Everything You Need to Know About Leaving a Google Review
When you want to check out a new business or a restaurant, what is the first thing you do? Most probably you go online and look up the reviews of the place. The simple fact of the matter is reviews are important.
Consumers now rely heavily on reviews as a factor in their decision-making process. Google reviews are an important part of that. This article will give you a complete guide on how to leave a Google review, how they work and their impact on SEO. Let’s get started.
How Do Google Reviews Work?
Google provides its millions of users; of which many are business owners just like you with a tool called Google My Business. This is essentially a tool that allows you to list your business on Google.
It is more than that though. With Google My Business, others can view your business and leave a review. People can of course read those reviews as well. Google is one of the fasted growing review sites in the world. Which solidifies its place as a legitimate place people go check out businesses.
From there you can leave a review for a business, service or product. There is also a star-rating option. It lets you rate the business with a star of 1 to 5 along with a written review.
Google takes all the reviews and star rating a business gets and uses its sophisticated algorithm to generate an overall review for the business. This is the rating that will show up next to the business when someone searches for it on Google.
Google also filters reviews just like another popular site Yelp. This means Google will look into the account that leaves a review and check if it is an active user or a fake review.
This is why aiming for good reviews, by providing better services and being proactive about reviews is so important nowadays. If you want to know more about how to get more reviews, you can check out the article on that topic.
How to Leave a Google Review?
Google is known for its innovative products and stellar UX design. So it’s no surprise leaving a review on Google is quite easy. You can do it in 3 easy steps.
Step 1 – Log into your account
This step is pretty obvious. You need to log into your Google account. This can be done either on a phone or a computer.
Step 2 – Search for the business you want to review
The next step is to find the business you want to review. Simply do a normal Google search for the business and it should pop up right away.
Step 3 – Write a review
After you have done that, find the section where you can leave a review and click ‘Write a Review’. Express your experience with words and also leave a star rating. Voila! You are done.
Keep in mind that you can also leave reviews on Google Maps. Open the app on your phone or visit the web version of Google Maps. Search for the business you want to review. The business will pop up. There you should have a section that also says ‘Write a Review’.
How Do Google Reviews Affect SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is crucial in today’s online world. This is the process of how sites like Google choose what to show and what not to show. This is basically what determines your ranking online.
If you want to be found, you better have good SEO – it is as simple as that. Google Reviews most definitely help your SEO rankings.
Reviews are a big source or credibility for the business. It creates trust in the brand and Google’s algorithms take notice of that. This helps to drive SEO.
There are a couple of things at play here. The number of reviews a business makes an impact on the ranking. Furthermore, a good balance of positive and negative reviews also has quite an impact.
How businesses respond to the reviews seemingly have an impact on your SEO ranking, confirmed a study. Other factors that include are also the frequency of new reviews business is getting also plays a role.
The top three results when you search for a business, are highly likely to have reviews. Businesses with the most reviews often rank high on Google search.
Conclusion
Google reviews are a very important tool and opportunity to increase your business traffic and sales. You can use many different strategies to increase the number of reviews you are getting. Also, make sure to have proper responses to your reviews as well. Negative reviews need specially tailored responses – this can turn out to be an opportunity.
