“The customer is always right”. This phrase has never been truer than in today’s age, where every customer can express their experiences online. In digital era, consumers of all group and age research for a brand, product or service by through online reviews. Online reviews are becoming the most entrusted way for a consumer to check for a product/service before investing their time or money.

Good rating and reviews are like the building block of a business’s ranking. Google and other search engines aim at displaying consumer-useful information, and hence rely on ratings. When someone searches for a business or brand in a particular area, google uses ratings as a major determining factor for top results.

Online reviews are not just good for business in a direct way, they also directly affect your search engine rankings. Reviews can be of various types, google reviews (by people with google+ accounts) are much more impact than reviews at other places.

The google search page shows star ratings of a business on its local search page. A good rating tends to increase the clicks on your site, and improves your business’s ranking in local search factor. The more number of review sites that feature your company, the more number of back links your site attracts, one more way it increases clicks on your site.

All being said reviews are not the ONLY factor that determine your website’s ranking. The structure of your site, user experience, your content all play a great role in determining your ranking. It is paramount importance to have a site with original useful content. Google’s ranking factors keep changing from time to time and they tend to focus on social sharing, device and user friendliness and uniqueness of your content and online reviews.

As a business or website owner, you absolutely need a strategy to attract and account reviews. To build a brand loyalty and make your customer a part of your brand you need to respond to all the reviews (good and bad). Reviews are also the most honest form of feedback, where unlike ticking on a form, your customer lays out the good and bad about your business straight away. It can be a great foundation to highlight your strength and improve your bad aspects.

Reviews today are the backbone of your brand for your customers. The more positive reviews you have, the better ranking your website will have, hence better visibility. Simply said, if your business is getting a good quantity of excellent reviews, with higher rankings across multiple review platforms, you stand a better chance of getting found in local search results.

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