Jump Up Google’s Rankings

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How do you find the local services that you use these days? Asks Azeem Yaqoob MD of i3MEDIA. Do you pick up that out-of-date Yellow Pages that has been used as a doorstop for the last few years and flick through it alphabetically?

Or are you more likely to pick up your smartphone and ask Google to suss out some options on your behalf?

 

How are your potential customers looking for you?

Considering the average person currently turns to Google three or four times a day for help in any number of searches, there’s a reason why Yellow Pages is no longer in print.

Are your potential customers doing the same to find your product or services? Are your competitors featuring higher on the Google rankings than you?

Your company may be better, more professional, offer greater value for money and do a better quality job. However, if Google isn’t being informed about your activities on a regular and consistent basis, then it won’t know to bring you up the page rankings.

 

Google My Business and Google Reviews

There are a number of factors that affect your Google page ranking – some more complex than others. There is one that is relatively simple, extremely effective and a technique over which you can have a high degree of control – Google Reviews, as featured on your Google My Business profile page.

Google My Business has become a major focus in terms of supporting local companies to build their presence online. More specifically, Google Reviews contribute to a local company climbing up the rankings and entering the top 10 on page one. So, if your business has a number of good reviews with high star ratings, it is more likely to get picked up by Google and pushed up the list. 

 

Digital word of mouth

Google is actually no different from us - it selects its favourites based on ‘word of mouth’ recommendations. So, if you search ‘local window companies’, it will sift through the results in terms of relevance, distance, and prominence and send back a list of local installers that match your specific search criteria, are closest to you and most importantly have demonstrated a high degree of activity and interaction on their online presence – including their reviews.

In fact, between two window companies local to you, the one that is higher in the rankings might not necessarily be the closest or the best. Instead, that installer will come up top because they have a consistent flow of new high rated reviews.

Think about it – Google doesn’t know your business but it does trust third-party reviews and it can track these using very simple algorithms. Your competitor has learnt this and has adopted its marketing strategy accordingly.

 

Other channels

What is more, the more active you are on your Google My Business page, the more it starts to look out for you through other social media channels. As your Google reviews pick up, Google will start to scan other platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and incorporate these into your personal search results. 

And here’s a really important statistic to remember – nine out of ten people check a company’s review before making a decision to buy a product or service. 97 per cent of them claim that the reviews have a real impact on their buying decisions. So, Google reviews are a brilliant way of pre-qualifying potential customers and increasing that desire to buy. The reviews are doing all the work for you, so your conversion rates should improve exponentially as a result.

 

Is it a case of the more reviews the better?

The volume of Google reviews is crucial, which is important for you as a business because it gives you a degree of control in terms of increasing your rankings. Assuming you know that you have done a good job, you need to get into the habit of asking your clients to give you a review.

If you have been lax about it in the past, asking previous clients for a review is a good reason for checking in with them. Email them, make it personal and explain how you’re implementing a new marketing strategy and would like their help in posting a review of your product or service.

Give them step-by-step instructions on how to do so, to make it as quick and simple for them as possible. Include a link to the review page on your Google My Business profile – the more that comes through from third-party devices, the more Google will love it and push it up the rankings.

 

Incentivise reviewers

You may want to incentivise previous clients to leave a review and it may be an opportunity to generate more business, maybe with a discount voucher for every positive review that they can redeem whenever they next need your services.

 

Systemise the process from here on in

Going forward, create a way of systemising collecting Google reviews so that you can maximise the opportunities without having to constantly chase them up. It’s just a process and can be worked into your existing CRM.

The more you put out, the more you get back. To summarise, there are two clear strategies you need to put into place that will help you climb Google rankings:

1.     Systemise the collection of Google reviews.

2.     Set up a Google My Business page and make sure that you are proactively posting content in the same way as you are on other social media platforms.

It will take time, but in a few weeks, you should start to see some results, and one day you will Google your business and you’ll have leap-frogged over your competitor into the highest-ranking positions.

Picture: How do you find the thing you need – a plumber, a taxi, a  pizza delivery or a new cable for your mobile? Presumably, you don’t thumb through the small ads, you go to Google. So what do you think your customers are doing – and how do you get a slice of the action?

www.i3media.net

Article written by Cathryn Ellis
12th September 2022

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