Seriously trying not to spam up the boards but I have tons of ideas and questions about SEO that I’m not finding through search.
Do you think for those of us that have brick and mortar businesses that there is any weight given to businesses that are “reviewed” on google through google maps/etc? Is there any evidence of this doing anything or is it just a “best practice” kind of thing in case they ever do something with it.
I’ve actually started asking new clients to our company to give us a honest review on google and of the six I have asked in the last week or two resulted in six extremely postive reviews. Could easily have a 100 by year’s end.
If you’ve claimed your business place Page on Google (and it sounds like you have) then you’re well on the way to ranking well in Google local search. Agree with the above post, the positive reviews you get on that page are incredibly valuable for helping with conversions and CTR to your site, so absolutely yes…keep them up!
SEO isn’t just about getting rankings (visibility), but is also abut getting some action on those rankings (like clicks). One metric for measuring that action is click through rate (CTR).
Now think for a second – why would somebody click on a Google local link? Do you think their behavior would be influenced by peer review of the site they were looking at? Do you think positive feedback / word-of-mouth affects a person’s perception of (and likelihood to engage with) a brand/store?
Reviews and all that are part of a standard operating procedure because of their monumental influence on user behavior… human behavior.
I’m unsure if they affect search robot behavior or ranking, as I haven’t tested this much on Google local.
I’m not sure if you have noticed or not, but when you do a local search and click on the “more info” link on maps all of the keywords used to generate your searched in the reviews. The meaning I take from that is make sure your customers use keywords especially location.