There are two different topics to discuss before determining the necessary quantity of online reviews needed for a business. While online reviews play many roles, the affects most pursued by small business owners are higher conversion of potential customers and a boost in SEO.
Regardless of whether a customer searches for a specific business or does a general local search, they are going to see that company’s online reviews. 90% of those customers’ buying decisions will be impacted by those reviews, so it is safe to say online reviews will play a huge role in the conversion of potential customers. As far as the quantity of positive online reviews needed to convert a potential customer, it’s not a lot.
85% of consumers read 10 or less reviews to decide if they can trust that business [source]. The key here is to not only have 10 reviews, but that your 10 most recent reviews be positive. If you are recently had a few negative reviews come in, the best solution is to get a burst of positive online reviews to flush out the negative ones. Find out how to that here. These 10 reviews must also reflect your current business, meaning, be within the last year. Not many customers will be highly persuaded by reviews from years ago, as that gap in online reviews leads one to assume that company is no longer recommended by it’s customers.
SEO is a very different story. Online reviews can dramatically boost SEO for a variety of reasons. This can be a neglected part of SEO as most business owners simply hire an ‘SEO guy’ and that person optimizes their website and social media pages. Online reviews are typically ignored because there is not much an ‘SEO guy’ can do to get online reviews from real, happy customers. This multi-purpose SEO factor, is actually mentioned 8 times in the top 50 Google Pack/Carousel Factors.
13. Quantity of Native Google Maps Reviews (w/ text)
22. Quantity of Third-Party Traditional Reviews
27. Overall Velocity of Reviews (Native + Third-Party)
30. Product/Service Keywords in Reviews
31. Quantity of Reviews by Authority Reviewers (e.g.Yelp Elite, Multiple Maps Reviewers, etc)
39. Authority of third-party sites on which reviews are present
46. Velocity of Native Google Maps Reviews
48. Diversity of third-party sites on which reviews are present
10% of ranking factors have to do with online reviews, but most SEO companies aren’t doing anything to get more positive online reviews, on these sites that matter. Unfortunately, the perfectly curated customer testimonials on your website will not help with SEO or potential customer conversion the way online reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc. will.
Many business owners struggle to get their happy customers to post online reviews for them, and typically, the only customers passionate enough to take the time to post an online review are the furious ones. The best advise I can give small business owners, is to stick to what you know. You own a business and you might be the hardest working, most experienced and knowledgeable person in that industry, but you probably don’t also have experience in SEO or creating online tools that gets you online reviews. So hire someone who does!
SurveyLocal has created a tool for small business owners to use that will make it extremely efficient for customers to post online reviews. A typically conversion rate is 10%. If you have just 100 customers a year, then you could easily get those 10 online reviews needed to boost your conversion rate of potential customers. To find out more about the SurveyLocal tool, schedule a free online demo of it here.