woman writing a google review

We all know Google reviews are good for business. People trust companies who have more, and better, reviews. Even if you're in the medical field and you want reviews on healthgrades, vitals or realself, the rules to guide your clients who write reviews still apply.

How to guide your clients who write Google reviews

The way to have your Google reviews help your SEO is by having your clients use the keywords you want to be found for. We want to be found when people Google "Columbus web design company," so having that keyword phrase in the review is tremendously helpful. For example, a review for us can be written two ways:

  1. "We love the work they did for us. They're awesome and always keep us on track. They're also incredibly good-looking and hilarious. I would recommend everyone in the world use them." or
  2. "When looking for a Columbus web design company, we definitely recommend Sevell+Sevell. They're awesome, incredibly good-looking and hilarious. I would recommend everyone in the world use them."

Because the second review uses our keyword, it helps us with our SEO.

How to make it easy for your clients to leave a good Google review

By giving them easy-to-use instructions. We recommend putting a page on your website that gives them a link to Google (or wherever you want them to write a review) and the requested keywords to use in their review. 

Then, you can send them an email with a link to that page on your website that reminds them to write the review, and use keyword(s) you want them to include. For surgeons, having the client write the procedure that was done is also helpful. See an example of a page we placed on one of our surgeon client's website here.

Don't have clients write reviews in your office on an iPad...

...or an office laptop. Why? Because all those reviews will be coming from the same IP address. And when Google sees that, they'll think YOU'RE writing your own reviews. That's the case even if folks are signing into their own Google accounts to write those reviews.

We found this out indirectly, because we had a plastic surgeon client who did just that: have clients write reviews before they left their office on a iPad. They did that in an effort to make sure more folks wrote reviews, because it's easy for clients to forget to write reviews once they leave your office. 

Bottomline is, reviews are good for business and SEO.