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In today’s digital age, customer reviews and ratings play a significant role in shaping the success of businesses. Increasingly, brands and businesses are becoming aware of this, investing efforts, and showing a conscious desire, to move in the right direction. Given the boom that today’s virtual ecosystem is seeing, such digital attributes will play a pivotal role, enabling businesses to find new ways to deliver positive consumer experiences and device growth strategies.
Let’s delve into the influence that ratings and reviews have on search results, and certain useful action steps for brands to make the most of this.
When it comes to ranking businesses in search results, search engines consider several factors, including distance, relevance, and prominence. One crucial aspect of prominence is online reputation, which consists of the average rating, number of reviews, and recency of reviews.
Average-rating is particularly significant to certain search engines’ determination of the “best” businesses. For instance, when users search for the “best gift shop near me,” those search engines rely on average ratings to deliver what they consider top results. In fact, these search engines often filter the results to display only businesses rated four stars and above, effectively excluding establishments with lower ratings from appearing. Furthermore, these search engines examine the content of reviews to justify a business’s ranking. For instance, in the previously-mentioned gift shop search, they’d scan review content and highlight relevant keywords that match the search query. This emphasizes the importance of incorporating positive keywords within reviews, to boost visibility in search results.
Considering that reputation and search are intertwined to such an extent, it is critical to ensure that one’s review and ratings are optimized. Here are some useful steps to go about it
For modern-day businesses staying on top of reviews being received, is highly important. This can help businesses find useful insights and trends over time. It is essential to have a comprehensive view of customer sentiment toward one’s brand’s service. With advanced capabilities, such as sentiment analysis, brands can better understand the opinions consumers are forming, and better understand the perception of the brand’s image, in the consumer’s mind. Accordingly brands can plan their digital strategies, deliver exceptional customer experience, and eventually unlock growth opportunities.
Making it a point to always respond to reviews not only improves customer retention but also positively impacts search rankings. When crafting responses, personalizing them on the basis of the feedback received contributes to consumer assurance. In fact, particularly when it comes to negative reviews, it is all the more important to offer responses with care and a promise to consumers, to improve things.
Alongside improving consumer perception, the usage of the right keywords in the responses enhances search rankings and helps businesses stay closely connected to prospects and the larger digital audience.
It is important that businesses can encourage customers to leave reviews. In fact, incentivizing customers to leave reviews is something several businesses additionally do today.
Studies reveal that 61% of consumers will review a business if it goes the extra mile to offer exceptional service. 37% are likely to do so if an initially negative experience eventually leads to a positive one. Such reviews generated particularly on digital business listings across the digital environment, help businesses be more easily accessible through better search rankings, leading to stronger associations with consumers. And it is through such routes, that consumers can then visit local webpages, showcase their purchase intent, and help brands find business opportunities.
Digital Transformation Marketing Stack for Physical Retail Enterprises.
