Blog: Google My Business

Small businesses frequently have a low marketing and advertising budgets in which to work with. This can make marketing your local small business extremely challenging. The good news is that you can often promote yourself to prospects and clients for free or insanely cheap.

This post covers 101 ways to advertise and market your local small business on a tight budget.

Before I answer the question posed in the title of this post, think let me ask you, dear reader, a couple of questions. Do you check reviews before you visit or reach out to a business? Have you ever found yourself favoring one business over another due to their online reviews?

I am sure you could answer yes to both of these questions. Now back to the question I posed in the title of this post and its accompanying answer, which is overwhelming YES! Yes, Google Reviews will help your both general SEO and Local SEO.

Now, this begs the question of how do these local businesses show up on the search results pages (SERPs) in the first place? Well, that’s Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at work.

In this article, I will help you better understand what local SEO is and its benefits. I’ll also show you how to use Google reviews SEO to improve your local rankings.

When it comes to online reviews, they help show prospects valuable social proof and create trust. It can also help your small business’s website rank higher in search results. In this guide to getting online client reviews, we want to help you learn how to get more and respond to them.

Are online customer reviews trustworthy?

A quick and simple answer is yes. In general, you can trust reviews online. For one, a lot of platforms have been successful in their efforts to crack down on fake and unverified reviews. They no longer let anonymous reviewers post on their sites.

Online reviews provide consumers with detailed feedback from their point of view. This provides readers with a perspective other than that of the business. The business is likewise not always capable of providing such feedback.

It is important, however, for users to exercise due diligence when browsing online reviews. It is a good idea to read numerous reviews of the same product. This can help you appreciate and understand the product through a wide variety of customer experiences. 

When reading reviews, you also need to be selective on what to believe and which ones to take with a grain of salt. For example, if you come across a review that seems too exceptional to be true, then it probably is something to be skeptical about.