{"id":970,"date":"2015-02-18T20:43:04","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T20:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/?p=970"},"modified":"2021-07-02T09:46:25","modified_gmt":"2021-07-02T09:46:25","slug":"seo-for-beginners-part-five-online-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/seo-for-beginners-part-five-online-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO for Beginners \u2013 Part Five \u2013 Online Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the fifth chapter of our SEO series. So far we\u2019ve covered website optimization<\/a>,\u00a0keyword research<\/a>,\u00a0social media marketing<\/a> and Link Building<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been following the series you\u2019ve probably realized by now that SEO is ever-changing and there are many different variables that influence rankings.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t an SEO professional outside of Google\u2019s \u201ccircle of trust\u201d that knows the exact algorithm determining rankings.\u00a0 We do know, however, that website age, website content (keywords, titles, etc.), website structure, inbound links, social media, and traffic (including bounce rate \u2013 do people bounce from your site as soon as they visit it?) affect rankings, but what else? Yes, you guessed it\u2026.. REVIEWS!<\/p>\n

Not only do reviews affect search engine rankings, but studies show that up to 90% of purchasing decisions are influenced by online reviews. \u00a0If a potential customer is searching for your service and they come across your business with a 4.5 star rating and 15 reviews and your competitor who has no reviews, who do you think is going to get that customer\u2019s business?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Reviews weigh heavily in local search results (map results and mobile search results specifically) and so if you target customers locally and\/or regionally try and garner reviews from your customers. Never reward or pay customers for reviews as Google has a strict policy against this. You can, however, ask your customers for reviews, include review links in your emails, newsletters, and on your website.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to be as natural as possible when acquiring reviews. Do not try and garner 100 reviews all at once and then never ask another customer to review your business. This will look unnatural to Google. In addition, DO NOT, I repeat, do not, build fake reviews. If you are caught doing this your website will be penalized. Chances are if your customer is happy to provide a testimonial for your website, then he or she might be willing to take an extra few minutes to post that review online.<\/p>\n

So where should you start? Try Google and Facebook to begin with.\u00a0 Most of your customers will be most familiar with these websites. If you haven\u2019t created a profile on Google My Business<\/a> start there. Next, move on to Facebook and collect a few reviews there. Additionally, if there are review websites specific to your industry, try and collect reviews there as well.<\/p>\n

In our next chapter of this series we are going to explore directory listings and their impact on SEO. Stay tuned and as always, please don\u2019t hesitate to email me Amy Grishman from\u00a0www.socialfocus.com\u00a0with your marketing questions at\u00a0amy@socialfocus.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the fifth chapter of our SEO series. So far we\u2019ve covered website optimization,\u00a0keyword research,\u00a0social media marketing and Link<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1652,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions\/1652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}