Hello again. So far we've talked about a number of important aspects of a local SEO strategy, such as updating your Google business page, creating on page content, generating citations, and procuring backlinks. The last aspect of local SEO we'll discuss is obtaining reviews. In this lesson, we'll consider why reviews are so important, as well as help you brainstorm ways to encourage customer reviews of your business on a variety of sites. As you'll find with every aspect of SEO, you never want all of your eggs in one basket. On a final note, we'll compare the relative importance of each of the aspects of your local SEO approach. With the new 3 pack, leaving reviews on Google Properties has become more difficult. The Google Plus page for business is no longer immediately visible, as it once was. However, reviews still get high visibility in local search, which can influence whether or not a potential customer connects with you. In the example shown, which dentist would you feel more comfortable visitng? The one with 14 reviews totaling five stars, or the other dentist with two or no reviews? Note that once these other dentists obtain a minimum of five reviews, review stars will display, rather than the number of reviews that they have. If a user clicks on More dentists and is taken to the map view, the dentist listings that contain actual review stars are the ones that are immediately noticeable to users. Having reviews in the Google ecosystem is very important. However, you should develop a well-rounded strategy of gaining reviews on other important sites as well. Having all of your reviews on Google would not be a great idea if next week Google decided to completely ditch the review system in favor of something else. If they do decide to place less emphasis on their their own reviews, my theory is that their algorithm will adjust and begin to monitor reviews on authoritative sites like Yelp, or Facebook, or other review sites to determine user sentiment about a business. Basically, never put all of your eggs in one basket. Other sites to to encourage customers to leave reviews on include Yelp and Facebook primarily. And then other more broad review sites, like Citysearch or Angie's List. It is also very helpful to acquire reviews on industry specific sites related to your business. I included some industry's specific review sites in the spreadsheet download mentioned previously. It's important to brainstorm ways that you can get customers to leave reviews for your business, as well as ways you can make it easy for them to do so. Most people, no matter how pleased they are, will not go out of their way to leave a review if it is not immediately noticeable how or where to do so. Some ideas include linking to your favorite review sites from your website. By providing them with a direct link to where you would like them to leave a review, you're making it a lot easier for them to do so. It's a good idea to include a call to action with your link that requests a review. Something like, pleased with your visit today? Let others know, would work great. Send thank you e-mails to customers which contain links to places customers can leave a review. Include links to review sites in your newsletter with a reminder to leave a review, if they haven't already. Add a sign on your storefront that remind customers to leave reviews when they're checking out. You can even add a QR code that they can scan with their phone to be taken directly to a page that links to your favorite review sites, or, directly to a preferred review site. Some businesses have provided discounts and coupons in exchange for leaving reviews. If you decide to do this, be very careful doing so, as many review sites, including Google, prohibit compensation of any kind in exchange for a review. This can get your business banned from the review site, which can negatively impact your SEO strategy. When requesting a review on your Google My Business page, it is difficult to explain the whole process to consumers. If you can, link them directly to this page, which features your business and has a write a review button. That will make it easier for customers to discover where and how to leave a review. Simply Google your business name, and then copy the URL of that search result. Now that you have a better understanding of the different ranking factors that affect how well site ranks for a local search, I'd like to show you a graph of the top local search ranking factors, and to how each factor weighs into the overall search ranking algorithm. This is from Moz's yearly local search ranking factors from 2015. From this chart, you can see that on-page signals are the most important part of the local search algorithm. So it is very important to make sure you have an actual web site and not just a Google+ page or a Facebook page. Your website needs to be optimized with quality content that includes location related information, in both the page and title tags. Also important is the presence of your name, address, and phone number throughout your site. The second biggest factor are link signals. Make sure to get quality links from high authority sites, especially local sites. Citations are the third biggest signal. So be sure there is consistency to references of your business across the web. Then, your Google My Business page is the fourth, followed by reviews, behavioral, and social signals. For behavioral and social signals, make sure you're active on social media, sharing content, and optimizing things, like the meta description of the pages on our site, to increase click-through on social media pages. You should now have an understanding of how local SEO differs from traditional SEO, and how to create a custom SEO strategy for any type of local business.
