You need to ask for online reviews every week 

Receiving online reviews of your business is one of the best ways to improve your Internet search rankings. It’s critical to your local search engine optimization.

Google, Yelp and other sites use the reviews to help determine how trusted your business is in the real world. You need to ask your customers to tell the online world about your business.

Just try searching “pizza paso robles,” “hotels in paso robles,” “furniture atascadero,” and you will see that reviews are important ranking factor. Reviews on Google and Yelp are the most important to attain, after that reviews on citypages.com, insiderpages.com, angieslist.com are helpful.

We have found that 10%-20% of clients will leave a great review, if you ask them to. So don’t be disappointed if you don’t get a review every time you ask.

A couple of rules about reviews

• Authenticity. Ask for real reviews from real customers
• Ask for them. It’s the best way to get them
• Don’t ask for too many at once. One per week is a good limit. If a directory sees too many in a short period, they may be filtered or removed.
• Valuable on multiple sites. Google Maps is the most important, but so are Yelp reviews, Facebook recommendations, and other directory reviews.
• Take the good and the bad. Not all reviews will be glowing recommendations. If someone leaves a poor review, be sure to respond with kind words.

How do I ask for an online review?

When you meet with a client in person or on the phone think about asking for a review. Did you just do a great job for them? Well, ask them to share it. Did you do them a favor, or go above and beyond expectations? Ask them for a favor in return.

Here is an example of an email to a client:

Hi,
I’m working on improving our company’s online presence and I would like to ask a favor. If you have a minute, could you consider clicking through and leaving a positive review of your experience with us?

1. Click on link: [plus.google link goes here]


2. Click on “Write a review”


3. Sign in with a Google account, or create one. It’s free and just takes a minute.


4. Write a review, rate, and publish it.

Thank you so much and thank you for your business!

Now get started by asking a customer of yours for a review today.