If you own a service based business, check out this article in USA Today - Businesses turn to online reviews to grow clientele. When you get to the article, watch the video interview on the left sidebar.
It features LA Chiropractor Dr. Mike Dorausch who is getting up to 80% of his new business from customers finding online reviews about him and then making appointments. Here is his Google Local Profile, with 78 reviews listed. He is on the first page of Google results for “Los Angeles chiropractor.”
Based on some work with our clients, we know that having many online reviews helps your search result ranking in Google Local a lot. And Dr. Mike’s rankings prove this.
The Online Review Sites
There are many online review sites out there. In fact, it is hard to keep track of all of them. Here are a few of the top ones that you could use cultivate reviews on for your business:
In previous posts I’ve talked about how establishing your Google Local and Yahoo Local profile is important for small business owners. And for specific industries, there are new players like Demandforce who manage the entire scheduling and review process for Dental and Auto Service businesses, and provide them to Google.
How to get your customers to review your business
Once you’ve created a profile for your business on these sites, you can send a link to your best customers asking them for a review.
First step – create an email template, so it is easy to send a nice follow up to your patients asking for a review. The template could look something like:
This is Dr. (your name) from (your business name.)
During your last visit I asked if you would be willing to share your thoughts about our office.
Online reviews are becoming more and more valuable to businesses like ours. If you have nice things to say about us or your experience here, it would help us if you would take a few minutes and share your experiences on one of the online review sites listed below.
There are four different review sites where reviews can be posted for us. Here are direct links to our business in each of them:
Google Local: http://tinyurl.com/4a8jfx
Yahoo Local: http://tinyurl.com/4z5r7r
Citysearch: http://tinyurl.com/3kv9pw
Yelp: http://tinyurl.com/3kv9pw
Your review can be short and sweet – it should only take a few minutes. Thank you for your willingness to help us out!
Sincerely,
Dr. (your name)
The review sites you list should include direct links to your review page there. You can make the list into hyperlinks if you know how, or just include the link to your review page after the name of the review site. Sometimes these links are very long, so use a service like TinyURL to give you a shorter link like the examples above.
As described in the USA Today article, ask your patients for their email address while they are in your office after the visit. A simple question from your front desk like “Do we have your email address? And would you be willing to write a short review for us?” is a good way to collect your customers email addresses if you don’t already have them.
Then follow up with your customers using your email template, and watch how a growing list of reviews helps your business attract new customers!
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Sounds to me like Yahoo and Google Local search will give the good ol’ (expensive) Yellow Pages a run for their money.
I would have to say that this is the most important item for ranking highly in the google local search. It is like getting links to your site to increase rankings. This has that effect on your local listing. Along with having one that is filled out well and optimized for your key terms.
Thanks for weighing in Tim. Agreed. I just ran across a great post along these lines by Stephen Espinosa titled Reviews and how they effect local ranking. Some great practical tips.
Here is another great article on this topic: User Reviews and Local Search: Great Together