Google My Business Series #2: Why Responding to Reviews is Important

Welcome to episode 135 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento and I will be talking today about why responding to your Google reviews is so important. Last time we talked about why the reviews themselves are important.

Different reasons why you should be responding to Google reviews?

Reason number 1

Google picks up everything that is in the review. So not only in the review but also in your response to the review. 

So if a customer has a particular service, let’s say you’re a hair salon and they had a great haircut and they mentioned exactly what they got done and they mentioned your salon name and they mentioned the city and they say this was the best haircut that I’ve ever had and I cannot wait to go back. That is going to give you more “SEO juice” on Google.

Then let’s say a customer doesn’t leave a great detailed review. Let’s say they’re just like; “Sarah’s so great. It was amazing. Love it. Can’t wait to go back.” What was great? What was amazing? Why can’t you wait to go back? Google doesn’t have any idea. 

So it is your job as the business owner to then put those details in that review response “I’m so glad that you enjoyed your eyelash treatment” or whatever that service is and you want to use all of those keywords in your reply, especially if they don’t leave it in the review. So that is the number one tip with keywords.

Reason number 2

It’s going to protect your reputation, review response is all about reputation management. If you get a negative review, you still want to respond to that to make sure that the next customer that’s reading that review is comfortable with your response.

I know that sounds weird but you want that next customer to want to go there just because of how they replied to this negative review. That is the kind of response that you need to be putting out there. I’ve seen a lot of business owners start arguing with people and they start name-calling.

It’s just not the place to do it and the reason why is that you’re not replying to that person, that’s leaving you the review. You’re replying to every potential future customer that you have that is looking at your listing. 

Reason number 3

Responding to your reviews is so important to the client that you’re responding to. They will get an email after you respond to the review and it will say so-and-so has responded to your review on Google and they’ll get a link to check it out and so that is going to give them if it’s a nice, heartfelt response, a warm, fuzzy feeling and they’re going to be eager to do business with you next time.

They’re not going to be able to forget you as easily. It’s another touch in your marketing system and it’s another touch in your customer service system and it lets that customer know that you value them because you took the time out of your day to respond to their review.

You might have a hundred reviews in your Google My Business but you took the time to respond to their review. That is going a long way.

Reason number 4

The last reason why responding to reviews is important is for your business practices. So making sure that you have a system in place for review response, whether it be Google, Yelp, etc any of that can affect how you run your business. So paying attention to the reviews that are coming in, are they good? Are they bad? Is there anything in them that you can use to improve? Is there anything that you can talk to your staff about?

That might be something that can be mitigated for the next customer that comes in, so they don’t have that same experience. It’s very important to read your reviews, process them and understand how you can use them to improve. I hope that you enjoy this episode.

All of these Google My Business episodes are going to be short and sweet but they are packed with value. Looking forward to seeing you in the next episode.