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The Perfect Stack of Online Reviews: How Does Your Local Business Measure up?

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/alvaroreguly/37317928410/

“I picked you because of your reviews” is nice to hear, especially it’s often.  But how do you achieve that?

Having “good reviews” isn’t always enough.  Plenty of businesses have good reviews, but don’t attract enough business, or rank well, or beget the kinds of reviews that beget more customers who beget more reviews.  That’s one reason local SEO and review strategy are so connected (if you’re doing it right).

What’s in a “perfect” pile of reviews?   More than you think.  Possibly more than you can get, even if you do everything right.  As someone who’s helped business owners on that for many years, I’ve got a long list of boxes you should try to check.  More on that in a minute.

To keep the checklist to a reasonable length, I’ve got to assume two things about you:

  • You want reviews from real people, and not from friends or Fiverr merchants.
  • You know your customers well enough to know how important it is for your business to have reviewers from “different walks of life,” and that you don’t need my advice on that.

For my list to be of much use, you probably need to keep at least a little influx of reviews from customers / clients / patients.  See this post.

Now, what should that stack of reviews look like?  No one review will meet more than a few of these criteria, but your stack of online reviews as a whole should contain as many of the following as possible:

  1. Reviews on a wide range of sites.
  1. Plenty of 5-star reviews.
  1. A stinker or two. For one thing, they’re a reality-check. We don’t live in a 5-star world.
  1. Recent reviews. Make it clear you’re still in business.
  1. Old reviews. In time you’ll want a few Mick Jaggers in there.
  1. Excruciatingly detailed reviews. Happy, yappy customers who don’t seem to have an “off” button can make great reviewers.
  1. Funny reviews. Maybe you can skip this one if you’re a bankruptcy lawyer, urologist, or funeral-home director.
  1. Sloppy reviews. Some people just don’t think in terms of paragraphs or complete sentences. Doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from a belch of approval.
  1. Photos included with the reviews.
  1. Mentions of your business by name.
  1. Mentions of specific people in your organization (you, partners, employees, etc.).
  1. Reviews on less-trafficked or niche review sites. Don’t necessarily fixate on Google and Yelp.
  1. Reviews by one-time skeptics. There’s no zeal like the zeal of the convert.
  1. Reviews by former customers of your competitors.
  1. Reviews by longtime / repeat customers of yours. “I had a great experience” is only weak when compared to “I’ve brought my wallet here for years.”
  1. Reviews by farther-away customers – people who maybe had to drive a little, or who are on the outer edge of your service area. Great tie-in with “city pages,” by the way.
  1. Reviews by almost-customers. When a near-miss speaks up, it shows you’re willing to turn down business if it’s not the right fit.
  1. Mentions of relevant cities / places. May help your rankings. Of interest to would-be customers  either way.
  1. Mentions of specific services. People like crunchy little bits of detail. Google sure seems to.
  1. Reviews that explain how the reviewer found you.
  1. Reviews that explain how the reviewer picked you.
  1. Reviews from people who reviewed you on another site, too.
  1. Reviews from shy customers / clients / patients. Maybe they use a pen name or initials. Maybe they don’t go into as much detail as they could, and it’s obvious there’s more to the story.  Reluctant reviews can pack a strange wallop.
  1. Comments on other reviewers’ reviews. It can be powerful for customer B to rebut or confirm what customer A said.
  1. Favorable comparisons to a competitor.

I didn’t include screenshots of examples because I wanted to keep it as much like a checklist as possible.  But I’m all about real-life examples, so here are a few examples of great local-business review profiles for you to leaf through:

google.com/search?q=Premo+Electric

google.com/search?q=Alliance+Mortgage+Funding%2C+Inc.

google.com/search?q=HomeMove+Removals+%26+Storage

google.com/search?q=Kaehne%2C+Cottle%2C+Pasquale+%26+Associates%2C+S.C.+Appleton

Can you think of any other parts of a perfect pile of reviews?  (I know I’ve forgotten something.)

Any real-life examples you’d like to share?

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Template for Creating Knockout City-Page Content for Local SEO

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/46799485@N00/4470761409/

Most “city pages” stink more than a pig farmer’s overalls.  Even if they rank well, they usually don’t compel anyone to call.  The content is stuffed with the name of the city, but it’s boilerplate otherwise.  To would-be customers it’s just lip service from a company that seems desperate for business.

Every page is the same, except one targets “roofer Dallas,” and another is for “roofer Fort Worth,” and another goes after “roofer Plano,” and so on.

When that doesn’t work, that’s when business owners and SEOs decide to do even more of it.  They pump out even more awful city pages.  And again they wonder why the phone doesn’t ring more.

It doesn’t need to be that way.  If you’re willing to rub a few brain cells together and do a little work, city pages (or location pages) can be a super-effective way to reach customers – especially farther-away people who may not see your business in the local 3-pack / Google Maps results.

I’ve already written on how to create city pages that rank well and can drive leads.  You’ll want to read and absorb that post if you haven’t already.  You’ll know everything you need to create knockout city pages.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/theogeo/1118335116/

Except it’s still daunting.  Even if you know the right approach and will put in the work, exactly where do you start?  Do you just stare at the blank page?  If you’re building city pages for a client, how do you know if you have enough meat to make a hot dog?

That’s where my quick-start template comes in.  I’ve created a simple worksheet you can use to zero in on good, relevant, city-specific content you can put on your city pages, or a client’s.  (It’s a new-and-improved version of what I’ve used to help my clients.)

Here’s the spreadsheet on Google Drive:
(If you want a copy, download the spreadsheet.)

https://goo.gl/4ghvbn

Notes:

  1. If you (or your client) can’t answer “yes” to at least a few of the questions, city pages are probably a no-go at the moment. You’ll have nothing to say.  You’ll be the Dr. Phil of your local market.
  1. You can see real-life examples in column D of the spreadsheet.
  1. You still need to work long-term on earning relevant links. You do not necessarily need to get links to your city pages (though it’s great if you do).  But if your domain as a whole doesn’t have much link juice, even the best city page is less likely to rank well – especially if you’re in a competitive market.  The flipside if you’ve got some decent links to other pages – probably most of which point to the homepage – any city page you create is more likely to rank well and sooner.  You earn Google’s “trust.”
  1. Yes, copying and pasting your online reviews is fine – whether the reviews are from Google or from Yelp or (as far as I know) from other sites. Just don’t mark them up with Schema (or other structured-data markup) as a way to get those juicy “review stars” showing in the organic search results.
  1. If the spreadsheet isn’t your thing, you might prefer this great guide from Miriam Ellis.

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Any local content-creation angles you’d add to the spreadsheet?

Any example of knockout city pages with thoughtful content?

Any other ways I can make the worksheet more useful?

Leave a comment!

How Do Local SEO and Conversion Rate Optimization Overlap?

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You want better local rankings.  But rankings won’t pay your bills, so you also want to do a better job of converting traffic.  One is useless without the other, so you need to do both from the start.

A few months ago I weighed in on a Google+ post where the concern was how to “balance” local SEO and conversion-rate optimization on your site.  As I mentioned there, working on your local SEO and boosting your conversions may sound like two separate projects, but they’re not.   There is a lot of overlap, and there are many ways to kill two birds with one stone.

Here are some steps that might help you boost your visibility and traffic and your ability to convert that traffic:

1. Create a separate page on each specific service you offer – or at least on the services for which you want to rank and get more customers.

For instance, until you rank at the top of the local heap for “dentist,” you’re more likely to rank for “pediatric dentist” if you have an in-depth page on how you do a great job for kids.  You’re also more likely to interest parents who are looking for that specific service – more so than if you come across as a generalist.

2.  Make those pages in-depth and detailed, with your USP info, plenty of reviews/testimonials on the page, good photos (preferably not stock), and a clear call-to-action at the end. You’ll give both Google and people more to sink their teeth into.

3.  Create in-depth FAQs pages – or, in general, just answer questions on your site Q&A-style. Not only will this help you convert more traffic, but it’s also more likely to get the right people to your site – the ones who know exactly what they’re looking for.  I’ve written on how you can do this.  Also, it’s the best way you can apply what Dan Leibson calls “Answer-box SEO.”

4.  Build city pages that don’t suck.

5.  Make your site more user-friendly. Google knows if people get to your site and just hit the “back” button, or if they venture deeper and spend some time looking around and take the next step.

Include plenty of internal links to relevant pages, create a main “Services” or “Products” page, make your contact info hard to miss, and remember that there’s no such thing as too long – only too boring.  See my post on analyzing visitors’ click-behavior.

6.  Having a mobile-friendly site. It doesn’t need to be mobile-responsive; it can be on a separate domain (m.yourwebsite.com) – like the kind you might get from Duda.  It simply needs not to frustrating for the average person who might pay you for something.

7.  Write catchy title and description tags. When done right they can get you higher click-through than the next guy gets.  That will likely help your rankings if you sustain it, and it can bring more of the right customers to your site (as opposed to tire-kickers).  You attract to the degree you repel.

8.  Embed a prominent Google Map – in a place on the site where visitors might want to know how they can get to you.

I like to customize the dimensions and put it in the footer.  Making it easy to get driving directions is smart for obvious reasons and, when combined with an influx of reviews, driving-directions lookups may be a minor ranking factor.

9.  Offer old-school driving directions. Landmarks, turn-by-turn, from the north/south/east/west, etc.  Some people prefer them, and it’s “local” content that gives Google more info as to where you’re located.  May also help you rank for some of the ever-increasing number of “near me” searches.

10.  Work like a beast to pile up online reviews on a variety of sites (even on the mediocre ones).

 Getting happy customers to speak up usually isn’t easy, but hey, few high-payoff things in life are easy.  It’s worth the trouble.

Having impressive reviews makes your website’s job easier in at least two ways: people aren’t as likely to leave your site to look up your reviews (especially if they’ve already seen the reviews, and they’re more likely to arrive at your site pre-sold on how good you are.

Your site can be a wounded animal and you’ll still probably get a surprising number of customers if your reviews stand out.  But combine them with a sticky site (see points 1-8) and you’ll win yourself a full goblet and a pile of turkey legs at the Local Feast.

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Can you think of more areas of overlap between local SEO and CRO?

What’s something you did that helped you on both counts?

Leave a comment!