Dominate Your Local Competition With 3 Easy Steps

Rhett Lloyd
Aug 05, 2021
6 mins

As a local business, it’s important to remain on the top in local search presence so that you can remain in the competition, for that purpose, you have to look for options to monetize your business. This will attract more traffic that can be converted into new customers.

If you follow the given steps, your online reputation can be improved easily. Additionally, you can offer a more convenient online experience and generate reviews that will interest more customers and inspire them to come again.

Make Yourself Prominent with Reviews:

You can simply say that reviews about your brand speak for themselves. If you want to stand out from your competitors at first glance, online reviews can help you can dominate the market. Most of the time, people use search to find a business. According to a Google study, 93% of the online experience starts with the search, and 99% of traffic does not even scroll past the first page. So, you have to think about these questions. Can someone easily find you when searching for your business? Is the information you are providing credible?

Reviews influence people. They can help drive a bulk of traffic to your site from different platforms as well, such as social media. According to a survey, positive reviews influence almost 90% of the online presence. Your business can be good or bad, and it depends on what Google portrays. Reviews can create a difference between you and your competitor and can also make someone choose you over others. One thing that really matters is your rating, but consider this, the quantity of the reviews can play a crucial role as well. In some cases, bad reviews can also increase the credibility of your business. For Example, if a business has 200+ reviews with 4.8 ratings is considered more credible instead of a business with 5.0 stars but only a few reviews.

You should have a template and personalization in the reviews section. You have to create a template and workflow that requests new reviews automatically through texts, email, and other sources. Personalize it and make it convenient for your users. If you add your logo or specific customer information, you are likely to get a review. You have to stay proactive to get positive reviews. Otherwise, you may only get negative reviews, which understandably can have a bad impact on your business. The thing that can encourage the customers to give you positive reviews is to solicit them.

Find the best way to automate reviews to Google My Business. Often software you are already using offers options for integrations. Automating review requests ensures every customer is asked for a review. Using email is ok but SMS is by far the best. It’s quick and easy and less involved, which leads to more reviews being generated.

Engage Conveniently:

Convenience is the most important thing for customers. The company’s top priority must be for the customers to make the buying of the products conveniently. You’ve made a good customer experience when it is easy for them to reach out to you. If you make it hard for the customers to get in touch with you, it won’t work because the expectations have changed. If you want to give the greatest satisfaction to your customers, you must provide a time-saving option for them.

Every person expects a good customer experience. You must evaluate your way of communication and engagement with the people and prefer the method that customers like the most. For easy scheduling and booking of your services, look for ways to make your customers comfortable. According to the research, 85% of the consumers want to send and receive texts from businesses. Additionally, customers want to securely pay from anywhere. Your customers can make your business great, but you must create convenient methods and make it easy for them to engage.

Keep in touch:

Once you grab a new customer, its life cycle is just beginning. You have to stay in touch with them (and everyone.) But this is a point where most businesses fail. You have to make a strategy that allows you to stay in front of your customers and top of mind. The best thing to improve your business is to consider and utilize customers’ feedback.

SEO Takeaways:

Before buying anything, consumers take online reviews into consideration. Your SEO strategy can be complemented with online reviews, and you can improve your organic presence with E-A-T, User Experience, and Rankings.

E-A-T:

Expertise. Authority. Trust. The E-A-T of the business can be boosted by generating online reviews from different consumers. You have to show the credible reputation of your business to search engines and people so that they can trust you. The organic visibility of your business could be impacted by E-A-T, whether it is onsite or offsite. If a local business doesn’t meet the expectations of customers, they are at risk of being pushed further down in the SERPs.

If you want to get more perspectives of customers, you have to build your local business according to E-A-T. It will be a plus if you pair the positive online reviews to increase more traffic on the website. It is also observed that if your business has 4 or 5-star ratings on Google My Business, which directly increases your click-through rates.

User Experience:

If your SEO strategy can bring positive star ratings on your website, it enhances the user experience and will not only be featured on the Google My Business listing but also in the organic search results. If the visitors can see the reviews immediately, it not only saves their time but also provide the information to the visitors that they are looking for without any effort or issue. Your keyword positioning can be influenced directly by having positive star ratings in your organic search results. This can be done by adding schema markup or structured data to your website so that it can pull in the reviews into the SERP.

Rankings:

After link building and Google My Business, online reviews are the most important factor for rankings to optimize and increase your positioning in the local search. If you are thinking that having some negative reviews can immediately impact your rankings, don’t worry. According to a study, it is observed that when some businesses removed their online reviews, their local pack positioning had dropped. If you receive negative reviews, see them as an opportunity to improve your reputation management and re-establish the online credibility of your business. Always respond in a professional manner, no matter what type of review you are dealing with.

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