you a rating or comment.
You can approve and edit responses or take a hands-off approach with AI and full automation. And with multiple plans and pricing tiers, our scalable service is built to grow with you.
Start your free trial today – and start delivering a better customer experience.
Done-for-you review response service for local businesses.
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