Who needs online reviews anyway?

Who needs online reviews anyway? What’s all the uproar about reviews?

Let’s face it, as a business owner, we all need reviews. Good reviews bring customers to your business. I recently read that 88% of businesses that have greater than 5 reviews will rank better than a business that has no reviews.

So I decided to conduct a study using one of my new customers. Customer “A” started out with no “Google Reviews”. With help from customers and a tool from WhiteSpark. Thanks to Phil Rozek for sharing this information and for giving me a few suggestions. We modified the handout by adding “Yelp” and “Foursquare” to the process. We then printed and had customer “A” hand them out to their customer.

This process netted customer “A” 5 Google Reviews, 6 Yelp, and no “Foursquare Reviews” in a 32-day period, with 75 handouts. It’s about a 15% percent return on the handout.

The most important thing I observed during this time frame was about 6 points increase in the customer’s PA (I use the Moz toolbar addon for chrome).

So make no mistake that reviews are important to the business. In “The 2104 Local Search Ranking Factors” conducted by Moz.com  reviews accounted for 9.8%. What will the account for in 2015? Only time will tell.

My moral to the story of reviews is like the “Little Red Train” I think I can, I think I can get reviews.

Here are a few good reads on the review process.

If you have a Google Plus account, please join this community” Local Search”

Another great reference for reviews is Phil Rozek

5 Ways to Get Reviews for Your Local Business by Directive Consulting

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