Google Reviews

This one is a no-brainer; you have to make sure that Google+ Local Business is totally set up, not just for the social media and SMO value but most importantly for the online Google Reviews. Google Reviews rank higher than all other reviews. In addition to Google Reviews ranking more powerfully than any other reviews, Google displays its reviews more prominently. This will include a whole section on the first page of Google, with a star rating system, number of reviews, review score, and even a link to the Google+ Business page.

If you Google “Ford dealers Philadelphia,” you will see six different dealerships' Google Reviews prominently on the first page of Google (see Figure 8.1).

Pacifico Ford has the most reviews and the highest rating: 134 reviews with a 4.7 (out of 5 stars) rating. Not only does Pacifico have supreme placement in the Google Reviews section, but also it has the best rating. A prospect is almost surely going to choose that dealership over the Dunphy dealership, which has one review and no rating. A prospect would surely choose Pacifico over a dealership that has no ratings and doesn't even show up on the list of possibilities.

Zagat Ratings

Let's dive into restaurants for a moment here and show you how much Google values reviews. In 2009 Google was in discussions to acquire Yelp for $500 million. That deal fell through, and in 2011 Google acquired Zagat for $151 million. It wasn't a half billion dollars, but $151 million is still a lot of money to pay for a company that reviews businesses. But Google had a vision and an understanding that people (searchers on Google) want to know what other people think about things. People want to avoid making bad decisions and wasting money on subpar restaurants (as well as companies, products, services, people, etc.).¹

If you Google “seafood restaurants New York City,” you will see a large black bar on the very top of Google that is above the PPC ads. In that bar are Zagat reviews for 22 restaurants that fit the search criteria.

In the black bar are graphics/pictures of food, restaurants, etc., which draw you in. Then, of course, there are the names of restaurants, the star ratings, the types of restaurants, and the number of reviews. There is everything you need right there on the first page of Google. You do not need to go anywhere else. If you click any of the options in the black bar, it will open a Knowledge Graph on the right-hand side.

Here is an example. If you clicked the “Blue Water Grill,” you would see what is shown in Figure 8.2.

The Knowledge Graph is tied to the Zagat review/rating system and provides very important information:

• Address
• Phone number
• Pricing
• Hours of operation
• Reservations
• Menu
• Star rating system (reviews)
• “Also searching for.” This is an important feature that gives searchers additional options and ideas they might not have known about.

Yelp

If you Googled “Chinese food San Francisco,” in addition to the Zagat/Google black bar on the top of the first page, you would find numerous Yelp reviews and ratings (see Figure 8.3).

Yelp is a major online review site that ranks very high on Google. It is arguably the most powerful and most relevant review site. The only problem is that Google doesn't own it. So, it won't rank as well as Google Reviews or Zagat, but it still has major value and more specifically it has major SEO value.

Another major aspect of Yelp is that it is partnered with Apple and powers Apple's Siri search results and reviews. For example, if you are one of the 500 million people who purchased an iPhone and you tell Siri, “Ford dealership Philadelphia,” “seafood restaurants New York City,” or “Chinese food San Francisco,” Siri will return with Yelp reviews, not Google reviews. So, Yelp is still a major force to be reckoned with. Make sure that in addition to creating a Google+ account so you can create a Google Review strategy or a Zagat account so you can create a Zagat strategy, you add Yelp to your arsenal for ORO resources.

Here are additional resources that you should also sign up your business for so you can start to harvest online reviews that will rank on page one of Google:

• MerchantCircle
• Yellow Pages
• White Pages
• Citysearch
• Foursquare

There are a myriad of important and useful websites, directories, and listing sites that you can utilize for your brand, company, product, or service. This can get confusing or cumbersome, so there are software solutions that you can utilize that will streamline and organize the process. One tool I suggest that you look into is Yext (www.yext.com). Yext will first scan to see how your brand/company is listed in all of the top directories and business listing sites.

Human Resources

Most people have no idea that there are human resources websites that have tremendous SEO value for online reviews. But these online reviews are not like traditional reviews. These are employment reviews! That's right—there are multiple websites that allow (actually encourage) employees to rate and rank where they work. This makes all the sense in the world. If you were looking for a job, you don't want to go work for a horrible company or a terrible boss. So, these websites are in existence to provide the job seekers some sort of transparency about what they might be getting themselves into.

Here are the two most powerful websites that specialize in this:

1. Indeed.com
2. Glassdoor.com

I encourage you to create accounts (profiles) on both of these websites and set up the profiles the proper way with relevant keywords for a viable SEO strategy. Once these profiles are created for your business (brand), I would encourage all of your employees to fill out positive reviews about your organization:

• Full-time
• Part-time
• Interns
• General contract agents (1099 employees)
• Frontline level
• Senior level

By creating human resource review site profiles, you are creating additional indexable content that can (and will) rank on the first page of Google.

Industry Review Sites

Let's use examples from the automotive sales industry:

• Edmunds.com
• KelleyBlueBook.com (KBB.com)

Another major opportunity is to connect with industry-specific review sites. These sites are powerful because they have a specific and relevant audience already built in. For example, in the automotive sales industry, the top two websites that consumers and shoppers visit are Kelley Blue Book and Edmunds.com. These sites generate millions and millions of unique visitors per month. They are primary information sites to assist the shopper/buyer in making an educated buying decision on their next automotive purchase. These sites already have powerful SEO value. A car dealership or an automotive salesperson would be smart to direct their clients to both of these websites and fill out an online review on their dealership (or them as a salesperson). Or they can send an email campaign with a link to either KBB.com or Edmunds. The overall objective is to get online reviews at places that specialize in online reviews, especially industry-specific online review sites.

To give you a different example about how this works, let's use the hotel industry. Google “best hotels Beverly Hills,” and you will see an almost complete first page of Google saturated with online reviews:

• Zagat reviews
• PPC reviews
• Hotel comparison (sponsored)
• TripAdvisor
• Expedia
• Hotels.com

You want to not only utilize review sites but also incorporate industry-specific review sites for even more relevancy.

Personal Review Site (Blog Site)

I am going to go into detail regarding blog sites/ancillary websites for SEO value in the next chapter, so I am not going to go into detail right here. However, I will say that it would be an amazing idea for you to create your own review site! You can create (for free) a review site using WordPress for your company or brand. It is simple—here is the roadmap:

• URL/Domain
  • I suggest something simple, like www.ABCCompanyReviews.com (the name of your brand or company and then “Reviews.com”).
• I suggest a blog format because it will be very easy to update all of the reviews that you receive on a daily or weekly basis.
• Make sure that you upload text reviews.
  • You can get quotes directly from clients or fans.
  • You can extract quotes from video testimonials from your clients and make text quotes.
  • Scan letters, cards, or thank you messages into digital format.
• Pictures: Get pictures of your clients. Get pictures of you and your clients, your clients at your events, and your clients with your products.
• Videos: Video testimonials are one of the most powerful pieces of review content that you can acquire.
• Syndicate content: Get all the reviews that you receive from all other sites:
  • Google Reviews
  • Zagat
  • Yelp
  • Yellow Pages
  • MerchantCircle
  • Foursquare
  • TripAdvisor
  • Hotels.com
  • Edmunds.com
  • GlassDoor
  • Indeed.com
  • And so on…

You can cut and paste them into your blog site.

Interaction with Reviews

Getting more reviews and having these sites rank for your name is just the start. The real juice begins when people read them. We already know how prominently the star ratings show up on Google, but that's just an overview. Depending on your type of business and the type of customers you attract, there's a good chance that you can make a huge impact on potential customers.

Every review should receive a personalized reply, preferably from the owner or general manager of the company. Let me repeat that for emphasis: every review should receive a personal reply from the owner or general manager. It doesn't matter if you're getting reviews every day. Time must be set aside for immediate responses so that no review sits there for longer than one business day before becoming a conversation rather than a monologue.

This works for two reasons. First, it's respectful to your customers. This should be obvious. If someone takes the time to say something about your company, good or bad, they deserve to receive a reply. The other reason is that Google loves these types of interactions. If you ask them, they'll deny it. If you ask SEO experts who have been doing this for a while, they will verify that interactions help your review pages get ranked higher in the searches.

There are exceptions. Sites like Ripoff Report and other “parasite sites” rely on business names to drive traffic to their sites. In essence, they hold you hostage by posting these negative reviews and hoping that they rank for your name so you have to address them.

Don't.

Your natural instinct will be to defend yourself, but if you validate these sites, it will only get worse. Focus on the strong sites—BBB, Yelp, Google, etc.—and let the parasites sink.

Sharing Makes It Even More Visible

Utilizing social media channels also has a double benefit for your business. When you have great reviews that you want to share, be sure to put them everywhere you can:

• Your website
• Blog
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• YouTube

That last one should have caught your attention. How do you share a Yelp review on YouTube? For some businesses such as mine, we meet face-to-face with customers and we're able to get actual video interviews with them. That doesn't work for most businesses, but that's okay. You can still take advantage of reviews.

It doesn't take extreme video editing skills to grab screenshots of your best reviews and put them into a nice visual media file that can be uploaded to YouTube. Add some music, tag it properly as discussed in the previous chapter on video SEO, and voilà! You have a video review.

These can be very powerful for one major reason. When people do a search for your business reviews, there's a great chance that your properly optimized video will rank on the first page.

I have already identified how powerful videos and video SEO are. So, I highly suggest that you create a video review or video testimonial strategy for yourself and/or your business.

Here are some best practice tips for creating the best video reviews:

• Make sure that you diversify the types of reviews that you create. For example, if you were a car dealership or an automotive salesperson, you would want to get video reviews from your happy clients. But diversify your testimonials by:
  • Expectations
    • Price shoppers
    • Convenience shoppers
    • Specific vehicle shoppers
    • People who hate car salesmen
    • Credit-challenged people
    • People interested in selling their trade
  • Geographics: Review from people in a certain area
    • People who live in the primary market area of the dealership (people who live close to the dealership)
    • People who live in areas outside of the dealership's primary market area (these areas are “conquest” territories)
  • Demographics
    • Minority communities
    • If there is a Hispanic community, get reviews from Hispanic clients
    • If there is a Jewish community, get reviews from Jewish clients
    • If there is an African American community, get reviews from African American clients
  • Law enforcement and military
    • Clients in uniform
    • Senior citizens
    • First-time buyers
    • Families
    • Credit-challenged

As you can see now, creating reviews is more comprehensive than just sticking your camera phone in someone's face and asking for a “quick review.” You need to create a strategy. I know that I used an example for the automotive sales industry. But the concept is simple and can be applied to all industries. Basically, you want to diversify your video reviews. You want to think of your audience—all of them. What is it that they want, need, or expect? What is important to them? Once you understand what these things are, then get video testimonials/reviews from all of your current and past clients and make sure to diversify your library of video reviews. So, when people are searching for you or your company, product, or service, they will collide with all of these video testimonials.

As I mentioned earlier, I have over 600 different video reviews/testimonials. All you have to do is type in “Dealer Synergy reviews” or “Sean V. Bradley reviews” in YouTube, and they will all show up. They are all diversified reviews. I have segmented them for:

• Me (Sean V. Bradley) personally
• Dealer Synergy Reviews (my training and consulting company)
• Internet Sales 20 group (my three-day workshop)
• Different audiences:
  • Dealer principals (multimillionaire owners of car dealerships)
  • General managers
  • Sales managers
  • Internet directors
  • BDC directors
  • Appointment setters/Internet sales coordinators
  • Car salesmen
  • OEM reps (automotive manufacturers)
  • State dealer associations
  • FranklinCovey students
  • Raving fans that say that I have changed their lives
  • Other industry experts who give powerful reviews
  • I even have my direct competitors provide video reviews on how awesome my workshops are

In addition to video reviews on YouTube and other video search engines, there are other sites that you need to syndicate your online reviews to, including your own site. The sharing and linking will help your strong reviews rank well on the search engines. Share them on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Syndicate them to your blog and website. There are widgets and plugins available that will pull these reviews onto your website and blog and then link back to your reviews themselves. When you acknowledge the reviews and review sites with your own properties, Google is more likely to give them credibility as a result.

Remember, there is no trick to beat Google. You can't fake or scam Google (not for long). Google feels so strongly about online reviews that it published a book called Winning the Zero Moment of Truth, which states that reviews are a huge influence factor and contribute to the prospect's Zero Moment of Truth. Google also went on a mission to acquire the most powerful review companies in existence and almost bought Yelp for a half of a billion dollars but at the last minute dropped that acquisition attempt and instead purchased Zagat for $151 million. Google gives preeminent position on the first page of Google for Google Reviews and Zagat Reviews. Google also integrates the Knowledge Graph with its online review platform(s).

Use this information to create an ORO strategy. Use online reviews to achieve Google first page domination.