What are Google customer reviews and why activate them on your Google My Business account?

What exactly is Google My Business?

Before we talk about Google customer reviews, we first need to know where to find them. That's on Google's free local listing tool, Google My Business.

Every business can create a Google My Business listing, which allows your company to appear in the search results. localized research made by Internet users.
A localized search is automatically activated when someone searches for a service or product on the Google search engine. In the first results, results that match your search and are geographically close to you are systematically displayed.

Every Google My Business listing provides information related to a point of sale or a company. You can find :

• Company or store name
• Opening days and hours 
• Physical address or area covered by your services
• Phone number
• Link to your website
• Direct messaging with the company
• Photos of the store, company or products 
• The news
• Google customer reviews 

As you can see, in addition to increasing your visibility on the Internet, your Google My Business listing includes basic information about your company and various means of contact.

It's the place where you can display all the information that helps Internet users come to you, rather than to your competitor! The creation of a Google My Business listing is completely automatic. free of charge. To create a card, follow these steps :

1. Start by logging in to your Google account (or create one if you don't have one), then go to the Google My Business site.
   
2. Create your establishment in just a few clicks. Then request a verification code directly in your new space.
   
3. Optimize and update your Google My Business listing.
   Be active on your Google My Business and bring your listing to life to improve your results over the long term. You can update various elements such as publishing news, announcing exceptional promotions, communicating about new products or services, responding to Google customer reviews, etc.

Google My Business also gives you access to statistics with which you can see the performance of your insert in terms of visibility, contacts, route requests, etc.
That's really interesting! With continuous analysis, you know what actions to take to perform even better tomorrow.

In this article, we focus on Google customer reviews, which are a key element in the company's success. particularly strategic for companies and brands. So it's up to you to create a strategy that easily generates Google reviews on your Google My Business listing, and then manage them properly.

Google customer reviews are essential for your reputation and visibility

Let's start with a few figures to give you an idea of the importance of Google customer reviews. These have a considerable impact on your reputation / visibility and they can also become a real purchase trigger for web users.

• 95% of customers look at reviews before buying
• 72% of customers won't buy until they've read the reviews
• 80% of customers say the number of reviews is decisive when two products have the same rating
• 53% of customers expect a response to a review within 7 days

It's now a reflex for 95% of Internet users: other customers' opinions are consulted before making a purchase on a site, before going into a store,...

Having Google customer reviews on your Google My Business listing is therefore an absolute priority. Other sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisorthat specialize in collecting reviews are not as reliable as reviews on a Google My Business listing. With Google My Business, there are no fake Google reviews, and they can't be deleted. They are therefore credible and serve your image (when it's generally positive, of course) with future customers. Excellent Google customer reviews serve to reassure consumers and encourage them to choose your company or brand. Positive reviews reflect a good customer experience and build reader confidence. In short, the more positive reviews you get, the more likely potential customers will be to visit your website, give you a call or push open the door of your establishment!

E-reputation must therefore be at the heart of your consumer strategy to generate new customers, so it's time to implement a strategy to get more Google customer reviews.

1. How can I get more Google customer reviews on Google My Business?

Are you convinced by the usefulness of Google customer reviews, but don't know how to go about acquiring the first review or more?

It's a well-known fact that it's easier for consumers to express their dissatisfaction and warn others about it than the other way around. The key is to raising awareness and encouraging happy customers to leave their opinion. Very few do so spontaneously, and yet it's these reviews that you need to collect. Here are a few tips that you should put into practice today, and continue to do so in the long term:

• Contact your happy customers and your most loyal customers. They're the ones most likely to take the time to give you a positive review, and they do it primarily to please you.
• Through a post on your social networks or a newsletter, get in touch with your customers or your community and show them that you'd like feedback on the experience they've had with your business. Make life easy for them by giving them the direct link they need to post a review on your Google My Business page.
• Get into the habit of asking each new customer for a review, either by sending them an e-mail after an assignment carried out by your company or a purchase made by your customer, or by calling them. For e-commerce companies, putting up a flyer when a parcel is dispatched is an easy way of automating the process of gathering feedback, and generally has a positive impact!

It is important to reach your customers at the right time to increase your efficiency and turn as many of your customer requests as possible into reviews on Google My Business.
Analyze your customer journey and define an effective strategy that takes into account the ideal timing, convincing copywriting and any automation required to collect the maximum number of positive Google customer reviews.

2. Ask for quality Google reviews

Receiving a customer review is great, but a quality review is even better. Here are just a few of the rules that make Google customer reviews a success more credible and impactful for those who consult them :

• Don't just put stars. Ask for reviews that include stars (as many as possible, of course) and a commentary that includes the various elements below.
• The comment must include specific details, service information, etc. (e.g. name of dish, speed of service, etc.).
• Pay attention to the importance of comment content, which also has an impact on referencing and therefore the visibility of your Google My Business insert. A comment is always more valuable when it includes keywords that are relevant to your business.
• Adding photos confirms that the comment is genuine and gives a glimpse of your product, service or establishment.

3. How do I respond to Google My Business customer reviews?

Responding to Google reviews (and on other platforms) allows you tomaintain a relationship with your customers and create a more personalized contact. At the same time, you show that they are important to you, that their opinion counts and that you do take them into account.

Google customer reviews, both positive and negative, help you evolve and feed your after-sales service, which can easily gather essential information about your customers. This information guides you in the strategic actions you need to take to further improve your services or your product.

The basic rule for Google customer reviews is to respond, without exception, to all reviews left by your customers. If it's positive, and especially if it's negative, this allows you to take care of your communication and your image.

Here are a few rules for responding to negative Google reviews:

• Adopt the right tone: Remain polite, pleasant and attentive to the customer's needs.
• Thank the customer: the information received by the consumer, however complicated it may be to hear, helps you evolve and put the right measures in place.
• Take care with the content: explain the situation so that Internet users understand the context that led to the negative review. If the context justifies it: apologize, explain that it won't happen again and that you're going to improve your product or service.

Responding to a negative review in the right way won't negatively influence the person reading it. On the contrary, responding to a negative review allows you to show how you operate, how you follow up your customers.

To give yourself a second chance with an unhappy customer, you can propose certain actions such as a discount on their next purchase. Anything that shows you're taking the best possible care of your customers, even the unhappy ones, reassures and attracts new customers!

4. Our other tips for managing Google reviews

How do you spot and remove fake reviews?

Watch out for fake Google reviews can damage your online reputation.

Don't forget that your Google My Business listing is often the first point of entry and contact with consumers searching on Google, and that you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression. If you have fake reviews, report it directly on your Google My Business administrator account. However, don't do themistake of reporting real negative reviews !

Here are a few criteria to help you identify fake reviews:

• The same person posts the same reviews on different Google My Business accounts. To check this, click on the person's name and look at their history.
• Negative reviews published at regular intervals
• Duplicate comments with the same spelling from different people
• The level of language used and/or spelling mistakes
• Little detail, too general

Buying Google reviews: a bad idea!

Buying fake Google reviews is not a practice to be adopted and if you do, we suggest you stop right now. It's too much risk for too little return.

In fact, using platforms and buying fake Google reviews is punishable by law. You may also incur heavy penalties from Google such as the total suspension of your business listing. It's no coincidence that the publication of deliberately false reviews tops the list of content formally proscribed by Google's policy.

Review management software to help you manage your reviews

Review Management software is available for save time in your customer review management. These allow you to centralize all actions linked to review management, such as survey creation, distribution, analysis and response management.

There are a multitude of platforms to suit all your needs, including Capterra brings together on its website.

Don't be afraid of a negative Google review!

A negative review drowned in 20 positive comments does not have the same effect as an isolated criticism. A dissatisfied customer whose negative review has been dealt with effectively can become an ambassador.

After responding, contact the customer again to confirm that the situation has been resolved. You'll once again demonstrate your commitment to providing optimum service. Who knows, maybe this behavior will lead to a positive review!

First and foremost, define a strategy to achieve results

Audit your website

First of all, we advise you to carry out a complete audit of your website and all the pages it contains. A website audit will enable you to identify the following forcesthe weaknesses and therefore areas for improvement to increase your visibility on the Internet. Thanks to this analysis and the resulting results, you can define action plans to improve your positioning and therefore the visibility of your website on search engines (Google, Bing, etc.).

Here are some important reasons why you should have your site audited:

• When you launch your business (even if you're not yet positioned, the audit enables you to analyze the competition and directly implement the best practices for rapidly increasing your visibility on the Internet).
  
• When setting up a new version / optimization of your website. The audit allows us to check and ensure that the changes made will not impact your site's positioning (and therefore its visibility on the Internet) on search engines, and that it can continue to be indexed by them.
  
• When you notice a significant change of position or a substantial drop in traffic. The audit will enable you to verify the best practices for optimizing your website's SEO, and to understand the reason for the significant changes that are impacting your results. The algorithms that define a website's position on search engines change frequently, so you need to keep checking that your site is continually up to date.
  
• Finally, we strongly recommend that you carry out an SEO audit at regular periods. This is beneficial for anticipating and adapting quickly to possible changes in search engines and their algorithms, and for gaining or maintaining good visibility on the Internet.

Set a coherent editorial line

Visit editorial line is a key part of your strategy. Normally, you'll want to get started even before you create your website or blog. With a clear editorial line, you define your style, your tone, your editorial angle... right down to the choice of images you're going to integrate.

It allows you to create consistency in your brand image. The editorial line should not only be used for your website and blog, but also for all your communication media: social networks, newsletters, emails, etc.

In short, your writing style is an integral part of your identity and reinforces your personal branding. Among other things, this is how visitors to your website will recognize you.

Having a clear and consistent editorial line allows you to increase :

• the credibility to your target audience by conveying a professional image of your company or brand
  
• the loyalty your readers, who appreciate your writing style and enjoy reading content that matches what they're looking for.
  
• the visibility on website. Indeed, publishing content and having a good editorial line can also be a plus that positively impacts your positioning on search networks and therefore your natural referencing.

Create a Google My Business account

Develop your local referencing

It has become the essential platform for developing your reputation and visibility on the local Internet. If you have a business with a physical location, you must have a Google My Business page. A multitude of searches are carried out every day to find service providers or products. by geography.
The better you fill out your Google My Business listing, the more you'll improve your visibility. Then, your visibility on the Internet depends on the following 3 main elements:

• Relevance Information about your company must be accurate and complete to facilitate understanding. (name, description, hours, services/products, photos, etc.).
  
• The distance : the company closest to the location indicated in the search will benefit from better visibility.
  
• Popularity The better known your company is to the public, the higher your ranking. So don't forget to ask your customers to leave positive reviews on your Google My Business page.

Find your company information easily on the web

In just a few seconds, Internet users can already find a a wide range of information about your company. That's why it's important to fill in as much of your data as possible. Google My Business. What's more, the more complete it is, the more space it takes up on the search network, which is a considerable advantage in itself.
Here's a brief overview of what you can add:

• Name
• Link to your website
• Description of your company
• Address
• Opening hours
• Phone
• Services / Products
• Articles

Display Google reviews on the web

Reviews on Google My Business are the foundation of your online reputation and allow Internet users to get an idea of your company without even knowing you personally.

Positive reviews give your company a good image and reassure Internet users. This makes them an incentive to get in touch with you and potentially become a new customer. Customer reviews have a major impact and influence your ranking and therefore your visibility on the Internet.
The ranking is based on 4 main factors:

• The number of notices
• The quality of reviews
• Regularity of notices
• Responses to notices

Optimize the natural referencing of your website

Surround yourself with professionals

For the creation of your content, you can call on the services of a SEO expert who writes content to optimize natural search engine optimization (SEO). Skilled and knowledgeable, he creates content for you that complies with SEO rules, using effective keywords and expressions. This is one of our specialties. Lead Agency.

Setting up the basics of natural referencing

As you've probably guessed, setting up and optimizing a website's Search Engine Optimization (SEO) enables you to gain visibility on the Internet, and therefore on search engine results pages. It's an excellent opportunity to raise the profile of a website or company, and an effective way to showcase your products and/or services. We've drawn up 10 criteria for optimize natural referencing that must be put in place if it is to be effective:

• Have a responsive design website: adapted to all devices (PC, smartphone, tablet)
• Maximize your website loading time
• Optimize your tags and metadata
• Define a clear and consistent keyword strategy
• Creating quality content
• Optimize the natural referencing of each content published on the website
• Avoid duplicating content
• Creating high-performance netlinking
• Be present on various social networks
• Use Google Analytics and the Google Search Console

Targeting the right keywords

Define your buyer persona

To target the right keywords, it's vital to know who you're talking to. So, first of all, identify your personas (ideal customer), their needs and their language. Then, understand your target audience perfectly, so you know how they express themselves and how they formulate their requests. Once you've identified these terms, you can use the requests to build your list of keywords that will make all the difference.

Publish regular articles on your blog

Publish blog posts frequently

There is no right answer to the question: "How often should I publish a blog post?".
The frequency of publication depends on your editorial line. You need to estimate how long it will take to write an article, and how much time you have available. This will enable you to realistically define the frequency with which you are able to write articles.

Regularly publishing content on your website is essential to gain Google's favor... and that of your readers! By frequently feeding your blog with editorial content, you'll improve your visibility on search engines, you'll attract new prospects and you build loyalty your customers.

Google crawls your site for new pages. If you suddenly stop publishing for a few weeks... Google won't visit your website as often, and when you start publishing again, your articles will take longer to be "spotted" by the engine and will therefore be slower to be indexed. Maintain your rhythm so you don't lose out on efficiency!

Publish quality blog posts

Be careful not to put quantity before quality. Don't neglect the quality of your content. One article per month is, in our opinion, the minimum if you want to feel the positive impact in terms of referencing and therefore lead generation, but also to boost your customer loyalty.

Think about the content that can interest your target and think about publishing high value-added content. Let your readers know that you're an expert, so that they can are interested in you.

Exploiting paid search

Coupled with a natural search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, it ensures your site's visibility on the Internet. Paid search (SEA) enables you toquickly increase your ranking on search engines according to the strategy defined and implemented, and the budget given.

Your SEA campaigns enable you to collect information which helps you optimize your natural search engine optimization. SEA also naturally has a positive impact on your SEO, because if you increase traffic of your website with SEA, which boosts your natural referencing.

In fact, it's quite simple. Quite simply, Google also thanks websites that have spent a minimum amount of money at one time or another. To explain in 2 words: you have two websites with exactly the same characteristics, the same SEO, the same reputation,... and one of them has implemented SEA, it will obviously be the one that has combined the two that is given more prominence than the other.

Anyone who wants to increase their website traffic and thus their visibility knows thatchoose your keywords carefully to appear in the first results on search engines such as Google, Ecosia, Bing, etc. But how do you go about generating maximum qualified traffic from your keywords?

In this article we give you 10 tips on how to choose the best SEO keywords, which is in a way the key to success. the basis of your SEO strategy.

1. Respond to search intent with the best SEO keywords

Since your ultimate goal is to attract future customers to your website, it's obviously important to take into account the terms they might type into the search bar in order to position you on the best SEO keywords. 

First and foremost, you need to clearly define your persona in order to provide the right information to the right person and generate the right response. traffic of the highest possible qualityIt's the one that's going to convert on your website.

First and foremost, you need to put yourself in your customer's shoes and ask yourself: 

• "What does he search for on search engines?"
• "What precise terms will it enter in the search bar?"
• "What are the answers he wants to get in the search results?"

We often have preconceived ideas when it comes to choosing our best SEO keywords. It's very useful to take a step back and ask other people what keywords they would have used to search for your services or products.

We'd be surprised if the terms used weren't the ones we thought. 

L'research intention is therefore an essential element to take into account in your SEO strategy: think about who you want to reach and where you want to guide them (service, specific subject, solution to a problem you can provide, etc.).

The web user expects to find a precise answer to a question or problem they're facing. When you have keywords in mind, remember to look at the results obtained on search engines to see the type of content put forward and the angle from which the issue was addressed.

To find out, simply type your selected keyword into the search engine and analyze the results. type of content which stands out on the front page and from which angle the issue has been addressed.

• The content type can be an image, a video, an article, etc.
• The angle is either a blog post, a tutorial, a comparison, etc.

2. See what your competitors are doing on Google

Analyzing what your competitors are doing is a good way to see what already works in your sector, keywords for which there is already a lot of competition or for which there is little competition, etc.

By studying your competitors, you can :

• Analyze the SEO keywords used in your competitors' title tags and textual content.
• to see the themes covered and give you ideas for content to cover
• get inspiration for SEO keyword synonyms to use

To facilitate your analysis, you can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Branalyzer or even SEMrush.

3. Am I able to compete on these SEO keywords?

Let's be optimistic: it's always possible to take on your competitors on every SEO keyword, but we won't hide from you the fact that, depending on the competition, this can prove to be an arduous, if not almost impossible, task.

Choosing the right keyword also means taking into account the competition for the keyword and the monthly search volume. You should also bear in mind that some keywords are seasonal, so search volumes can rise and fall sharply from one month to the next. The higher the competition, the more complicated it will be to rank for your selected keyword.

To help you find the best SEO keywords, there are plenty of tools on Google, including free SEO keyword generators:

• SEODataViz
• Ahrefs
• Keyword Sheeter

Be careful, however, when it comes to writing your content once your list of defined keywords There's no point in repeating your keyword too often!

Worse still, this is actually penalized by Google, and can have a negative effect on your SEO. So just because you mention your best SEO keywords everywhere on your page doesn't mean you'll beat the competition in the search results! 

A misuse of a keyword can be perceived by the search engine as keyword stuffing. This was a widespread practice at the time, but is now counter-productive as it is reprimanded by Google.

Your keywords on a page of your website can be used several times, and the optimum quantity is defined on the basis of a ratio between the number of keyword appearances and the number of words on the page. So there's no fixed maximum - it all depends on the size of your content.

To avoid redundancy in the use of your keyword, remember to use a varied vocabulary by using synonyms of your main keyword and alternate their use.

And finally, to position yourself well in relation to your competitors, you simply need to put into practice all the points mentioned in this article and even better, call one of our experts. 

4. Evaluate the traffic potential of each keyword

To choose the right keyword, you need to analyze potential traffic of each keyword on search engines. This is quite easy to do, thanks to the tools available free of charge on the web.

To find out the search volume for the keyword you've selected, simply enter it in the Keyword Planner and launch the search.

Targeting keywords with a high search volume is obviously interesting for potentially generating a lot of traffic, but it does have its drawbacks. These terms often have a stiff competition and it's therefore difficult to position yourself on the first page. What's more, it may generate a lot of traffic, but the relevance of visitors may be limited, so your traffic is generally less qualified.

In many cases, therefore, it is more interesting to position yourself on a keyword that generates less search volume but more targeted research. That's exactly what we'll see in the next section.

5. The best SEO keywords: the long tail

To define a list of the best SEO keywords and rank in the top positions on search engines, it's highly recommended to work on long-tail keywords. 

So, when defining your keywords, think offrom the most global to the most precise. What does this mean? To put it simply, a three-word keyword is more precise than a one-word keyword.

There are several types of keywords:

• Front-end keywords: they're highly sought-after, and there's a lot of competition. Example: "Smartphone".
• Intermediate keywords: these are moderately sought-after keywords with moderate competition. Example: "lightweight smartphone".
  
• Long-tail keywords: they're not highly searched and there's little competition. Example: "lightweight smartphone with 6-inch screen".

As you can see, long-tail keywords are much more precise, and even if they have a lower search volume, they allow you to reach a target with a higher search volume. more precise search and therefore a real interest in your product or service. In other words, you're more likely to meet a visitor's need, and therefore convert.

We therefore recommend that you vary the use of different keywords Front keywords, intermediate keywords, long-tail keywords.

Focusing solely on front-end keywords is likely to generate few results, as they are very complicated to rank for. So don't forget to add your long-tail keywords to your SEO strategy.

6. Choose the most important SEO keywords

In your SEO strategy, and therefore in the choice of your SEO keywords, you must take one thing into account: one main keyword per page.

This is the basic rule of SEO. Next, you define the secondary keywords that will complete your keyword list. The main keyword, also known asfokus keyword"It must also take into account all the elements mentioned in this article.

Bear in mind that it's preferable for a page's main keyword to be used only once throughout the entire website (this is not the case for secondary keywords, which can be reused).

This confirms the importance of choosing the right main keyword and selecting a specific keyword to avoid using it twice on your website.

7. Choose secondary keywords

Defining secondary keywords allows you to specify the subjects covered by the search engine and to strengthen your main keyword. It's important to identify several secondary keywords on your website to strengthen your natural referencing.

As you've already set up a keyword list, all you have to do is go back to it and add the other keywords mentioned on it.

Often, when you're on a CMS such as WordPress or Wix you have access to SEO plugins that just identify the main keyword in the free version!

8. Does Google understand your keyword?

Pay attention to multiple meanings of your keyword. Google may misunderstand the meaning of your keyword if it has more than one.

Again, the more information you give Google, the more you limit the risk of this happening. Once again, this demonstrates the importance of long-tail keywords or the use of synonyms when necessary.

By default, when you're in doubt as to whether your keyword will be understood by search engines, think about adapting it.

9. TOP 3 free tools for keyword and competitor analysis

There are, of course, many tools available to guide you in your SEO strategy: competitor analysis, keyword analysis, backlink analysis, etc.

Most of them, when you want to access the full range of functions, become chargeable, but you can find them here 3 free analysis tools SEO keyword competition :

Google Keyword Planner

A tool that you can find on Google Ads and which includes figures such as search volume, trends, CPC, etc.

Google Trends

Google tool for targeting search engine trends

Keyword Surfer

Free Google Chrome extension with estimated global and monthly search volumes and lots of other information

10. Analyze your SEO results

Adopting a search engine optimization strategy and taking an interest in the best SEO keywords is all well and good, but analyzing the results obtained afterwards is much better!

There's little point in embarking on SEO without ongoing analysis, and it's almost a waste of time.

SEO as a whole, and in this case the most searched words on Google, is constantly evolving, so your analysis will enable you toidentify trends positive or negative impact on your website's positioning.

There are several free tools available to help you analyze your situation and make decisions that will enhance your visibility.

For example, you can use Google Analytics to analyze incoming traffic and its sources, and get more precise details on the path and actions taken by web users according to the same source.

And the Google Search Console is also an interesting platform for identifying the terms used by Internet users that generate impressions in search results.

These two tools enable you to better understand search intent and adapt your SEO strategy to position yourself on the best SEO keywords.

Analysis with these tools does, however, require a certain amount of expertise. There are plenty of figures and information available, but you still need to know what to analyze in order to implement actions that will have a positive impact on your visibility. That's why we've put together some powerful analysis tools to help you quickly analyze your situation and make the best possible decisions. Discover our GA4 analysis tool or our Google Ads analysis tool.