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Do Google Reviews Help SEO?

Google reviews aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when discussing search engine optimization (SEO). During strategizing, we immediately think about how many keywords to use for SEO, optimizing the user experience for SEO, or even Squarespace vs. WordPress for SEO. But Google reviews are powerful tools that help SEO, allowing you to climb up the search rankings.

How Do Google Reviews Help SEO?

Google reviews correlate to Google’s emphasis on EAT, or Emphasis, Authority, and Trust, but especially on trust. Good reviews prove that people have confidence in you, so Google rewards you by connecting you with more people searching for your business, products, or services.

Here are some of the specific ways that Google reviews help SEO.

Google Reviews Tell Google What Your Site Is About

Keywords are one of the essential elements in SEO. We optimize sites, pages, and content with keywords to signal our identity to Google. Google reviews can help in the same way. When people leave reviews, they talk about your business, which allows Google to pick up on signals that can make your business more relevant to related terms.

Google Reviews Build Trust—With Your Customers And Google

People often look to reviews to inform or validate their purchasing decisions. Good Google reviews show that people trust your business or have good experiences with your products or services. This good reputation makes you more attractive to potential customers, helping them differentiate you from the competition.

In the same way, Google reviews also build confidence between you and Google. Google wants to satisfy the people using its search engine by providing relevant, helpful, and trustworthy results. Good reviews tell Google that you are a business that can be recommended to its users, increasing your chances of ranking well in the SERPs.

Google Reviews Drive Traffic And Conversion

Businesses with great Google reviews are more likely to get clicks from potential customers, resulting in more site traffic and conversion. For example, if you search “Thai restaurant” on Google, you’ll often see a curated list of businesses near you. The top results include recommendations with higher ratings and more reviews, even appearing before those closer but lacking reviews. Because of this, more people will click your site or go to you. This benefit is two-fold because not only do you see immediate results, Google also recognizes the activity you get, which will likely increase your ranking further.

How To Manage Google Reviews For SEO

It’s not enough to bide time waiting for people to leave reviews about your business, hoping that it generates better SEO results. Here are some ways that you could maximize Google reviews for your SEO strategy.

Encourage User-Generated Content

The best way to get reviews is to encourage past customers to leave their thoughts about your business. Set up channels to make it easy for them to leave reviews. You can even incentivize it by providing perks in exchange for leaving a good word, like a discount on their next visit, a freebie with their next purchase, etc.

Once people have left reviews about your business on Google, take these testimonials and add them to your site, as well.

Reply To Reviews—Especially Bad Ones

Replying to reviews tells Google that your business is active and, more importantly, that you care about your customers. It’s especially crucial to reply to bad reviews. Negative reviews don’t necessarily affect your ranking unless an overwhelming amount of reviews are bad. Still, it’s vital for your marketing to respond to this feedback so that potential customers can feel put at ease after reading a negative review.

Listen To The Feedback

Google reviews can tell you a lot about your target market’s needs and preferences. And you should take these into account not just in your marketing strategies but in how you conduct business as well. This feedback can better inform the decisions you make about your business and generally improve the products or services you offer.

Should I Include Google Reviews In My SEO Strategy?

Google reviews should be part of any business’ SEO strategy, but it’s crucial for local businesses that show up with Google My Business features. Make sure that you properly manage your reviews and undertake all the established best practices in order to maximize the SEO benefits.

Kyle Roof

About the author

Kyle is best known for revealing the “secret” hidden in plain sight: Google’s algorithm is an algorithm. In other words, it all comes down to one thing - Math. Kyle demonstrated this by ranking number one in Google with a page consisting of gibberish text and only a handful of target keywords. Google actually punished him for exposing their algorithm by de-indexing 20 of his test sites and creating a rule in an attempt to de-value his efforts. Kyle has spent the past several years running more than 400 scientific SEO tests to better understand Google's algo. The combined results of those tests became the backbone of the popular SEO tool, PageOptimizer Pro, and they are implemented within his SEO agency on client sites. Kyle also shares his techniques in podcasts, at conferences around the world, and within the platform he co-founded, IMG, a sort of Netflix for SEOs with an active community aspect.