Why You Need Reviews on Google

Do you buy anything anymore without looking online for a review? Especially for something more expensive? I don’t either! Reviews are necessary for your business because customers use them as part of their research. 91% of consumers read online reviews of local businesses before purchasing a product or service (Bright Local).

Benefits of Positive Reviews:

Speeds up the decision process for customers looking to make purchases
Business with more high quality reviews tend to get higher Google rankings
Provides social proof that helps to increase trust from people who are unfamiliar with your business
Reviews are your 24/7 marketing. Reviews breed more reviews. Trust grows as the amount of your reviews grows

Lengthy reviews have a greater impact than shorter ones. A well written recommendation from a customer is treated as a vote for your business, or an endorsement. Descriptive feedback that contains industry relevant keywords are better than simple one liners, like "Excellent Service". So if your customer include keywords in your review, even better. Bottom line, if you want to have a competitive presence online, then you will need more reviews.

Google makes it really easy for your customers to leave feedback. Google reviews are prominently displayed on local search results and the accompanying map with a "Leave A Review" button.

Reviews Help With Your Local Presence

Customer feedback is great for local SEO and local business marketing. If your business is open at the time of someone’s search, is nearby, and features more positive ratings and reviews than your competitors, it is very possible to come out as a top result of the search query. For a small, local business competing against similar business in the same neighborhood, positive reviews can be the tiebreaker between 2 businesses with the same location proximity from the searchers location.

Reviews Provide Valuable Feedback

You can learn a lot about how you can improve the customer experience and make improvements based on what customers say. For a business with a large number of customers, like a restaurant, this information can be invaluable.