The Importance of Online Customer Reviews

Never underestimate the power of good reviews. Reviews help people all over the world determine which services and products are best. These personalized assessments hold a powerful effect on the behavior of the public, therefore influencing sales. Having a lot of positive reviews can help boost your online authority and lead to more conversions and sales.

Why Are Online Reviews So Important?

It’s no surprise that online reviews are important, but just how much weight do they carry in customer acquisition? The proof is in the data!

• 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business
• 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation
• 72% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more
• 10% of website traffic value is attributed to online reviews
• 90% of consumers say that their purchases are influenced by online reviews
• Product page visitors who read reviews, convert at a 58% higher rate

Pretty impressive, right? If those numbers weren’t enough to convince you to invest in online reviews, let’s consider how they can benefit you in an additional way. Reviews can help you better understand what you are doing right and wrong as a business. By hearing from customers themselves, you will be able to reevaluate and improve certain aspects of your business that are important to consumers.

Google Review Policies

So how does one go about getting reviews on popular search engines such as Google? By continuing to improve customer service and kindly reminding consumers about reviews. While it may be tempting to offer rewards and prizes for online reviews, Google’s review policies clearly state that this is against their rules. The policy reads:

“Don’t offer or accept money, products, or services to write reviews for a business or to write negative reviews about a competitor. If you’re a business owner, don’t set up review stations or kiosks at your place of business just to ask for reviews written at your place of business.”

By choosing to disobey this policy, companies can be given a penalty by Google.

Read more about Google review and photo policies here.

Benefits of Adding Reviews To Your Site

Have you considered including customer reviews to your website (instead of just having them on other review sites)? If you sell a product or service, consider adding a review section with star ratings to a page on your site. Why isn’t it enough to just have Google reviews? Adding reviews to your own website can improve the visibility of your business on Google and other search engines.

How does this work? Each new review written about a product or service on your site increases the amount of unique content on your site. This additional content can increase your authority and relevance—giving you a better chance of getting pages ranked.

Hiring an SEO Team to Manage Reviews for You

Are you ready to team up with our experienced team of SEO specialists to increase your online presence and bring in more reviews? Blue Corona is here to help your business grow in all the right ways. While some internet marketing companies rely on gut instincts and unreliable data to build out plans, Blue Corona utilizes innovative tools, creative minds, and current trends to help our clients get the results they are looking for.

Want additional advice? Let us know how we can help you reach your target audience by contacting us today!

If you would rather spend your time running your business in other ways, then you can leave the online growth and customer review management up to us! To meet each client’s unique needs, we conveniently offer a wide range of internet marketing services that are sure to blow you out of the water.

Do you have a bad customer review you need us to handle? Our team has an extensive amount of experience handling troublesome customer reviews for clients.

Some of our services include:

• Extensive SEO Packages
• Content Marketing
• Facebook Advertising Campaigns
• Email Marketing Campaigns
• LinkedIn Advertising Campaigns
• Video Production

And more!

Give us a call today at 800-696-4690 to learn more about our services or request a case study here to see our previous success stories.