Connect with us

SEO

8 Techniques To Get More Customer Reviews For Your Local Business

Published

on

8 Techniques To Get More Customer Reviews For Your Local Business

In the internet age, few things shape purchasing decisions as much as online reviews. And why not?

They provide authentic and honest insight that no marketing campaign could ever replicate.

The modern equivalent of the all-important word of mouth, customer reviews can make or break the reputation of a local business – and make a huge impact on sales numbers.

Not convinced of the importance of reviews for small businesses? Here are some key online review statistics you should know:

  • When shopping online, more than 99.9% of people read reviews at least occasionally.
  • 91% of consumers acknowledged positive reviews made them more likely to support a business.
  • 79% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
  • Only 13% of people would consider using a business with a two-star or less rating.

Online reviews provide social proof of the quality of your offering, establish your expertise, and build trust – which makes it extremely important for local businesses to have as many positive ones as possible.

Here are eight techniques you can use to encourage reviews for your local business,

Advertisement

1. Collect Email Addresses During Billing

Asking for the customer’s email address and phone number at the time of purchase is a big step toward landing a review from them.

Usually, if someone is willing to share these contact details with a business, they have likely had a satisfactory experience and, thereby, are quite likely to share their experience with others.

Once you have their email address, send a friendly follow-up after a week and ask them to write an honest review about their experience with your business.

Important: Always review and follow the latest official guidance from the review platform on soliciting reviews:

2. Use In-Store Placards To Encourage Reviews

Being a local business with a brick-and-mortar store, you can use in-store signage to spur reviews. This can be in the form of banners, flyers, brochures, and window clings.

You can also include a review request at the bottom of the bill receipts.

Advertisement

Furthermore, you can have a kiosk with an in-store app that can direct customers to a page on the business website to leave an on-site review.

Or, you can even have a QR code that, when scanned, points to a list of review profile links that enable them to choose the platform of their choice to write a review.

These are clear cues to customers about your desire and appreciation for online feedback, proving you care about their opinions and the continuous improvement of your services.

3. Verbally Mention How Much You’d Appreciate Honest Feedback

Train your employees to mention how much an honest review would be appreciated, especially if a customer seems satisfied.

This tactic won’t be effective if there’s a line of customers and the person at the counter keeps repeating the same “Please review us” message to everyone.

But when the time (and rapport) is right, a friendly staff member should be authorized to use their judgment to say, “It’d be great if you’d consider dropping a review about <business name>.”

Advertisement

In this case, a request for a review will sound heartfelt instead of pushy.

Keep in mind that this applies to both in-store staff and online/phone support.

4. Offer Incentives On Future Purchases

While your most loyal customers are hopefully already evangelizing about your brand to their friends and family, some others may need a friendly nudge to get them to leave reviews.

One of the best ways to do this is by offering them discounts, coupons, or other incentives in return for a review.

Just be aware that Google looks down on fake reviews and other types of engagement it views as ingenuine.

That’s not to say you can’t offer incentives – you just can’t offer incentives for positive reviews.

Advertisement

So long as you’re giving the two-star reviewer the same coupon as the five-star writer, you stay within the guidelines.

5. Include Review Reminders On Your Website

The easier you make it for your customers to leave a review, the better the odds you have of landing more reviews. It sounds obvious, yet so many businesses aren’t making any effort to simplify the review writing process for their customers.

You see, most people don’t leave a review because they don’t want to spend time “learning” how to do so.

Even if they know how to, it’s just viewed as an unnecessary tedious process that they can’t be bothered with.

So, make it as straightforward as you can for your customers to leave their valuable feedback.

Use call-to-action buttons and pop-ups (not in an annoying way) on your website to lead them to your Yelp or Google Business Profile review page.

Advertisement

Consider using a direct link generator tool like Supple to generate a unique Google review link for your business and send it to your customers via email.

Clicking on this link brings customers directly to the URL on your Google Business Profile, where all they have to do is write the review and post it.

Don’t expect your customers to follow an elaborate path for writing reviews, as it’s highly unlikely they’d do that.

6. Leverage Social Media

You can use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to post specific questions regarding your business’s performance.

Interested followers can be directed to leave a review on their choice of review platform.

For instance, if you have a restaurant business, you might informally ask if there was an older menu item that was discontinued that your followers really miss. Then, you could encourage customers to mention that in their review as a “vote” for bringing it back.

Advertisement

This technique empowers customers to share fun stories in the form of reviews while boosting the social media engagement of your brand.

7. Thoughtfully Respond To All Reviews

No matter how busy you are, it’s your duty to respond if someone takes the time to review your business.

And, while it’s always advisable to avoid sounding robotic as a brand, even a simple, timely “thank you” can encourage customers to stick around with your business.

In other words, your response should ideally be personalized and uniquely worded.

When people see that you respond to every review – good or bad – it gives the impression that the business truly cares about consumer sentiment, thus providing an incentive for new customers to take a moment to share their own experiences.

Also, don’t feel dejected by negative reviews – they help make your brand more authentic.

Advertisement

If all the reviews are sunshine and rainbows, there’s almost always something fishy. People would start doubting the authenticity of those reviews.

Here are some guidelines to follow when responding to negative reviews:

  • Respond as quickly as you can.
  • Acknowledge your mistake.
  • Explain your point of view courteously.
  • Write a meaningful and personal apology (even if you think it’s not your fault).
  • Provide an immediate resolution or compensation (such as a refund, voucher, etc.).
  • Request to take the matter offline if things seem to be getting out of hand.

Use bad reviews as an opportunity to improve your business and show that you care about your customers’ satisfaction.

Go back to the drawing board and fix the root cause of the problem.

Long story short, follow the golden rule of responding to reviews: always respond and never respond harshly.

8. Delight Your Customers With A Great Experience

Your customers’ in-store experience is pivotal to the amount and quality of reviews you’ll receive.

If a customer is awestruck with your product, service, or the experience they had, they’ll feel obliged to leave a review.

Advertisement

Delighting customers and exceeding their expectations is key to generating more, and better, reviews.

So, if you strive to deliver the best possible customer experience, rest assured it will pay off.

Find Reviews For Your Business

If you’ve already been soliciting, monitoring, and responding to your reviews, congratulations! You’re ahead of the game. If you haven’t, there’s no better time to start than right now.

The first thing you should do is figure out what your customers are already saying about you. That means checking the top review platforms.

For nearly every business, Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Facebook will factor in your online reputation.

Depending on your field, you may also have industry-specific review sites to manage.

Advertisement

For example, Capterra is well-known as a software review site, while TripAdvisor keeps tabs on hotel experiences.

For a detailed explanation of how to find reviews for your local business, be sure to read Matt Southern’s piece here.

Online Reviews Can Change Your Business Trajectory

Online reviews are a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s happening with your business, gather feedback, and expand your customer base.

And this is true of both the good and bad ones.

Good reviews tell potential customers how great you are, and why they should do business with you.

Bad reviews give you an opportunity to take accountability, identify shortcomings, and turn negative experiences into positive ones.

Advertisement

Online reviews are vital for any business’s success, particularly on a local level.

By describing actual interactions with your business, they give potential and current customers insight into your operation and provide an authenticity you can’t find anywhere else.

More Resources:


Featured Image: Black Salmon/Shutterstock



Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

SEO

Google On Hyphens In Domain Names

Published

on

By

What Google says about using hyphens in domain names

Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit about why people don’t use hyphens with domains and if there was something to be concerned about that they were missing.

Domain Names With Hyphens For SEO

I’ve been working online for 25 years and I remember when using hyphens in domains was something that affiliates did for SEO when Google was still influenced by keywords in the domain, URL, and basically keywords anywhere on the webpage. It wasn’t something that everyone did, it was mainly something that was popular with some affiliate marketers.

Another reason for choosing domain names with keywords in them was that site visitors tended to convert at a higher rate because the keywords essentially prequalified the site visitor. I know from experience how useful two-keyword domains (and one word domain names) are for conversions, as long as they didn’t have hyphens in them.

A consideration that caused hyphenated domain names to fall out of favor is that they have an untrustworthy appearance and that can work against conversion rates because trustworthiness is an important factor for conversions.

Lastly, hyphenated domain names look tacky. Why go with tacky when a brandable domain is easier for building trust and conversions?

Advertisement

Domain Name Question Asked On Reddit

This is the question asked on Reddit:

“Why don’t people use a lot of domains with hyphens? Is there something concerning about it? I understand when you tell it out loud people make miss hyphen in search.”

And this is Mueller’s response:

“It used to be that domain names with a lot of hyphens were considered (by users? or by SEOs assuming users would? it’s been a while) to be less serious – since they could imply that you weren’t able to get the domain name with fewer hyphens. Nowadays there are a lot of top-level-domains so it’s less of a thing.

My main recommendation is to pick something for the long run (assuming that’s what you’re aiming for), and not to be overly keyword focused (because life is too short to box yourself into a corner – make good things, course-correct over time, don’t let a domain-name limit what you do online). The web is full of awkward, keyword-focused short-lived low-effort takes made for SEO — make something truly awesome that people will ask for by name. If that takes a hyphen in the name – go for it.”

Pick A Domain Name That Can Grow

Mueller is right about picking a domain name that won’t lock your site into one topic. When a site grows in popularity the natural growth path is to expand the range of topics the site coves. But that’s hard to do when the domain is locked into one rigid keyword phrase. That’s one of the downsides of picking a “Best + keyword + reviews” domain, too. Those domains can’t grow bigger and look tacky, too.

That’s why I’ve always recommended brandable domains that are memorable and encourage trust in some way.

Advertisement

Read the post on Reddit:

Are domains with hyphens bad?

Read Mueller’s response here.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Benny Marty

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

SEO

Reddit Post Ranks On Google In 5 Minutes

Published

on

By

Google apparently ranks Reddit posts within minutes

Google’s Danny Sullivan disputed the assertions made in a Reddit discussion that Google is showing a preference for Reddit in the search results. But a Redditor’s example proves that it’s possible for a Reddit post to rank in the top ten of the search results within minutes and to actually improve rankings to position #2 a week later.

Discussion About Google Showing Preference To Reddit

A Redditor (gronetwork) complained that Google is sending so many visitors to Reddit that the server is struggling with the load and shared an example that proved that it can only take minutes for a Reddit post to rank in the top ten.

That post was part of a 79 post Reddit thread where many in the r/SEO subreddit were complaining about Google allegedly giving too much preference to Reddit over legit sites.

The person who did the test (gronetwork) wrote:

“…The website is already cracking (server down, double posts, comments not showing) because there are too many visitors.

…It only takes few minutes (you can test it) for a post on Reddit to appear in the top ten results of Google with keywords related to the post’s title… (while I have to wait months for an article on my site to be referenced). Do the math, the whole world is going to spam here. The loop is completed.”

Advertisement

Reddit Post Ranked Within Minutes

Another Redditor asked if they had tested if it takes “a few minutes” to rank in the top ten and gronetwork answered that they had tested it with a post titled, Google SGE Review.

gronetwork posted:

“Yes, I have created for example a post named “Google SGE Review” previously. After less than 5 minutes it was ranked 8th for Google SGE Review (no quotes). Just after Washingtonpost.com, 6 authoritative SEO websites and Google.com’s overview page for SGE (Search Generative Experience). It is ranked third for SGE Review.”

It’s true, not only does that specific post (Google SGE Review) rank in the top 10, the post started out in position 8 and it actually improved ranking, currently listed beneath the number one result for the search query “SGE Review”.

Screenshot Of Reddit Post That Ranked Within Minutes

Anecdotes Versus Anecdotes

Okay, the above is just one anecdote. But it’s a heck of an anecdote because it proves that it’s possible for a Reddit post to rank within minutes and get stuck in the top of the search results over other possibly more authoritative websites.

hankschrader79 shared that Reddit posts outrank Toyota Tacoma forums for a phrase related to mods for that truck.

Advertisement

Google’s Danny Sullivan responded to that post and the entire discussion to dispute that Reddit is not always prioritized over other forums.

Danny wrote:

“Reddit is not always prioritized over other forums. [super vhs to mac adapter] I did this week, it goes Apple Support Community, MacRumors Forum and further down, there’s Reddit. I also did [kumo cloud not working setup 5ghz] recently (it’s a nightmare) and it was the Netgear community, the SmartThings Community, GreenBuildingAdvisor before Reddit. Related to that was [disable 5g airport] which has Apple Support Community above Reddit. [how to open an 8 track tape] — really, it was the YouTube videos that helped me most, but it’s the Tapeheads community that comes before Reddit.

In your example for [toyota tacoma], I don’t even get Reddit in the top results. I get Toyota, Car & Driver, Wikipedia, Toyota again, three YouTube videos from different creators (not Toyota), Edmunds, a Top Stories unit. No Reddit, which doesn’t really support the notion of always wanting to drive traffic just to Reddit.

If I guess at the more specific query you might have done, maybe [overland mods for toyota tacoma], I get a YouTube video first, then Reddit, then Tacoma World at third — not near the bottom. So yes, Reddit is higher for that query — but it’s not first. It’s also not always first. And sometimes, it’s not even showing at all.”

hankschrader79 conceded that they were generalizing when they wrote that Google always prioritized Reddit. But they also insisted that that didn’t diminish what they said is a fact that Google’s “prioritization” forum content has benefitted Reddit more than actual forums.

Why Is The Reddit Post Ranked So High?

It’s possible that Google “tested” that Reddit post in position 8 within minutes and that user interaction signals indicated to Google’s algorithms that users prefer to see that Reddit post. If that’s the case then it’s not a matter of Google showing preference to Reddit post but rather it’s users that are showing the preference and the algorithm is responding to those preferences.

Advertisement

Nevertheless, an argument can be made that user preferences for Reddit can be a manifestation of Familiarity Bias. Familiarity Bias is when people show a preference for things that are familiar to them. If a person is familiar with a brand because of all the advertising they were exposed to then they may show a bias for the brand products over unfamiliar brands.

Users who are familiar with Reddit may choose Reddit because they don’t know the other sites in the search results or because they have a bias that Google ranks spammy and optimized websites and feel safer reading Reddit.

Google may be picking up on those user interaction signals that indicate a preference and satisfaction with the Reddit results but those results may simply be biases and not an indication that Reddit is trustworthy and authoritative.

Is Reddit Benefiting From A Self-Reinforcing Feedback Loop?

It may very well be that Google’s decision to prioritize user generated content may have started a self-reinforcing pattern that draws users in to Reddit through the search results and because the answers seem plausible those users start to prefer Reddit results. When they’re exposed to more Reddit posts their familiarity bias kicks in and they start to show a preference for Reddit. So what could be happening is that the users and Google’s algorithm are creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

Is it possible that Google’s decision to show more user generated content has kicked off a cycle where more users are exposed to Reddit which then feeds back into Google’s algorithm which in turn increases Reddit visibility, regardless of lack of expertise and authoritativeness?

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Kues

Advertisement

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

SEO

WordPress Releases A Performance Plugin For “Near-Instant Load Times”

Published

on

By

WordPress speculative loading plugin

WordPress released an official plugin that adds support for a cutting edge technology called speculative loading that can help boost site performance and improve the user experience for site visitors.

Speculative Loading

Rendering means constructing the entire webpage so that it instantly displays (rendering). When your browser downloads the HTML, images, and other resources and puts it together into a webpage, that’s rendering. Prerendering is putting that webpage together (rendering it) in the background.

What this plugin does is to enable the browser to prerender the entire webpage that a user might navigate to next. The plugin does that by anticipating which webpage the user might navigate to based on where they are hovering.

Chrome lists a preference for only prerendering when there is an at least 80% probability of a user navigating to another webpage. The official Chrome support page for prerendering explains:

“Pages should only be prerendered when there is a high probability the page will be loaded by the user. This is why the Chrome address bar prerendering options only happen when there is such a high probability (greater than 80% of the time).

There is also a caveat in that same developer page that prerendering may not happen based on user settings, memory usage and other scenarios (more details below about how analytics handles prerendering).

Advertisement

The Speculative Loading API solves a problem that previous solutions could not because in the past they were simply prefetching resources like JavaScript and CSS but not actually prerendering the entire webpage.

The official WordPress announcement explains it like this:

Introducing the Speculation Rules API
The Speculation Rules API is a new web API that solves the above problems. It allows defining rules to dynamically prefetch and/or prerender URLs of certain structure based on user interaction, in JSON syntax—or in other words, speculatively preload those URLs before the navigation. This API can be used, for example, to prerender any links on a page whenever the user hovers over them.”

The official WordPress page about this new functionality describes it:

“The Speculation Rules API is a new web API… It allows defining rules to dynamically prefetch and/or prerender URLs of certain structure based on user interaction, in JSON syntax—or in other words, speculatively preload those URLs before the navigation.

This API can be used, for example, to prerender any links on a page whenever the user hovers over them. Also, with the Speculation Rules API, “prerender” actually means to prerender the entire page, including running JavaScript. This can lead to near-instant load times once the user clicks on the link as the page would have most likely already been loaded in its entirety. However that is only one of the possible configurations.”

The new WordPress plugin adds support for the Speculation Rules API. The Mozilla developer pages, a great resource for HTML technical understanding describes it like this:

“The Speculation Rules API is designed to improve performance for future navigations. It targets document URLs rather than specific resource files, and so makes sense for multi-page applications (MPAs) rather than single-page applications (SPAs).

The Speculation Rules API provides an alternative to the widely-available <link rel=”prefetch”> feature and is designed to supersede the Chrome-only deprecated <link rel=”prerender”> feature. It provides many improvements over these technologies, along with a more expressive, configurable syntax for specifying which documents should be prefetched or prerendered.”

Advertisement

See also: Are Websites Getting Faster? New Data Reveals Mixed Results

Performance Lab Plugin

The new plugin was developed by the official WordPress performance team which occasionally rolls out new plugins for users to test ahead of possible inclusion into the actual WordPress core. So it’s a good opportunity to be first to try out new performance technologies.

The new WordPress plugin is by default set to prerender “WordPress frontend URLs” which are pages, posts, and archive pages. How it works can be fine-tuned under the settings:

Settings > Reading > Speculative Loading

Browser Compatibility

The Speculative API is supported by Chrome 108 however the specific rules used by the new plugin require Chrome 121 or higher. Chrome 121 was released in early 2024.

Browsers that do not support will simply ignore the plugin and will have no effect on the user experience.

Check out the new Speculative Loading WordPress plugin developed by the official core WordPress performance team.

Advertisement

How Analytics Handles Prerendering

A WordPress developer commented with a question asking how Analytics would handle prerendering and someone else answered that it’s up to the Analytics provider to detect a prerender and not count it as a page load or site visit.

Fortunately both Google Analytics and Google Publisher Tags (GPT) both are able to handle prerenders. The Chrome developers support page has a note about how analytics handles prerendering:

“Google Analytics handles prerender by delaying until activation by default as of September 2023, and Google Publisher Tag (GPT) made a similar change to delay triggering advertisements until activation as of November 2023.”

Possible Conflict With Ad Blocker Extensions

There are a couple things to be aware of about this plugin, aside from the fact that it’s an experimental feature that requires Chrome 121 or higher.

A comment by a WordPress plugin developer that this feature may not work with browsers that are using the uBlock Origin ad blocking browser extension.

Download the plugin:
Speculative Loading Plugin by the WordPress Performance Team

Read the announcement at WordPress
Speculative Loading in WordPress

Advertisement

See also: WordPress, Wix & Squarespace Show Best CWV Rate Of Improvement

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending

Follow by Email
RSS