Think about the last time you searched for a service or business recently, what makes you trust a search result enough to spend your time clicking and reviewing the information? Many things can come into play to prove very quickly a listing is worth your time, and Star Reviews are one of them. People trust other customers’ reviews of products and services, the good and the bad, because they know those customers are usually very trustworthy – especially if they spend the time to write a good review. Because, let’s be honest, most people don’t review their experiences unless they are very unhappy. So, positive reviews for a listing mean it’s worth looking into for your business.

Organic Star Reviews for Local Listings

Google classifies local search results above others through a “Local Pack,” local business search results grouped together in a pack. It can be incredibly beneficial to be included in this local pack, as the click-thru-rate is extremely high because it shows Google trusts them. In order to be placed in this pack, you must spend time and money with optimizing your search results with search engine optimization (SEO).

Seeing SEO results takes a few months, but optimizing for your industry’s specific keywords and creating and implementing trusted backlinks will help your site immensely, and therefore improve your search results rankings.

Once your business is in this prominent local pack position, take the time to optimize your results. Businesses shown in the local pack with Star Reviews from Google Reviews will have a much better chance of connecting with prospective customers. So, encourage current and past customers to write a Google Review for you. You can even implement this as a sales benefit – purchase our product or service, write a Google Review and you get a reward.

The more reviews you get, the better. Google needs a number of reviews to provide an average, which is shown with the filled in Star Reviews. As you can see in the screenshot below, your business can purchase an ad in the local pack as well. Obviously, the law firm with 293 reviews and a rating of 4.8 looks much more reliable than some of the other options. They probably offer great services on top of encouraging or asking their clients to write Google Reviews. If you provide great services, many people are willing to take the time to praise you online.

Organic Star Reviews in Regular Search

Star Reviews in organic search results make your search listing appear more credible and therefore, stands out in the endless list of results. How can you accomplish this? There are a few ways:

  1. Trusted review sites
  2. Schema markup
  3. Site authority

Trusted Review Sites

Review sites like Yelp and Angie’s List are trusted by Google to provide legitimate reviews of businesses from customers. Google trusts these sites because businesses have to use certain procedures to obtain reviews from their customers. This ensures businesses are using real reviews and are not inflating their ratings with fake reviews.

Signing up for a review site and encouraging your customers to review your business is another way to get Star Reviews. As you can see, it’s very similar to asking customers to write a Google Review, so just decide whether you want your customers to do a Google Review or go to a separate review site.

Beware review sites like Yelp often target businesses to advertise with them, even local businesses who may have a tiny marketing budget. So just do your research!

Schema Markup

This is actually step two of using a trusted review site. Once your reviews start coming in, you need to use a schema markup to notify Google about your reviews so they will display them. The schema markup is code your website managers will need to implement. Below is an example.

Speaking of schema markups, you can use another schema markup to create a Knowledge Card about your business to show up with a local search. Follow these instructions to create one!

Site Authority

Once you’ve signed up for the review site and implemented the schema markup, work on improving your site authority if you haven’t already. This includes implementing short and long tail keywords to improve SEO, content marketing to improve website visits and back linking to other credible websites through Google. Content marketing is the easiest and cheapest way to improve your site authority. Create a content plan including blogs, downloadable-packages such as workbooks or white pages and implement this content into your social media marketing and email marketing. Using a tool such as HubSpot to manage your content and email marketing could greatly improve your inbound marketing success. Offer credible and useful content to your customers to keep them happy and to encourage them to use you in the future.

Summary

There are a few things you can do to improve the click-thru-rate to your website for those searching for your business. Implement a review campaign to encourage customers or clients to write a review either through Google or through a review site like Yelp. Once reviews start coming in, implement the correct code to notify Google of these reviews and then work to upgrade your website authority in order to justify your credibility in local search and appear at the top of the pack in your industry.

With just a few months time, you’ll notice an uptick in click-thru-rates and sales because prospective customers want to hear from their peers before they purchase a product or service. Aside from directly asking for recommendations from friends and family, Star Reviews provide a fountain of information for prospective buyers and make them feel more comfortable with whatever purchase or investment they are considering. It’s worth it to spend some marketing dollars on implementing an SEO campaign with a review campaign to boost your businesses ranking in Google search.

Feature Image Credit: searchengineland.com