Disclaimer: This offering is part of our Customer Appreciation program.  Feel free to read the articles and videos, but the free gifts are reserved for our clients in good standing.  You can learn more about Alaskarama by going to our website about web marketing, and our website about local search marketing.

You may have noticed that people are happy to rant when things go wrong, but rarely tell you when things are great. So we need to give people a reason to give us the review.  However, rants can be good for you to know about too so you can make corrections in your small business.

Of course, fundamentally you need to have a great relationship with your customer or client in order to earn the great review. Great service gets great responses.

Here are some tips for getting customer reviews.

1. Customer online reviews can be collected by phone, email, on your website, or from a hand-written note. Choose which one will work best for you.

2. Never offer to pay for reviews. Most people will give you one if you ask. Just make sure you are offering a service or product that makes them happy first!

3. Make it easy.  Give them options like sending an email with links, giving a review card at the point of sale, or having an easy form on your website.

4. Ask for your reviews promptly.  Review cards given at the time of service have higher completion rates than follow up requests.

5. Follow up with an email request if you have email addresses and give the links to where they can post.

6. Getting reviews from happy customers is easy so make them happy first.  Getting reviews from unhappy customers is also easy, so make them happy first (oh, I already said that so it must be important).

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Be sure to leave us comments and suggestions for future offerings ! Also be sure to post any tips you may have for others in our community.

Disclaimer: This offering is part of our Customer Appreciation program.  Feel free to read the articles and videos, but the free gifts are reserved for our clients in good standing.  You can learn more about Alaskarama by going to our website about web marketing, and our website about local search marketing.

We made this brief 5 minute video to get you acquainted with Google Places.  If you do nothing else, set up your Google Places so you have a start at showing up on the 7Pack! Don’t forget to also get started on a plan to gather reviews and get your website up to snuff. All these components work together.

Here you go.

You may have heard the term “7 Pack” lately and how important it is to get on there. So what is it and why is it important to your small business?  In the image below you will see a Google SERP (Search Engine Result Page) using the search term restaurant.  The only term used was restaurant.  No city was included.  Google knew where I was sitting due to GPS in my phone and desktop and brought me a list of local restaurants. If you are a local business selling to a local market, this is huge!

In the past, your goal was to get your website to show up on the first page of a SERP.  But now, it may not show up until page 2 or 3.  You still need to optimize your websites, but more important is to have your local business listings optimized.  Let’s take a look at the image of a SERP result.

The shaded box is always a paid position. Those companies have paid Google using pay per click to be positioned there for specific key words.  In this example, they purchased the term restaurant (which would be very expensive per click).

Below the paid spot is usually directories.  In this case, www.restaurants.com came up.  If there is a high ranking directory, it will show  up in that position.

On the right is a map.  You will see little red tear drops.  When you roll over them,it gives you the name of the restaurant and  how many reviews it has received.

Then there is the 7 Pack.  This is the sweet spot you want to be on. The good news is that you can optimize your website and Google Places to get on there.

Another cool feature is the ability to review the website page just by rolling over the small arrows to the right of the listings in the 7 pack. If you do not have a website, people might not think you are a legitimate business, or maybe that you are no longer in business. It is also a handy tool to remind you of a site you may have visited before but were unsure of the name.

How do you get on the 7 Pack?

1. Make sure your website is optimized (known as SEO – search engine optimization). This means that each page has its own keyword phrase that people are searching for, has titles, alternative text on images, and a unique description. Your address and phone number also needs to be visible by Google and match all your other directory listings (like Places). If you do not manage your own website, ask your webmaster if you are optimized.

2. Claim your Google Places page.

3. Reviews are a big part of the ranking. See the stars? That is an average of the ratings of customer reviews. You will need to have an active plan for collecting reviews from your customers and clients.

4. Google needs to know you are a legitimate company so inbound links are important.  Find other directories that relate to your business and get listed. Be sure each listing represents your business consistently. And don’t forget to make a list with usernames and passwords!

5. Keep your website fresh by creating great content in your blog.  This content, which provides information to people searching the web, is how Google knows you are a serious company.  Keep in mind that Google is in business and has competitors too and wants to give the best SERP possible.

Get started today by reviewing your website to see if you are optimized, or get in touch with your webmaster and ask them for a review. It may have been a year since they have seen it if you do not update often!  And a lot has changed in a year.

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Be sure to leave us comments and suggestions for future offerings ! Also be sure to post any tips you may have for others in our community.