Small Business Blog

Without a doubt you realize the importance of reviews. When you go to Amazon to look for a book, for instance, what is the first thing you do? No doubt, you look over the customer reviews.

It's natural to look to other consumers for advice in making decisions. With Amazon, that community is various book enthusiasts. For example, with massage therapy offerings, that community of people is other massage and spa customers.

Customers seek feedback from other buyers for the truth. They recognize that customers who have purchased previously will openly share their blatantly frank opinion about a business they've used.

Let's focus on a specific kind of review web site: Google Maps. Most customers engage in online window shopping looking for the best place to take their business to.

Search engines, of course, recognized this fact years ago and have put a lot of money into indexing and ranking local businesses. So if you went into Google and typed in a phrase like 'massage Atlanta' into Google, for example, and you will see local businesses prominently displayed. You can see how the results for local businesses are tied directly into Google's map functionality. Yahoo and Bing (Microsoft's search engine) do exactly the same kind of thing.

Notice that these listings are given special prominence on the search results page. This is important for you as a local business. Getting listed in Google's local results is surprisingly easy. For the most part it's a matter of filling out your listing fully.

You might be surprised to find out that you may be listed there now without even knowing it. And if you are, your review count might be low. Without enough reviews, customers will simply skip over your business.

Your company name appears and is linked to your website. You can see that the phone number is likely displayed beside your website URL. And what's really important are the links to the reviews for that business. People have a tendency to look at reviews before they even look at your site.

Take a look for yourself. Type 'massage [your city]' or 'restaurants [your city]' and take a look at the results. Click the reviews link and you are shown a Google business listing. This listing contains information that Google has found on that business from phone directories and other sites like review sites. If you look through that business page you'll discover the review section.

If you claim the listing as belonging to you, you can edit it, correct any mistakes and make your listing more appealing to get possible clients to make the decision to make call to your business.

Fill out the information completely in the listing to grab people's attention. The reviews on the page are invaluable for improving your credibility and a little work on your part will ensure that your reviews are positive and reflect well on you and your business.


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