Are Google Reviews Good For My Business? Yes!

Google My Business (GMB) is a fantastic tool for helping your online visibility and attractiveness to potential customers. If you're not putting effort into it, why not? You could be missing out of generating a lot of business.?

You've probably seen thousands of these listings when searching online; they contain your company details, contact information and the services you offer.

However, they also include another feature which many businesses don't give enough attention, your reviews! But you may ask, 'are they that important?'.?

The straight and absolute answer to this is yes, your Google reviews are very important, and here's why:

Boost your Local SEO

No matter what your business does, or how big it is, Local SEO is essential for success, because after all, you'll get no customers if no one knows who you are. Below is an image of two of our Inspire listings in Google's map pack. As you can see, we have a star rating and review count.?

The position of our place in the map listings, and in local search result pages, is not affected by our company's size or how much we pay Google. We appear high on the list because we optimise our profile and we have more reviews than other companies around us.

Almost 46% of all Google searches are looking for local information or services. Whether it's 'Bakery near me' or 'Digital Agency' in Perth, you'll want your business at the top of the page, which reviews can help you with.

So, the more reviews you have on your GMB listing, the more reputable Google sees you and so the higher on the list you'll be.

Good for business

Another way Google reviews will help your business is because they show potential customers how good you are! The more reviews you can get which say you're five-stars and offer an excellent service, the more likely a customer is to choose you over a competitor.

Unfortunately, it's a fact that almost no business will receive positive reviews 100% of the time. Having large amounts of positive reviews, however, can help prove to viewers that any negative feedback may be an isolated event.

Out of a combined total of over 400 reviews (435 at today's count) we've had a few negative reviews which have been nothing more than 'trolls'. We take pride in our work and as such investigate all negative reviews and guess what - NONE - have been clients of Inspire. I believe it's time to start calling out these trolls.

One bad review and one-hundred positive can help sway any potential customers who may be on the fence.

So, if you're serving many customers, you should always be looking for feedback and social proof. Great social proof is rewarded by Google pushing you further afield (not necessarily pushing you to number one in the ranking, that's another conversation entirely). The more you ask, listen and act upon that feedback the better your service will improve. You're always going to incur the wrath of the trolls if you're willing to put your head above the parapet, and that's yet another conversation for us to have later...

Even us with 435 reviews have received 6 malicious comments from trolls. Try to encourage as much feedback as possible, and if that's evidenced with social proof, all the better. It could be as simple as a line in your email signature asking politely for a Google review or a quick mention when serving a customer. It's an easy effort to start making, but can have massive returns.