Why should you bother getting reviews? The reasons are almost too many to count, but here are 10 big ones off the top of my head.

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Reviews can help you:

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1. Capture more word-of-mouth referrals. One of your happy customers tells a friend, and the friend looks up your business. When that happens, he or she had better be impressed.

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2. Get more business from whatever rankings you’ve already got. Sure, maybe only 10 people find you in the search results every day, but if each of those people is impressed enough by your reviews to click through to your site, then you’ve got something.

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3. Help your rankings in Google’s “local map” search results. The benefit of Google reviews, specifically, isn’t direct: the business with the most reviews doesn’t always rank on top. Rather, the benefit seems to be more indirect:

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If you rack up Google reviews over time, you’ll probably get more clicks than your competitors during that time period, and those clicks from would-be customers appear to help your rankings over time.

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4. Develop non-Google sources of visibility. You can turn Yelp, Facebook, Avvo, Health Grades, TripAdvisor, Home Pros California and many other sites into additional trickles of leads. Relying too much on Google visibility is foolish.

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5. Take a little pressure off the other aspects of your marketing. Whoever makes it to your site is more likely to be “pre-sold” on how good you are.

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6. Lend you more credibility. If you say you’re great, and past customers also say you’re great, then would-be customers will listen to what you say about yourself a little more. Your stories match.

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7. Provide defense . At some point you will get a bad review. That is not the time to start caring about your reputation. Don’t wait until you’re in a hole to start asking the happy customers to put in a good word.

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8. Provide easy content for your site – content you don’t have to write personally. If you’re not sure what you can say about your services, try leaning on what customers have said.

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9. Condition future customers to write more reviews for you. If they found you and chose you in the first place because of your strong reviews, they’re more likely to write one for you when you ask.

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10. Learn how to improve. You can find out which customers end up being happiest and why, which customers are least happy and why, and how to avoid more of one type and get more of the other type – for starters. Everything you need to know about your customers and how to run your business you can learn by studying your reviews (or lack thereof) and the customers that write them.

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Andrew Shotland SEO Guide