Friday Roundup: Boost Your Local Presence with Reviews

Today is the Friday Roundup. I'm John Peterson with Develare. Today we're going to cover boosting your local presence with reviews. Now, there is a business out here that I work with. It's a client of mine and a big fan of called Houston iPhone Screen Repair. They've repaired many of our devices, many of our screens, and they've always done an awesome job, even before they were a client of ours. They've done an awesome job for other folks as well. They have 49 reviews on Yelp with a five-star rating, and they have 52 reviews on Google My Business, also with a five-star rating.

Now you might've seen those Google My Business reviews on Google Maps. You might've seen them on the regular Google page. Maybe you type in a search term where a business comes up on the sidebar there, you'll notice some little reviews. Either five stars, four stars, whatever on the sidebar there. They're doing an awesome job. They use a service called grade.us to help make sure that they're asking their clients for reviews, that they're, in a non-annoying way, making sure that they're out there. Just, "Hey, thanks for coming in. Then if you have a chance, feel free to review us on Yelp or Google." You can use grade.us and then also services like that called Get Five Stars. They're very helpful in making sure that you're capturing those reviews from your clients who would love to review your business online. It's a small, little reminder.

Now Houston iPhone Screen Repair, obviously, they provide excellent service and they do that every time. That's why they have such high ratings and it definitely reflects in the reviews online, and then also helps them get more business in the future. Now, Mozz has released. It was back in 2015, but it was called the 2015 Local Search Ranking Factors. Out of that, they had a section called Top 50 Local Organic Factors. Number 47 came in with high numerical ratings by authority reviewers. That would be folks who are Yelp elite reviewers, folks who are Google local guides. Those people really help boost your ratings in the local space. It's something that just capturing those reviews, asking for those reviews from every customer is something that's a good practice. You never know who's a Yelp elite reviewer, but you get those people. You send them an email. They'll be happy to review you online.

Now, Search Engine Watch also released a "Does Yelp Really Matter?" article. This is a 2015 article, but in that they mentioned that back in July of 2014 that Google updated their Pigeon algorithm. They actually started favoring Yelp results there. That's something that I'm seeing even to this day. I typed in Salata, which is a local restaurant within one mile of my office here. Typed in Salata and the number one result that came back was for a Yelp page for Salata right down the street. Same thing for Chipotle, number two result on the Google search page was for Chipotle's Yelp page. Now Jasper's, number two as well. That's for my local Google search here. There's another article out there called Google My Business Updates and it says, "Improve your local ranking on the Google page."

This was done on ... There's an article on Mike Blumenthal's website, blumenthals.com, in there. The first part of the article, Mike Blumenthal references the Google My Business help article. In Google's own help article, they say, "The Google review count and score are factored into local search ranking," so more reviews and positive reviews or positive ratings will probably improve a business's local rating. Get those good reviews. Get them up on Google My Business. That helps your business, helps as a ranking factor that Google uses to determine where you should be on those local results. If you're a local business, if you're a small business and you want to get more exposure, more client calls, more business, reviews are easy way to boost that. That's been the Friday Roundup. I'm John Peterson with Develare, and hope you enjoyed with roundup.