Reviews are the cornerstone of local search engine optimization (SEO). They are feedback written by customers who have come into contact with your business and patronized you.

This feedback plays a key role in deciding how your local SEO campaign will perform.

In fact, whether the reviews and ratings on your Google My Business Profile are positive or negative is what determines the success or failure of your campaigns. They are that important.

Here are key reasons why reviews are very important to local SEO:

• Improved Search Rankings

Google uses reviews to rank websites in local search results.

If your reviews are positive, Google knows that your customers are satisfied with your products and services. Hence, it trusts your credibility and ranks your website listing highly when a local search concerning your business is done. This gives your business more visibility.

However, if your reviews are negative, it signals to Google that your customers are dissatisfied with your services. It then ranks your website listing low in local search results.

Now that we have established the fact that Google loves reviews and uses them to trust and rank sites, you must understand that there are certain factors the search engine usually considers from these reviews before ranking sites.

These factors include:

• Quantity

First of all, Google can’t trust your brand’s credibility based on just one positive review or rating. It needs several reviews to verify that your business is trustworthy and recommendable.

For example, if a business has 20 positive reviews and another has 100 positive reviews, Google will definitely rank the latter over the former. The more, the better.

• Quality

Having a lot of reviews is great, but quantity alone isn’t enough. They must be quality reviews.

No matter how many reviews your business has, Google ranks the business with the most positive reviews higher.

So, if one business has 20 reviews that are all positive and another one has 100 reviews but only 20 are positive, the search engine will rank the former over the latter in this case.

Google also loves keyword-based reviews. The search engine prefers reviews that contain keyword phrases that are relevant to the field or industry that the review is based on.

• Recency

The goal of Google is always to give its searchers up-to-date information, and it applies the same logic to reviews.

Recent reviews are prioritized over older reviews. When a business is receiving a consistent inflow of reviews and feedback, Google sees it as a signal that the business is actively serving customers.

Hence, a business that has gotten several reviews over the last 3-6 months will be ranked over a business whose last review was one year ago.

• Response to Reviews

Another signal of activity that Google uses to rank businesses in local search results is the speed and number of responses that they give to the reviews that are dropped on their profile.

If a business responds to the reviews that customers leave about it online, it shows that they are active and customer-focused. This gives a boost in rankings. 

• Balanced Reviews 

Google knows that not all your customers can be 100% satisfied with your products and services. So, when all your ratings are 5/5 star ratings, and none of your reviews point out an area that needs improvement, it sees it as manipulated and not real.

Real reviews need to be balanced with positive and negative reviews, even if the positive reviews are more. 

• High Ratings

Aside from written and visual reviews, Google also uses high ratings to evaluate and rank profiles in search results. 

Businesses with ratings of 4.5/5 and above are usually preferred and ranked over businesses whose ratings are lower than that threshold.

• Higher Click-Through Rate 

Reviews don’t just enable your business to rank high on local search rankings; they also improve your click-through rate (CTR). That is the percentage of people who click on your website’s listing in organic search results.

The more positive reviews you have, the more clicks your website will get in search results.  

• Increased Trust and Credibility 

Do you know that 88% of customers determine the quality of businesses by reading their reviews, and 72% of customers trust businesses based on the positive reviews they see about them online?

That’s a high percentage of customers. This tells you how important reviews are.

There are several people who haven’t interacted with you or bought from you, but they form an opinion about your business based on the kind of reviews they see online.

They treat these reviews and ratings the same way they treat the word-of-mouth recommendations they get from people close to them. 

According to them, the customers who left those reviews have used your products and interacted with your business, so they should be in a better position to leave accurate feedback.

That’s why if the reviews are positive, they boost your brand’s trust, credibility, and reputation. However, if they are negative, they paint a bad image of your business.

• More Sales and Foot Traffic 

Based on a report by Qualtrics, 90% of new customers are more likely to purchase after reading reviews.

When your reviews are positive and your ratings are high, potential customers are more confident to buy from you. They trust you and your products or services because the people who have patronized you before have put in a good word for you.

In addition to that, when the reviews on your GMB profile are positive, people around you who need your products will walk into your physical store to make inquiries and buy from you.

Final Thoughts

Good reviews and ratings posted by your customers online play a major role in improving your local search results, giving your business more visibility, credibility, and trust. It could also earn your business more conversions and sales. 

Hence, ensure you get your customers to drop reviews and ratings about your business online after they patronize your products and services.

If you don’t know how to get feedback from your customers about your products and services, READ THIS.