Boost Your Online Reputation with These 4 Ways to Generate Google Reviews

Learn How to Get Google Reviews

The main issue for many businesses is how to get positive reviews on Google from every single customer. The answer that Google will give you is “provide excellent service and the reviews will come.”

That’s good enough in theory, but many customers don’t feel motivated to review after a purchase unless you put the idea out there.

That’s why so many businesses use these popular methods to get more reviews:

1.- Ask for a Review After Purchase

Google states that it’s okay for businesses to ask for reviews. However, you can’t manipulate reviews, which means that when you suggest to customers to review on Google, you have to take the good in with the bad.

Some ways that businesses ask for reviews include:

• Link to your Google reviews on your website with a graphic that says “Review Us On Google”
• Send an email asking about their experience and link to writing a Google review
• Include a card in your packaging that asks for Google reviews
• You can automate and manage all of your reviews using tools like NiceJob.
  

2.- Feature Google Reviews on Your Website

You can add Google reviews on your customer testimonials or reviews page, then link to your Google profile where customers can leave a review. It’s important to include messaging like, “Want to share your experience with us? Click here to write a review.”

By showing customers positive ratings and how they’re featured on your website, you may get more interest from your visitors and customers to do so.

3.- Create an Email Campaign

While you can’t solicit positive ratings/reviews or provide incentives for reviews according to Google Review Policy, you can still create email campaigns that ask for a review.

You’ll want to send these emails after a customer has interacted with your business by making a purchase, visiting a store, or talking to customer support.

4.- Feature Google Reviews on Social Media

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are great channels to reach your fans and followers to talk about reviews.

You may want to create graphics with snippets of Google reviews that you like best and share to social media. These are best done with an image and caption about the product that the review is featuring.

Your fans and followers may see this review and realize they haven’t left a review for your business yet. If you’re bold enough and know you’ll get positive ratings and reviews from your followers, you may also want to link to your Google review profile with a “Share your experience” call-to-action.

Other Methods to Get Google Reviews

Building your reputation in Google starts with SEO and online reputation management. Reviews should come naturally if you’re on top of your customer service game and constantly sharing graphics or testimonials that feature Google reviews.

Here are some other ways that businesses can get more positive exposure for their brand:

Get Involved in Your Community

By hosting community events or supporting local groups, you’ll get your brand name out there and encourage people to interact with your brand. They may decide to leave a positive review after seeing what you do for the community.

Donate to Charity

A smart way to promote Google reviews is to create a campaign that says you’ll “donate” to a charity for every review you receive.

This isn’t considered an incentive or paying for reviews, but it does something nice for charities that will encourage your customers to leave a review. It’s also a rewarding experience for your customers!

Try Other Review Platforms

While it may take some time to get reviews on Google, you can always try other platforms. Experts recommend using Capterra as you can generate reviews by paying verified customers with $10 gift cards.

You may also want to look into review management tools from NiceJo to help you organize your reviews, reply to reviews, and find other review platforms.

Why You Don’t Buy Google Reviews

The simple answer is that it’s against Google policy to exchange money or provide incentives for reviews.

It’s also disingenuous, and many customers can read into fake reviews. In many cases, reviews may not be written correctly by “paid review services” or use improper grammar, which causes customers to question your trustworthiness.

There are also huge penalties if you are caught buying reviews. You may lose your Google My Business profile (Google Maps profile) as well as receive a de-ranking.

Google assesses penalties for:

• Review-gating: When a business purposefully only solicits positive ratings and reviews
  
• Bulk-collecting: Buying reviews in bulk from a third party
  
• Incentivizing Reviews: You can’t directly pay customers or exchange money for reviews from your customers in any way, not even with a gift or discount.
  

How to Handle Negative Online Reviews

When campaigning for reviews, you’ll inevitably receive some ratings and reviews that won’t be good for your business. These are negative Google reviews typically under a 4-star rating that often talk about some bad experience or product issue that caused a lack of faith in your business.

It sucks, but there are some ways to handle these negative reviews and mitigate the damage to your brand:

• Read about How to flag Google reviews for removal
• Flag any reviews that are fake, offensive, sexually explicit, or fraudulent
• If a negative review is from a real customer, it’s best to provide a courteous and sincere response from a manager or customer service representative.
  
• When responding to negative reviews, try this type of tone and language “[Name], we’re sorry to hear about your experience, and we’d like to offer a solution. Can you email help@yourbusiness.com and provide your contact information? We’d like to help you ASAP.”
  
• If you are able to talk to a negative reviewer, provide a solution and then ask if they’ll update the review once satisfied.
  
• You may want to build a “Review Response Library” such as a spreadsheet or document that shows how to reply to different negative reviews.
  

How to Respond and Why to Respond Positive Reviews

In addition to replying to negative reviews, you should have a person on your customer service team reply to ideal reviews as well. This shows that you’re actively engaged with your audience, and it encourages others to leave reviews.

Your responses should highlight their name and 1 to 2 specific things from their review that really stood out to you.

For example, a review may talk about how fast your shipping was. This is a golden opportunity to reply with, “Thank you, [Name]! We use priority shipping to get orders to customers within 2 to 3 days. We’ve also kept free shipping for our customers so you don’t have to pay extra for fast delivery.”

How Reviews Boost Local Business SEO

Is it worth all the effort to get Google reviews? Yes! It’s especially important if you’re a local business. Many customers won’t go to businesses that have less than a 4-star rating unless you’re the only storefront in town offering a product or service they want.

In addition, reviews highlight your products, use natural keywords, and receive ranking signals from Google search engine crawlers. With more reviews and higher ratings, businesses seem to rank up faster. The logic is simple: Google sees businesses with higher ratings and positive reviews as more trustworthy for local searches.

Learning how to generate Google reviews from local customers also will help your business spread the word through your community. As more customers leave positive ratings and reviews, you'll probably notice more traffic to your storefront and website.

Manage Your Online Reputation Easily

It's important to pay attention to all reviews of your business, especially when negative ratings and reviews start bringing down your reputation. You can see and manage all of your reviews using tools like NiceJob for reviews.