When you start a business and create a new website, you want that site to appear professional. Google reviews are part of this, but there are a few things you should know.

Customers trust reviews and expect to find companies that have many reviews from real customers to read and review. This become challenging when you first start a website and open a new business. It can take time for real reviews to show up on your pages. You need people to take advantage of your business and what you have to offer, but they might avoid you without any reviews or history. This is a lot like the “chicken and egg” conversation, making things difficult.

Should you post fake reviews?

Some companies have posted fake reviews in the past or hired companies to draft and post fake reviews for them. Some reasons that businesses have done this include pushing down bad reviews that negatively impact their overall score, and because they don’t have many reviews and need to boost that number. In both cases, this is unethical, dishonest, and goes against Google’s policy.
Google has strict policies against fake reviews, and if they catch a business doing this, they might:

• Remove the fake reviews
• Suspend or delete the Google My Business listing
• Impose penalties on your website’s search ranking and overall online reputation

As you can see, it’s not worth it to post fake reviews. Instead, work on getting them without violating policy. Here are some ideas to help with that.

Check your profile

Is your Google My Business profile fully optimized? If not, your business might not be noticed or appear on the first page of Google search results. This could be problematic. You need to ensure your business name, location, phone number, and hours of operation are correct, as well as the business category, which helps Google match you with relevant searches.

Regularly check your business details

You might not feel this is important, but what happens when you choose to stay open for a few extra hours on the weekend, or open later during the week? These changes should be easily and readily available to your customers, which means your details must be accurate and regularly updated. Consistent details across all online platforms help boost your local SEO.

Use high-quality images

Consider using professional images to show your services or products. It will cost a little bit more than images you’ve taken, but professionals understand backgrounds, lighting, and capturing the images you need correctly. The more professional your business images appear, the more seriously your customer base will take you. Strangely, this could lead to more Google reviews for your business.

Ask for reviews at the right time

When should you ask your customers to write reviews? Asking for reviews doesn’t violate any policy and you should ask for them right after a positive experience. If they ell you they’ve received excellent service, like a product, or enjoyed working with your team, politely ask them to fill out a review for your business. You can even make a review form that helps them answer a few questions to leave a review.

Use email to automate review requests

Some customers will forget to leave a Google review for a few days, which means you need to reach out to them to ask for reviews. This means sending emails or SMS messages after the customer interacts with your business. This process can be automated, but also needs to be set to limit sending emails and messages to only once per week and to stop once a review has been received or a specified time period has elapsed.

Used software to collect and respond

Positive reviews are easy to respond to, but you should still respond to each one with at least a message of gratitude. Negative reviews are a bit trickier and must be followed up on, commented on, and taken seriously. In some cases, you can turn a negative into a positive, but that doesn’t happen very often. Still, it’s important that you follow up with the customer, handle their concerns, and ask for them to follow up on their review when satisfied.

Use links and codes to make reviews easy

If you want to get the most Google reviews from your customer base, you’ve got to make it easy for them to leave reviews. This can be done by posting QR codes on documents for easy access to review links, or by adding links to emails, social media posts, and receipts. These are great ways to make it easier for your customers to leave reviews immediately, which is when they are thinking about your business the most.

Share positive reviews on social media

Customers love to see the positive impact of their reviews. This means sharing them on social media, where customers can add comments and see the reviews and who they came from. This is a source of pride and could be something they share with friends and family, which could quickly grow your social media audience.
How will you go about gaining more Google reviews? Don’t go against policy by cheating; do it the right way and let your reviews tell the story of your amazing customer service, team, and products.