Earlier this week I was talking to my wife about a problem her cousin was having. He’s a dentist looking to grow his practice. She mentioned that he once had a bunch of reviews on Yelp, but they were all taken down one reason or another. I pointed out that Google reviews (aka Google Plus Local) had a much bigger impact on search engine results for me. Indeed, when we searched for dentists in the area, the ones that showed up with the highest ranking, most appealing results were the ones with plenty of good Google reviews.
So here’s my technique for getting reviews:
1. Once a month I look to see which regular, loyal customers have ordered.
2. If I know their purchase went off without a hitch, I send each of them a quick e-mail to thank them for the order and make sure everything went OK with the order.
3. If the answer is “Yes, everything was great”, I proceed to step 4. Otherwise I work on fixing the problem.
4. I then ask how likely they are to recommend my business to a friend on a scale of 1-5.
5. If they say “5”, I proceed to step 6. Anything else, again, I work on the problem.
6. I ask them if they’d do me the honor leaving a rating on my Google Plus page. Remember, these are loyal customers who have just recently have their needs satisfied, and have just told me that my business is a “5”.
One hint with #6: send them your Google Plus page URL with the string “?gl=US&hl=en-US&review=1” appended to the end. This will automatically pop up the review box when they visit the page. So
https://plus.google.com/+YOUR_BUSINESS_NAME_HERE/about
becomes
https://plus.google.com/+YOUR_BUSINESS_NAME_HERE/about?gl=US&hl=en-US&review=1
The reviews I’ve gotten have improved my organic search traffic from Google. There’s a bunch more to maximizing your search appearance with these reviews and setting up your Google Plus page, but those will have to wait for another post. Let me know if you want to hear about that or if you want some details on how this improved my search engine results and organic traffic.
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