The definitive guide to online reviews: where to feature them and how to get them

Did you know that 97% of consumers use online reviews to help them decide whether to buy from a business?

But how do you get reviews? Where are the best places to feature them? How should you deal with negative reviews?

Online reviews help your customers decide to buy

One of the biggest challenges any business faces is helping new customers overcome their fear of the unknown. People want to know that they won’t regret spending their money!

Positive reviews from existing customers show that others have made the same decision and been pleased with the outcome. This is why reviews hold such sway.

BrightLocal conducts a Consumer Review Survey each year that takes a deep dive into how people view and use reviews to make buying decisions. You can read the full findings from the latest survey via the link above, but the takeaways include:

1. 91% of consumers say reviews of local branches impact their overall perceptions of big brands in some way
2. 88% of consumers would use a business that replies to all its reviews, compared to just 47% who would use a business that doesn’t respond to reviews
3. You can use a generative AI tool to respond to reviews – 58% of consumers preferred AI review responses when shown one written by a human and one generated with AI!
4. 34% of consumers use Instagram and 23% use TikTok to find and leave local business reviews
5. 41% of consumers look at three or more review sites to check business reviews before they make a purchase
6. Google reviews remain the most popular – 81% of people look for these when checking reviews
7. 33% of people always read reviews before buying, and only 3% of people never read reviews
8. Facebook and Yelp remain the second and third most viewed platforms for reviews, but their popularity is slowly dropping

According to Reputation, people are 270% more likely to buy a product when it has five or more reviews than those with no reviews.

If two products or services have the same average star ratings, people will typically choose the product with more reviews.

As we can see, reviews matter!

Reviews can help your SEO

Did you know that search engines use certain information from your business reviews to help them decide where to rank your content in searches, especially if you run a local business?

Moz’s latest guide to Local Search Ranking Factors (June 2023) says that Google is most likely to look at reviews about your business on Google, third-party sites such as Yelp, and on your website.

While multiple factors influence how Google uses these reviews as ranking factors, the most important are believed to be:

• Recency – Have you had new reviews or are they old and outdated?
• Velocity – How often do you receive new reviews?
• Diversity – Do you have reviews on multiple platforms?

It has also been surmised that Google lends more “weight” SEO-wise to reviews from high authority sources (e.g. a member of a programme like Google’s Local Guides) than a first-time unknown reviewer, and that text reviews may have more impact than textless star ratings.

If you develop a system to ask for customer reviews, it can only help your SEO. We’ll be looking at how to do this further in this guide.

How important are star ratings?

It’s probably fair to say that while star ratings matter, they’re only part of the picture.

Consumers are cynical, and if they see a company has a long list of five-star reviews, they tend to worry that they’re fake or come from biased sources like friends and family. After all, no matter how great a product or service is, there’s usually room for improvement!

Similarly, if a business only has one-star reviews, people might see them as an attempt by competitors or scorned customers to rubbish the business’s reputation.

Recent research suggests that most of us expect a mix of reviews and that purchase likelihood peaks when the average star rating is between 4.0 and 4.7.  If you do get a one-star review, it’s not the end of the world. Potential customers will probably look at your response for information more than the review itself.

The downside of reviews

As we’ve touched on above, reviews are open to abuse.

Over the years, there have been examples of companies posting fake reviews to boost their star ratings. There have also been instances of companies paying for endorsements without making this clear to consumers or blocking/deleting negative reviews to stop them from being seen.

There have also been examples of businesses writing or commissioning fake negative reviews to undermine their rivals, or customers threatening to leave negative reviews unless they were given a discount on their purchase.

These problems are still widespread.

If you are going to feature reviews about your business, products, or services, you need to do so ethically. Consumers can spot fake reviews and, as we’ve seen, are wary of too many five stars.

Dealing with negative reviews

If you do get a negative review, don’t panic. Most businesses must deal with one eventually.

Even a negative review can have a positive impact for your business if you are able to show that you are listening to your customers, responding to their comments, and addressing any issues, wherever possible.

Before you reply, it’s important to take a moment and plan your response.

• Research the facts – Does the person have a justified complaint? Have they approached you before? If so, how did you manage it? Be honest if mistakes were made at your end.
• Respond as quickly as you can (once you’ve fact-checked the situation)
• Be calm and polite. Thank them for bringing the matter to your attention, if possible.
• If the claims made in the bad review are incorrect, then you can highlight this.
• Don’t get personal and don’t take it personally.
• Offer to talk it over, especially if this is the first you’re hearing about a complaint.
• Show that you’re authentic and genuine by signing off the response with your name or initials.

Bad reviews often present an opportunity to learn or to turn a complaint around by resolving it. Some complaints may not be justified – for example, a complaint about heavy traffic or parking – but you could address this by adding parking information or ‘How to find us’ details to your website. Everything presents an opportunity.

Should you ask for reviews?

To keep a steady trickle of new reviews coming in, most businesses need to be proactive and ask for them. This is common practice.

But is it a good idea? This is a question asked by Harvard Business Review in 2023.

They found that people tend to leave reviews without prompting if they’ve had a very positive experience or a very negative experience with a business. This tends to lead to many five-star reviews with some one-star reviews in the mix from the negative experiences.

When businesses ask all customers for reviews, these extremes tend to disappear. Most customers have a neutral experience when buying – they get what they want with no drama and then move on. When they’re prompted to leave a review (which they’re usually happy to do), their average experience can lead to average three- or four-star reviews.

As we’ve seen, this can be a good thing.

Just make sure that you aren’t doing anything that could be seen as trying to manipulate or coerce your customers into leaving reviews.

Where are the best places to feature reviews?

The latest BrightLocal Survey found that these are the top ten places that people currently look for reviews (the numbers in brackets represent the percentage of consumers who check these platforms):

1. Google reviews – featured on a Google Business Profile, on Google Maps, or on the Knowledge Panel in Google searches (81%)
2. Facebook (45%)
3. Yelp (44%)
4. Tripadvisor – for hotels, attractions, restaurants, and other businesses related to travelling (21%)
5. Better Business Bureau – for US and Canadian businesses only (20%)
6. Apple Maps (16%)
7. Trustpilot (10%)
8. Healthgrades (9%)
9. Yellow Pages (6%)
10. Angi (7%)

Increasingly, people are looking for other sources too for information and reviews about a specific business, product, or service. BrightLocal says these are:

1. Local news (43%)
2. Instagram (34%)
3. YouTube (32%)
4. TikTok (23%)
5. Reddit (21%)
6. Local bloggers (19%)
7. X/Twitter (18%)
8. Threads (10%)
9. Chat GPT or other generative AI tools (9%)

As we’ve above, it will serve your business best to have information about your business, including reviews, on a variety of platforms.

Using testimonials on your company website

It’s still a good idea to feature client testimonials on your website and in your marketing, even though people understand you’ll probably cherry-pick the best reviews for this purpose.

You can feature a dedicated testimonial page on your website and/or use snippets of testimonials throughout your site as well so that people can see social proof from other customers regardless of which page they land on.

As people are familiar with the star rating and review format, you might want to consider incorporating that into your website design. Better yet, try to feature the names and faces of your customers as this helps to show they come from real people!

One approach that works well is to screenshot positive comments made via your social media pages, so that potential customers can see that people are praising your products and services away from your site.

You could create a questionnaire for your previous and existing clients using a free tool like  Survey Monkey or Typeform and send that out to them to gather reviews.

The biggest benefit of featuring testimonials on your own website is that you have complete control over what appears and what doesn’t.

How to collect reviews and testimonials

All this information brings us to the big question: how do you get customer reviews?

In this next section, we’ll look at some approaches you can try. It might take a bit of time, testing, and variety to see which works best with your audience.

Let people know that you will ask for a review

Rather than putting your customers on the spot, it’s helpful to let them know in advance that you will be in touch to ask for a review.

If you run a product-based business, you might have something on your sales receipts/invoice that says you value reviews. If people are buying at a till, you could give them a card that tells them where and how to leave a review.

With a service-based business, you could always have a paragraph in your initial contract or on-boarding email that says something like, “When the project is complete, I’ll send over a link for you to share your thoughts on Google. I truly appreciate customer feedback as it helps me to constantly evaluate and improve my services”.

Get the timing right

It’s usually best to ask for a review for a product or service when the purchase is recent and it’s still at the front of the customer’s mind. If there are any customer service issues, you’ll need to resolve them first. People are especially happy to leave reviews after a great experience.

A good tactic is to send an email asking for a review, but also saying “If there is anything we can help with or you would like to discuss before leaving a review, please contact us at….”

If you have delivered a service or product where the full benefits take a few months to become clear, you could follow up after several weeks or months to ask some questions about how your product or service has made a difference.

Use a message that highlights, “Now you’ve had a few weeks to use <product X>, we’d love it if you could leave a review on Google/Facebook/Yelp (whichever platform you choose) to share your experience. Here’s the link you’ll need”.

Personalise your request

Your customers want to feel that their individual experience matters. Where possible, address them by name when you contact them and tailor your review request to their purchase.

If the person came in store, for example, you could mention their visit.

When you’re dealing with a repeat customer, acknowledge this by saying, “Thanks for choosing to buy from us again” when you ask for a review.

Make it as easy as possible

When you ask for a review, send a link that takes the customer to the right place, if possible.

For example, in your Google Business Profile, you’ll notice there’s an Ask for reviews option. When you click on this, you’ll see a pop-up screen with a preset link. If you copy this link, you can share it with anyone to ask for a review.

(You can check out my four-step process to getting Google reviews here).

The same pop-up also includes the options to ask for reviews by email, WhatsApp, or via Facebook.

When people receive this link, they’ll be able to write and post a review in a matter of seconds.

You can follow a similar process on Facebook ( click here for a step-by-step guide).

Some customers like a steer on what to write, so you might want to send them a handful of questions that will function as a prompt. If possible, try to make the questions relevant to what the customer bought rather than too generic.

There are some helpful tips about how to word review requests over on the SEMRush blog.

Follow-up – either to chase or to say thank you

If you don’t hear back from someone following a review request, it’s worth sending a quick follow-up to say that you know life is busy and that your message may have slipped through the cracks, but that you’d love their feedback (with the appropriate link to leave a review).

Equally, if someone does take the time to leave a review, I’d always follow-up by saying thank you, usually on the platform where the review is published rather than via email.

Final words of advice about asking for and using reviews

These are the key points I’ve learned about using reviews over the years I’ve been running SEO+:

• Ask for reviews – people are busy and won’t necessarily leave them without a prompt.
• Only ever use genuine testimonials.
• Respond to every review, good or bad, even if it’s just to say thank you.
• Keep an eye on where people are posting reviews and what they are saying about your business.

As you can see, reviews have the power to drive traffic to your website, increase your website’s ranking, boost conversions from clicks to sales, and help build a tribe of passionate fans and followers.

What action are you going to take today to generate some new reviews? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the Comments section below.

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