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Does responding to reviews help SEO? The answer is a resounding Yes.
If that’s all you needed to hear then you should definitely get to responding to them.
But if you want to know why and how you should respond to reviews then make sure you stick around.
Furthermore, we’ll also cover how you can use automation tools to streamline the process and cover the most frequently asked questions regarding responding to reviews.
As we mentioned, responding to reviews definitely helps SEO and here are three reasons why.
Firstly, the more content that Google finds centered upon your website, the more they’re going to recognize your site as an authority in your niche.
This may take a while to see effects but don’t under estimate the compound effect for such small actions.
A business with 500 reviews and comments is going to rank higher than one with 100 reviews.
And by engaging with reviews, you’re encouraging other customers to leave their reviews too which further helps your SEO. There’s a snowball effect to it!
Just from engaging with your reviews, Google can see that your business is active and worth promoting in relevant search queries.
And don’t worry about trying to hide any bad reviews. Google just wants to see activity and that people are actually engaging with your business.
If your business relies on getting customers within a specific region, it is absolutely critical that you engage with every review you get.
There are only so many factors that go into Local SEO (making sure your site shows up before your local competition).
And one of them is whether you engage with your reviews.
Google themselves have confirmed this within their guidelines.
They’ve stated that you should “interact with customers by responding to reviews that they leave about your business. Responding to reviews shows that you value your customers and the feedback that they leave about your business”.
Local SEO can be the difference between your business being the most popular in town to not getting any customers because your competition are in front of your customers’ eyeballs.
Another way in which responding to reviews help your SEO is through review signals.
Whilst reviews aren’t among the most important ranking factors for general SEO, they are still a ranking factor.
Unlike Local SEO, Google don’t give as much weighting to your review activity.
But they do look at user engagement for every website and your reviews can become a major component of that if you spend the time replying to every review.
Google will take note of your review content, review regularity, and review quantity as part of their analysis on your user engagement.
Therefore, the more you can encourage your customers to leave reviews, the more success you’re going to see in the world of SEO.
Not only does responding to reviews help with your SEO, it also helps with getting new customers through the door and keeping your customers happy.
When your business is presented to new faces, one of the first things they’re going to look at is the reviews you’ve received.
In fact, studies suggest that 92% of potential customers look at your reviews prior to making a purchase.
If they can see that you’ve taken the time to respond to each and every review, they’re going to start to make positive associations with your brand.
This sort of engagement displays the emphasis your business puts on keeping it’s customers happy and the community surrounding the business.
Furthermore, actively trying to resolve any issues stemming from negative reviews is a key sign that potential customers look out for.
Not only does responding to reviews help with attracting new customers but it also helps with keeping the current customers that you have.
You may be surprised that 56% of your customers expect a response to their review.
Whether that be resolving their issues or acknowledging their praise.
And what’s even more surprising is that over 75% of businesses don’t reply to their reviews.
The more touch points that you can have with each customer, the more likely they are to stick around.
This emphasis on ensuring brand loyalty can pay off for decades to come.
Negative reviews hurt your business.
It’s a tough pill to swallow and we wish it wasn’t true but over 90% of people have refused to buy from a business because of a bad review.
Whilst you we don’t recommend that you erase the bad reviews that you get, you can certainly redirect the conversation.
The most effective method for redirecting the conversation is to go above and beyond in dealing with each negative review.
By doing this, you’re letting potential customers know of the level of service that you provide.
And if you can resolve the situation, the negative review is often removed. You may even earn a positive one.
Whilst it would be amazing if we could tell Google and our target audience about how amazing our business is and they simply took our word for it.
Unfortunately, both parties place a lot more weight on what others have to say about our business.
As you can guess, this is because the content is unbiased and trustworthy. It allows both parties to make an informed opinion regarding your business.
By now it should be very clear that responding to reviews help SEO! And it’s even more beneficial to start encouraging as many reviews as you can.
We’ve listed a few reasons why below and have also included some tools which can help to make your life ten times easier.
As we mentioned, reviews help SEO. Especially local SEO.
But an often overlooked component regarding the importance of reviews is this content is usually packed with keywords and important brand connotations. Thus, it informs Google of what your business is all about.
This helps you with getting your website in front of the right audience.
If Google can see that you have heaps of reviews that all mention a certain keyword, they’re going to start ranking you for that keyword.
This can be incredibly helpful for attracting your target audience to your site.
Reviews can often be posted by you and others on social media.
This is another great sign of your business’ credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of Google.
The more people you can get to engage with any piece of content, the better your SEO is going to be.
Furthermore, reviews that express an opinion that others share can encourage conversation.
And this leads to more keywords, more brand mentions and more credibility for your organisation
As we mentioned earlier, a surprising amount of businesses don’t even read their reviews.
Whilst they may look at it from a perspective of “it takes too much time”, they’re missing out on all of the gains they could see for their business.
Reviews give great hints regarding the direction that your business is heading, if your customer satisfaction is dropping you can immediately address it.
And those reviews will usually tell you exactly what the weak-points of your business are
Without those reviews, you may end up wasting time trying to identify why your business is failing when the answer could be found in just a matter of minutes.
Yes your read that heading right.
Not only do positive reviews help SEO. So do negative reviews.
I thought i’d include this section just because of the anxiety that comes with receiving a bad review.
As well as to prevent business owners from trying to delete their bad reviews (we cover this in the FAQs later in the article).
We can’t stress enough how dodgy it looks when a business has hundreds of 5 star reviews and not one poor review.
Even with exceptional businesses, just by probability there will be a set percentage of bad reviews.
When businesses don’t have any bad reviews, customers have been found to trust them less.
Don’t worry if you’re average review is not 5 stars, it’s far from the end all and be all. It’s key to remember that the average score on Yelp is just 3.5 stars.
Just focus on marginal improvements over time.
Review sites will penalise you if they find that you’re influencing your reviews in an unethical manner. This consequently hurts your search engine optimisation.
You should always strive for as many positive reviews as possible but don’t silence those that want to voice their criticism.
Later in this article we’ll cover how you can ethically reduce and limit the amount of bad reviews left on your website.
Just don’t try to do it in an unethical manner as the downsides greatly outweigh any potential benefits.
It’s important to remember that a business grows through iterations.
Not only do reviews help SEO, they help your entire business to find product-market fit.
If you can look at negative reviews as a blessing, you’re going to see improvements in a much shorter time period than those that ignore their reviews.
These negative reviews will usually leave you with actionable advice that you can start trying to solve immediately.
And the more problems you can solve, the higher your review ratings and customer satisfaction is going to be!
Our first tip for managing reviews is to automate review notifications to the device you use most frequently.
If you don’t do this, odds are you’ll go weeks or months without checking your reviews – allowing for them to build up.
After all, you’re only human and life gets in the way. That’s why you need to be as proactive as possible about ensuring that you stay on top of your reviews.
We recommend building a habit of responding to the reviews as soon as you receive them.
Not only does this hold you accountable but it will also improve your customer satisfaction with such prompt responses.
Our next tip is to use a tool of your choice to keep on top of analytics.
By doing this you can have quantifiable metrics to keep on top of your customer satisfaction.
You can then deduce whether the amount of 5 star reviews are increasing or whether they’re going down.
Similarly, you can use these analytics to identify any patterns among your reviews. This could be identifying a product that your audience loves or finding where your business lacks.
And if you need help finding a tool, we’ve listed our top 3 favourites further down the article.
Our third tip for managing your reviews is to personalise as many of them as you can.
Whilst automated responses and templates are great for efficiency, if you can go the extra mile in personalising the message you’re going to significantly extend each customer’s lifetime value.
This could involve giving a compliment or responding to specific events. Anything to show that there is a real human being behind the message.
And although automation tools are working on their authenticity, it’s still very much obvious that their messages stem from a template.
As we mentioned earlier, one way in which reviews help SEO is through keywords.
The more content that is out there on your website, the better your web visibility is going to be.
And that works for both local and general SEO.
A good way to do this is to ask questions when responding to reviews or using humour to extend the conversation and draw other members of your audience in.
The bigger the conversation, the more keywords are going to spouted!
The most popular option for collecting reviews comes from the guys at Jotform. They provide both a free and paid version of their service.
Their platform allows for you to design, produce, and send out your review forms to multiple different platforms (i.e. your Facebook or Instagram audience).
Furthermore, they’ve set up an analytics dashboard where you can identify the general consensus among the reviews.
And not only that but they have a whole host of premade templates meaning the whole process can be done in just a matter of minutes.
Furthermore, their Offline management module allows for you to collect reviews in person via a smartphone or tablet and then be uploaded to their database later.
As the name suggests, this platform allows you to keep a Birdeye view of your reviews.
They can keep track and provide statistics of your reviews amongst over 200 different sites.
Furthermore, they automate the process of keeping 5 star reviews on your website so that they’re front and centre when potential customers visit your site.
And you can collect reviews whilst still dealing with your customers through the use of QR codes sent via email/text messages.
Last but not least, they also offer automated replies in case the volume of reviews starts to become overwhelming.
The third and final customer review management tool on our list is Podium. This platform specialises in helping local businesses with managing their reviews.
Podium will send out a Google review link via SMS to any customer you serve. It’s a simple one click process where customers can leave their thoughts in a matter of seconds.
Since Podium relies on text messages, there aren’t any lengthy forms to fill out for your customers. And because they rely on text messages, you can expect the amount of reviews you get to soar!
Furthermore, should you want to receive video reviews or sound bits, Podium can offer that too.
First and foremost, you should try to give a personalised compliment in return. This shows that you remember and value the customer.
If you’re unable to recall the event or the customer, show sincere appreciation for their compliment.
The last thing you want to do is to ignore a positive review, this is a great starting block for building a relationship with a customer.
And remember that relationship could be fruitful for both parties for decades to come!
In the same way that you should try to add as much personalisation to the response of a positive review, you should try to do the same for a negative review.
Nothing is going to kill a customer relationship quicker than ignoring or sending an automated response to a negative review.
You should aim to show that you understand the customer’s concerns and then work as hard as you can to rectify those problems.
Not only does this increase the odds of you extending each customer’s lifetime value but it also helps with branding.
Other potential customers can see that your level of service is of a high standard and that you genuinely care about helping each customer.
Unfortunately, there is no “instant delete” button to remove bad reviews on your Google My Business profile.
This is because it would be unethical to silence those who want to voice their opinions about your business. Especially since other customers then make a judgement on your business based off these reviews.
However, you can report any review to Google.
They will then consider whether the review is considered as spam or is malicious to your employees/business then they will remove it in a matter of days.
If the review is genuine critique, more times than not you’ll be unsuccessful with removing the review.
We wish we could give you a black or white answer but it really depends.
If the review can be considered as spam or has malicious intentions, we recommend that you flag it to Google on your “GMB” profile. They’ll act accordingly and remove it.
If the review is genuine then it’s best practice to reach out to the author of the review and try to resolve any disputes.
You’d be surprised how effective this is in ensuring your customers stick around and that bad reviews are removed.
As we mentioned bad reviews help SEO too.
Businesses receive reviews from a range of platforms, these include:
No, there is no way to turn off reviews via Google.
Google wants to provide the best user experience to every single one of it’s users and this involves showcasing what others have to say about a business.
And this is the case for most social media and review platforms too.
Hopefully this article has been helpful with regards to managing your reviews and utilizing them to improve your web visibility.
If you want to learn more about SEO, check out this article.
And if you want to learn more about the topic of reviews and SEO, this is a great article by the guys at search engine journal.
