Why are reviews so important?
A few reasons. Authenticated customer reviews boost your online reputation for the better in many ways.
- Higher Rankings in the search engine directories and Local Business Directories. Search Engines like Google are hungry for information. The more information there is about your business the higher they will place you in the search results and also in the local directories like Google Maps, Yelp, Yahoo Local etc. See an independent Study here.
- Reviews online are the digital version of a referral. Increases trust and increases conversions.
- Increases Conversions. If a customer can access authenticated reviews from your previous customers this will increase conversions for you up to 20%.
- No Lawsuits – The FTC is cracking down on fake reviews and testimonials. All reviews need to have a legitimate proven source. Fake reviews can be get you fined up to $11,000 per infraction. Ouch!
- Reputation Management – If you have a total of 5 reviews and 2 of them are bad. Guess what….. you get a 3 star rating. By adding more real positive reviews you will increase your 5 star rating and best of all you will bury that one or two bad reviews you may have.
Beat Your Competition Online on Google Maps and the Local Directories
Most Businesses are not actively pursing getting customers to review their service. If you start now you will be way ahead of the competition. A business that has tons of reviews appears to be the “it” company online in their vertical. The more reviews the better. And the more 5 star reviews even better. The more REAL reviews the better. Customers can sniff out fake reviews. We allow you to approve or disapprove
the reviews that are being posted about you.
Mary Bowling – “Yahoo Local has said there’s a threshold for the number of reviews and that once you reach that threshold, the reviews begin to factor into your rankings. Of course they will not say what that threshold is. For Maps, more reviews help you to rank better and even one review is helpful and gives you an edge over businesses with no reviews.”
Most people who post reviews online are actively seeking you because of a BAD experience. We all make mistakes and cant please everyone. Or maybe you have a disgruntled employee who is posting negative stuff. On the flip side, if a company actively seeks customer feedback, customers are more apt to leave positive comments.
5 Star reviews are crucial. When I visit the car dealership they always tell me that a survey company will be calling and please please give us a 5 star review if you feel we met all your expectations. They actually tell me how to review their customer service. And you know what, I leave a 5 star review everytime. These companies that are actively participating in an customer survey program are so confident in their customer service that they have the nerve to tell me how to review their company. And it works.
Read what these experts have to say about reviews from David Mihm’s article.
Dev Basu – Reviews indicate inclusiveness and comprehensiveness of LBC profiles, and it doesn`t really matter if they are positive or negative.
Ian Lurie – Volume of reviews isn’t as important as velocity – a steady flow of reviews is essential. Make sure you work this into your strategy.
Steve Hatcher – Looking at hotels in major cities in Google Maps, with 300, 400, 500 reviews, shows that volume matters. The locksmith spammers seemed to have proved this too.
Matt McGee – Quantity is particularly important to Google, as we’ve seen cases where Company A fraudulently leaves poor reviews of Company B, and Company B shoots to the top of the 10-pack because they have so many more reviews.
Increased Conversions
If you are conducting a paid search campaign or actively driving traffic to your site then you need to set yourself apart from competitors. You need to halt someone in their tracks and stand out. By displaying a Authenticated Reviews Badge 
on your site you will gain credibility and ultimately INCREASE CONVERSIONS up to 20%.
Search Engine Optimization
We have noticed that companies with reviews associated with their business are almost always ranked higher then businesses without reviews. So, higher rankings mean increased traffic which also results in more calls and leads. Further more, we have noticed that businesses that have the highest number of reviews usually gets to the top of directory listings in Google Local, Yahoo Local, Yelp, InsiderPages, Superpages and other directories.
Reputation Management
Do you have negative reviews about your company? It is extremely difficult and sometimes just plain impossible to remove these negative reviews. The way to “get rid of them” is to actually bury them. Reviews are displayed in a time stamp fashion. The newest reviews show first. The older reviews show “under” the new ones. So if you actively pursue new reviews with Review Defender we will post the new reviews “on top of” of the negative reviews.
Review Defender will help you get new reviews from your customers. We will even post reviews that you may have on file, as long as they are authentic. We will then post them on the review sites that are most important like Google, yahoo, Bing, Superpages, Citysearch and Yelp.
Currently on Google maps it does not seem that negative reviews affect your rankings. On google maps its more about quantity and velocity than anything else. However, negative review will affect your clickthrough and you will get less business because of this.
We have seen that negative reviews will affect your rankings on other sites Yelp and Insider pages. Bad reviews on your listing will push you further down the page.