According to Search Engine Watch, they are "an SEO weapon with massive firepower." According to Business.com, they represent an "opportunity to provide additional SEO value for your business." Moz refers to them as "free advertising" that also serves as "public relations media," "social media," and "customer service." According to Forbes, they "can influence how your business listings appear on the SERPs."
What are they all talking about? Online reviews from your customers — and, equally important, how your company responds to them.
These replies, also known as owner responses, are an essential component of any successful SEO strategy in 2021. But what exactly is SEO? What are the SERPs that Forbes mentions? Why are they important to your company?
And how do owner responses to online reviews fit into the equation?
We appreciate your inquiry. Those are important questions for business owners to ask themselves, and this article will provide answers by delving deeper into some recent statistical data — as well as a few direct quotes from Google My Business (GMB) — that shed more light on this important subject. Let's start by going over what SEO is and why it's so important for business owners.
What exactly is SEO?
SEO is an abbreviation for "Search Engine Optimization." There are two types of optimization: "on-page" optimization and "off-page" optimization, which we'll go over in more detail later.
There's also "technical SEO," which you can learn more about here if you're interested in topics like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, or schema markup; but for this discussion, let's keep things simple.
For the moment, you should understand that SEO is the process of making your website more search-engine friendly to outrank your competitors and drive more traffic to your desktop and/or mobile site.
The problem is that Google rankings are determined by highly complex algorithms that can change hundreds of times per year, potentially causing your initial rankings to slip.
According to Search Engine Land, these algorithm changes, or "Google core updates," have "often unknown" consequences, though various tracking tools are available to help businesses check and monitor their rankings for various keywords.
The good news is that, despite Google's frequent (and frequently unpredictable) updates, there are still some SEO best practices that your company can — and should — implement to rank higher in search results. For instance, you should:
- Publish unique, relevant, and informative content that responds to the user's search query, such as a company blog and/or a variety of informational or resource pages. Checking the "People Also Ask" results is a great way to see what products, services, or issues your customer base is Googling.
- Use internal links or links that connect pages on your website. "An SEO best practice is to add internal links from top-ranking pages on your site to pages that need a boost," according to SEMRush. Consider interlinking from your high-ranking Page A to your low-ranking Page B, for example, to help Page B rank higher and become more visible.
- Make sure your site loads as quickly as possible and is as simple to navigate as possible. It's a good idea to test both the mobile and desktop versions of your site to ensure that they both look and work as expected. There are numerous free speed tests available online, including Ookla's Speedtest, Pingdom Tools, and Google developers' PageSpeed Insights.
These are all examples of on-page SEO, which is concerned with optimizing and improving your website to rank higher in search results. Off-page SEO, as the name implies, is concerned with promoting your website through methods other than link-building.
For example, if a high-ranking and widely-trusted website links to your website (this is known as "backlinking" as opposed to "internal linking"), your website's rankings can improve.
Responding to reviews, in addition to building backlinks, is another effective — yet often overlooked — strategy for improving your SEO without having to change or update your website.
However, before we get into the benefits of a review response strategy, let's take a look at some eye-opening statistics that show why SEO is so important for your business.
Why is SEO Important for Your Business?
You only need to look at the data on the business impacts of SEO to get an answer to this question. Here are a few eye-catching statistics to think about:
- "SEO has 20X more traffic opportunity than PPC on both mobile and desktop," according to Moz. PPC stands for "pay-per-click" advertising, which is a type of paid advertising — and, as Moz points out, less than 3% of people in the United States "click on paid advertisements." Effective SEO can help you increase your "organic," or unpaid, traffic, especially if you use the SEO best practices we mentioned earlier, such as internal linking and publishing high-quality content.
- "The first organic result in Google Search has an average click-through rate of 28.5%," according to Search Engine Journal, where "click-through rate" (CTR) refers to the percentage of "impressions" (ad views) that resulted in a user clicking on the ad. This information is derived from a 2020 Sistrix study, which also discovered that CTR was "determined by the SERP layout." "SERP" stands for "Search Engine Page Ranking," which Sistrix defines as "the specific composition of a Google results page" for a given search (for example, "car wash Youngstown," "best thin crust pizza").
- According to Agency Jet, approximately 1.6 billion of the 3.6 billion Google searches conducted daily are local searches (such as "BBQ takeout near me"), accounting for roughly 46% of the total. If you want to rank in the top three local results for searches related to your business, known as the "local pack," you must have a strong SEO strategy. So, why should your company be a part of it? Here are a few examples:
– "88% of searches for local businesses on a mobile device either call or visit the business within 24 hours," according to HubSpot.
- According to one Google study, "18% of local smartphone searches resulted in a purchase" within 24 hours, compared to only 7% of generalized searches.
– Perhaps most astonishingly, HubSpot revealed that searches for terms such as "near me" increased "by more than 900% over two years" (italics our emphasis).
Can responding to reviews help improve your SEO?
Simply put, yes! Providing owner responses to your reviewers is an effective and cost-effective way to improve your Google ranking, especially if you've fallen behind your competitors in local rankings.
Indeed, one GMB help page expressly advises you to "manage and respond to [your business] reviews" to improve your local Google rankings.
According to GMB, "responding to reviews shows that you value your customers and their feedback." "High-quality, positive reviews from your customers can improve your business's visibility and increase the likelihood that a shopper will visit your location," the page continues, a reality reflected in the statistics we shared earlier.
This is due in part to a phenomenon known as "social proof," a psychology concept pioneered by author and professor Robert Cialdini in the 1980s. In this context, social proof refers to the phenomenon of positive reviews or endorsements that encourage other consumers to support your business — without you having to actively engage in traditional (and costly) forms of advertising.
According to seo.co, "rather than trusting an unknown business, [consumers] look to other people who are similar to them and then act based on the information they receive" — that is, the reviews (and owner responses) they read.
Positive reviews provide social proof that your business is trustworthy and credible, which is invaluable for attracting new customers.
After all, according to a recent BrightLocal survey, "79% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family," implying that ratings and responses have a significant influence on consumer behaviour.
Of course, as we discussed in a previous article, positive reviews aren't the only ones worth responding to.
Even extremely negative reviews, such as 1-star ratings or comments, can benefit your business by providing you with the opportunity to respond courteously and helpfully.
GMB provides a step-by-step technical explanation of how to respond to Google reviews, which begins with verifying your business. However, there's no reason to waste time dealing with Google or responding to reviews when you could be serving your customers.
Instead, let Reputation Booster handle the review response and management for your company. Our software collects all of your reviews and consolidates them into a single, secure management system, eliminating the need to constantly monitor multiple sites and apps.
And, because our platform will automate owner responses for you, you won't even have to think about what to write. Simply provide us with your messaging guidelines, and we'll handle the rest. Of course, you'll always have the option to review each response before publication, giving you extra assurance that each response is on-brand.
Do you want to be ranked higher on Google? Inquire About Our Brand Review Response Service
Don't worry if this seems like more jargon than you have time to learn — let our team handle the technical work so you can focus on running a successful business.
We simplify and streamline SEO with our responsive service and online review management system. Our auto response ensures that each of your reviews receives timely, on-brand responses, while our review management software makes organizing, sorting, and monitoring your data simple and intuitive.
You can improve your rankings and drive more traffic to your business by utilizing our team and technology.
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