Review management

Review management in the Google ecosystem comes down to managing your Google Business Profiles reviews. These reviews are, rightly so, a major concern for many businesses. Reviews can make or break your business.

Most consumers only trust a business when it has a certain number of reviews. On top of that, reviews are an important ranking factor for Google. So more reviews mean more visibility in the (local) search results. Reviews are increasingly replacing (citation) links as the main source of “authority”.

However, due to the large number of reviews and many different Google Business Profiles, review management can become a challenging task.

What does our review management software report on?

GMBapi.com’s review management software reports on all KPIs that matter for multi-location businesses. Also, the review management software focuses on making it time efficient to manage your chain’s reputation across a large number of physical locations.

For both the latest reviews, and the aggregated reviews per location, our review management software reports on the number of reviews, average ratings, response percentage and response times.

Sentiment analysis functionality

We also have sentiment analysis functionality that can report on the sentiment around specific topics, such as “service” or “price”. That is available for the entire chain or per location – but it needs a large number of reviews in order to make sense.

Why are Google reviews important?

Ways to improve

First of all, as a business owner, you want to know what customers say about you(r business). Reading what (potential) customers say about you will allow you to improve things before commercial results are impacted. Or to use what consumers think of you(r business) in your communication and promotional strategy.

Customer decision making

Secondly, it is also a critical part of the customer journey. More than 82% of consumers read reviews before deciding whether to support a local business. So, an essential component of facilitating your customer’s journey is managing reviews. Users trust Google reviews, and research shows, they are even trusted on par with recommendations from friends. How does this company handle dissatisfied customers? What are others saying about this business? In fact, 88% of consumers believe online reviews to be just as reliable as personal recommendations.

Reviews impact ranking

Thirdly, reviews impact ranking and ranking can increase visibility at the bottom of the funnel. According to research, and depending on the competitive arena, businesses with more than ten reviews typically perform better than those with fewer than ten. More reviews are strongly correlated with local rankings. You can quickly verify this for your most important local queries by performing a “local search” and comparing the number of reviews the top listings have to those below them. There are other aspects, with fresh reviews (particularly those from the last six to nine months) being more important.

Tip

We also have done research on the ideal content and length of a review. This is important as well. Longer reviews are more trustworthy, and tend to get a more dominant place on your listing. Google likes long reviews. Also, upvoting the reviews you want to stick to the listings helps keeping them there for a longer period of time.

Why is review management important?

Anything that has a significant impact on your business needs to be managed well.

One of the most important aspects of local SEO is monitoring and managing your online reviews. Whether you get good reviews or bad reviews, it is critical to respond to each review in a timely and professional manner. It helps build trust with your customers.

Most customers are highly or fairly likely to use a business that responds well to all its online reviews.
If a business doesn’t respond to reviews, most people say they will not use a business.

Last but not least, studies have shown that customers tend to be less critical (in reviews and ratings) when they anticipate a response from the business in question. So besides supporting conversion from Google business listing (to store, call or consideration), it also helps with the average rating.

Our Review Management Solution

Our review management software sits within the standard package of our Local Search tool – GMBapi.com. Our review management functionality is designed to save you as much time as possible and manage your organisation’s online reputation with an hour per week of time investment.

With one click, you can reply to any review or question. Or see the locations that are in need of support.

We have created a plan for businesses to enhance the quantity of reviews and their authority in local SEO. This tactic can be easily carried out thanks to our tooling.

How can we help you reply to your reviews?

On the homepage of your GMBapi.com account, you can navigate to Reviews Google. Subsequently, you can view ‘All reviews’ or you can select ‘Reviews per location’.

How to reply to reviews with our tool

You can reply by pressing the reply button. Write your message and press ‘Post reply’.

In the “Use from template” dropdown menu, you also have the choice to create and use templates for responding to reviews.

Lastly, to be even more time efficient, you can also filter reviews with or without a reply in the dropdown.

How do I increase the number of reviews?

This depends on the industry you operate in. However, there are a few guidelines that apply to a majority of sectors. Typically, we combine a few different aspects in order to boost the quantity of reviews. Additionally, we can track and evaluate the results of your work.

There must be physical QR codes at the site. We can print and distribute QR codes. These codes send people directly to the Google review section of the location in question. Remember, unhappy customers leave reviews, and happy customers often forget. Reminding them is effective.
Focus on the locations where impact is most likely. Our review software reports on the key KPIs for each location, this gives you a clear view of the locations that need your attention and allows you to see where to look for best practices and/or tips.
We help you to create, implement and measure the impact of an incentive program to grow reviews that do not conflict with Google’s review policies.

Check out our tool in action

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