Check out this video and watch it in its entirety, even if you think you know everything there is to know about Google Places.
What we show you here is a very sneaky but clever tweak you can make to your website and Google Places For Business listing to get far more reviews than any of your competition.
The end result is a more dominant listing on the front page of Google and a truckload of free traffic. We’ve tested it on multiple businesses now and it works great, check it out.
Social proof really matters. You know, you want to make sure you have good reviews for your products. But you might be thinking, “Hang on a second, I’m not in an e-commerce store, how is this relevant to me?” Well, it is, because here, this is an example of Google places, which is the maps listing on Google, and effectively, it’s a bit hard to see this, but eyes would ultimately rest down here. This one has the most stars and the most reviews.
The way Google places for business works, is your rankings generally are about, you know, the number of positive reviews you’ve got. You’ve got to have a good listing that’s built out, that says, “This is who we are, and this is where we’re located, and photos of our business,” or videos and opening, and all that sort of stuff. But then, after that, it really comes down to reviews. In a moment, I’m going to show you a way to get a truckload of free traffic from Google with this.
So, is there anyone here who hasn’t done this, you haven’t typed into Google places for business, and then claimed your listing, if you’ve got a physical profile? Is there anyone who hasn’t done that yet? There’s a few. Cool. That’s really a good, easy, obvious one, so if you have a physical premise, or if you don’t want people to know your exact address, you can still do this, and then there’s a setting there that says, “Don’t show my exact address. Show the 10Ks I live within, or whatever.
So, you type into Google, Google places for business, and then it will say, you know, “What’s the address of your business?” You go in there, and then it says, “Is this you?” You say, “Yes,” and then you say, “Claim my listing,” and then you go in there and you put in all your details, and then it will either want to send you a text, or it will send you out a postcard, or that sort of stuff, to say who you are. Then after a while, you build out your profile, and then you start getting reviews, and getting reviews is a great way of getting free traffic from Google, so you’re after that sort of thing, and then you’re ultimately getting people writing positive stuff about you.
So, I’ll show you something now. I’ve taught this twice this week. I only learned it in the last month, but I wanted to emphasize the importance of it. Because I taught this, and then some people went, “Oh yeah, that’s good,” and then other people got it, and I want you to get it, that with what I’m about to show you, if you’ve got a physical premise, or that type of business, you can get a truckload of free traffic from Google, just by implementing this one thing.
So, set it up once, and then change one little thing in your business workflow, and you’ll get a lot of traffic from Google. So what it is, is you do a reviews page. So, here’s one from a customer of ours, ETTiS, we’re just building this out at the moment, so basically what that says, is that “The team at ETTiS constantly strives to exceed our customer’s expectations and provide the very best service. Could you please spend one minute of your time to provide us some feedback, either positive or negative?”
So you would send an email, say for example a customer, they spent a thousand dollars with you, you did a body of work with them, and then you’re just wrapping up that project, all I’m saying is change one thing in the way you’ve got an automated email that just goes out to them as they finish off the project, and says, “We’re really trying to do better and better all the time. Could you spend one minute and give us some quick feedback?” Okay, so then these buttons might be hard to read. This one says, “I was really happy with the ETTiS team and service.” ETTiS is obviously your company, name, team, and service, or the other one says, “It needs improvement.” I’ll go back there.
So, let’s look at if it needs improvement first. Let’s say, for example, they weren’t happy about something, so we then make it go off to a form on your site. So, you ask for their name, email, you know, what can we do better, how was your experience, that sort of thing.
So, this is a good process, right? You get the feedback of any areas that you need to improve, but any negative PR doesn’t go out on the public web. It’s just held within your company, right? But, now, what happens if they click, “I was really happy with the ETTiS team and service,” or your company’s team and service? It then goes directly over to your Google places listing, and straight to the bit where they can put how many stars and what their feedback was.
Your competition, say for example, your plumber Melbourne, your competition’s going to have three reviews, four reviews, that sort of thing. If you build this into it, over time, you’re going to have twenty-six, forty-eight, whatever, reviews, and no negatives. Remember that bell curve? Google is going to think these guys or girls are amazing. They’re great. We definitely should be pushing them, because everyone’s having a positive experience with it, and they just keep continually building reviews.