One of the most difficult parts of my job, as a local SEO consultant, is to encourage clients to implement a review strategy for their Google+ page.
Why? Well, up until 3 weeks ago the only thing Google+ reviews were good for were local search results, like the ones shown below:
Google has now announced that Google+ reviews can be shown in PPC text ads shown at the top, right and bottom of a Google search results page. The only way you could show reviews on ads in the past was to use a third party review platform like reviews.co.uk, which included an additional cost that many small business owners did not see the benefit of paying.
The other benefit of this new update is that all of your customer feedback efforts are piled into one. Understandably, it can be difficult for some industries to collect reviews from customers. So you can imagine how they felt when I told them they need at least five reviews on Google+ to get the gold stars and then even more on a third party platform so that we could enable reviews to show on PPC ads too.
Good things come in threes, right?
Ever wondered how people get reviews to show within the organic search results? This is another great way to grab the searcher’s attention, especially if there is no local pack and the only thing eye catching is your golden review stars in the organic results. With all of these combined, there is a possibility of having 3 or more listings on the first page of Google, all with the golden review stars.
How to do it
Local Results
Simply set up a Google+ page for your business and then get at least 5 positive reviews. It may take a few days for the stars to appear, so be patient. I have seen, in some cases, that the golden stars can appear with either 4, 5 or 6 reviews.
PPC Ads
In order to get your reviews to show on your PPC ads remember that you will still need to do the one above as they are all pulled from your Google+ page. All you need to do is link up your Adwords and Google+ by enabling the location extension in Adwords.
You can find the full list of benefits and instructions here: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2404182?hl=en-GB
Organic Results
This is slightly more technical so I’m going to keep the detail really simple, but if you would prefer to read more about it, check out Marcus Miller’s post on Rich Snippet Reviews for Local Businesses.
