With the advent of sites like Yelp, it is now easier than ever for consumers to make their voices heard and leave reviews about businesses, good, bad or otherwise. From corporate giants like Amazon to small, mom-and-pop establishments in your neighborhood, your online reputation still matters a great deal.

Local Business Reviews

These days it’s becoming trendy to support local business, and there is no better way to advertise your upstart company than word-of-mouth advertising. 97% of consumers say they read reviews about local businesses, according to BIA Kelsey. Since locals are going to check consumer review sites to see what people are saying about the businesses in their neighborhood before making an informed choice to patronize them, it is crucial to make sure your business is among the most highly-rated and reviewed in its category. According to Neilsen, 82% of users visit review sites because they intend to buy a product or service. A negative review or, perhaps worse, no reviews at all, can adversely impact in-store and online traffic and ultimately cost you potential customers.

How do you make sure that your online reviews are plentiful and generally positive? While there’s no exact formula, a good start would be to provide excellent customer service. Since most people who write reviews actually write positive ones, the biggest incentive of all is for the consumers to have a terrific experience with your business that leaves them excited to share it online. There is nothing wrong with encouraging your customers to leave a review if they feel the service they received was first-class. However, in order to be above-board and genuine, it is not good practice to encourage reviews by offering gifts or incentives, nor is it fair or honest to encourage false reviews about your business (or false negative reviews about a competitor!) Ultimately you will find that if your business has merit, you will be positively reviewed without having to do much convincing.

Let Local Search Titan Help

With Local SEO services from Local Search Titan, we can help you increase your local presence to help your business get found online, make it easier for customers to leave reviews, and increase engagement with your brand locally!