As a small business owner, you already know how much Google reviews impact your brand's online reputation, visibility, and traffic.
By learning how to manage Google reviews, you can improve your local SEO, enhance your brand's reputation, and earn the trust of new customers. You can also increase the amount of reviews you receive, ensure the accuracy of your business listing, and promote your brand for free.
This comprehensive guide to Google review management covers everything your business needs to know to get started, including:
Before we dive into our review management tips or start comparing different software options, let's quickly revisit some of the reasons why Google reviews are important for businesses.
They include:
Online reviews help build trust and credibility for your business — especially Google reviews, which consumers trust more than other types of reviews.
When potential customers see positive Google reviews from others, they are more likely to trust your business and feel confident in purchasing from you.
Positive reviews act as social proof, showing that your business satisfies its customers and provides quality products or services.
When customers review your business on Google, it increases your visibility in local search results. That means your business is more likely to appear on Google Maps and be displayed in relevant search results whenever someone searches for a product or service related to your business in your geographic area.
This increased visibility can translate to more website traffic and increased foot traffic to your physical store.
Google reviews positively impact your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
The more reviews your business receives, the more content search engines can crawl and index. This can help improve your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) and make your business more visible to potential customers.
Additionally, Google considers the quality and quantity of reviews when determining search rankings, so having positive reviews can give you an edge over competitors.
To manage your Google reviews, you'll need to set up a page for your business.
You'll also need to monitor Google for new reviews, request reviews from your customers, respond to all the reviews you receive, and flag inappropriate reviews for removal.
The first step of managing Google reviews is to create a Google Business Profile (formerly "Google My Business") for your company. As Google explains, “Before you can engage with potential customers, make sure your profile is set up and verified on Google. Upon verification, customers can only find your business profile on Google.”
Here’s how to set up and verify your business account on Google.
The more positive reviews you receive, the higher your business will be rated—and the more potential customers will learn about your brand.
Here's how to get more Google reviews, according to Google's own tips:
As noted, Google enables your business to create and share a link your customers can follow to easily leave a review. Here’s how to provide your customers with a link to your business profile:
Another strategy is to work with a review generation service like Shout About Us, which enables you to automate sending out requests for customer feedback.
You can't manage reviews you didn’t see. Monitoring Google keeps your business in the loop and up to date on customer feedback, which enables you to resolve complaints swiftly and watch trends as they develop.
To monitor Google efficiently, you need to enable review alerts and notifications. For example, you can set your account to send you email notifications whenever somebody leaves a comment on your business profile.
Here’s how to turn on Google review notifications, depending on what type of device you’re using.
For Android users:
For iPhone and iPad users:
If using a laptop or desktop computer:
While this guide has been focused on Google, it's also important for your business to monitor other review sites, such as Yelp and Tripadvisor. Here are 16 examples of review platforms and social media networks to monitor, depending on your industry:
Make sure you have review alerts and notifications enabled for every platform you want to monitor. Or, simplify your tasks by letting us handle the review monitoring for you. Shout About Us tracks over 75 platforms — and if there’s one you’d like to add, just let us know, and we’ll get your profile connected.
Here are some of Google's tips for responding to reviews:
Here are some additional best practices to follow:
When it comes to the actual process of creating and publishing review responses, there are several strategies your business can follow:
Google tries to ensure that all reviews on its platform are authentic. That means Google will not remove bad reviews simply because they happen to be negative or critical.
However, Google will remove reviews that violate Google's review policies. This includes, but is not limited to, the following types of prohibited content and behavior:
There are multiple ways to report a review to Google: using Google Maps, Google Search, or the Review Management Tool on your business profile.
Flagging a review will trigger an investigation to determine whether the reported content violates Google's policies. You can stay up-to-date on the status of your review removal request by following the steps below.
Manually flagging individual reviews is an ongoing, time-consuming task, especially if you have multiple locations or business listings. To save time, you can use a review removal service like Shout About Us, which fully automates the process.
Online review management tools are programs or platforms that are designed to help companies track, analyze, and reply to customer feedback on different review websites. They can be used for managing Google reviews, Yelp reviews, Facebook reviews, and more.
While every platform is different, they typically offer review management features such as:
Equipped with these capabilities, Google review management tools make it easier and more cost-efficient to manage your online reputation. They also enable your business to respond to reviews promptly, gain valuable feedback from customers, and address negative feedback in a professional manner.
Let’s go over three advantages of using Google review management software.
Managing online reviews can be a time-consuming task — especially if, like most businesses, you need to manage reviews on multiple platforms and not just Google.
Review management tools save you valuable time by automating many of the manual tasks that are necessary for managing reviews, such as:
This enables your team to focus on other projects, increasing your organization’s efficiency.
Every review response should be personalized to the customer. At the same time, all responses need to be consistent with your brand's voice and messaging.
Depending on the specific tool, there are two ways that review management tools can help businesses respond to reviews with both consistency and personalization:
This ensures that your review responses are not only error-free and professional-sounding, but also that they align with your brand's marketing strategy and language.
Review management tools provide businesses with valuable data and insights about their online reputation. For instance, many offer analytics features that allow businesses to track review trends, measure customer sentiments, and identify areas for improvement.
By gathering and analyzing this information, your business can make informed, data-driven decisions and target the most effective ways to improve the customer experience.
To choose the best Google review management software, consider your company's goals and requirements. For example, do you want to focus strictly on getting more reviews? Or does your business need a comprehensive solution, like a service that takes care of reporting inappropriate reviews, analyzing customer feedback, and responding to reviews for you?
Shout About Us offers all the review management features your business needs, including review generation, review removal, and review monitoring on over 75 platforms.
We also offer a done-for-you review response service, ResponseScribe, which delivers personalized replies to your reviewers within hours of receiving them. You can select the services you need a-la-carte to design the perfect review management plan for your business.
In addition to determining what services or features you require, you also need to consider the size of your organization and the volume of reviews you'll need to manage.
Some review management platforms are specifically designed for small business owners, while others are made to support large enterprises and multi location businesses. Shout About Us is a scalable platform for businesses of all sizes, whether you need to manage a single location — or hundreds of them.
Other factors to weigh include:
Improve your business's reputation and attract more customers with an intuitive, cloud-based platform that makes review management a breeze.
From monitoring your reviews on Google and 75+ platforms, to creating automated, personalized email and text campaigns to request reviews, Shout About Us empowers your brand to reach and convert more customers.
Rethink the way your business manages online reviews. Get started with a demo today.
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