This morning I was meeting with a client that has multiple locations for their business. While their organic visibility was horrible for their site, their placement in the Google Map pack section was fantastic.
It's a nuance that many businesses don't fully understand. Regional search engine results pages have 3 main sections:
- Paid Search – denoted by small text that states Ad, the ads are typically prominent at the top of the page. These spots are bid on in real-time and the advertiser pays per click or phone call.
- Map Pack – a significant-sized map is the critical part of the page and they display the businesses, their ratings, and additional information. Ranking in this section is determined by the business' ratings, reviews, and activity in publishing to their Google Business page.
- Organic Search – at the base of the page are organic results, links to the actual website of companies that are indexed, and ranking well for the terms that the search engine user entered.
Dominating the SERP Map Pack
As you see explained above… the reputation of your domain versus the reputation based on reviews and activity on your Google business page are completely different. In fact, you can totally have one without the other (although I don't recommend it).
The reason why this client was performing so well was that a few years ago they put processes into place to solicit online reviews from every client that they serviced. As they began accumulating reviews… they started to see the number of referrals increase from search engines.
If you're a local service provider or retail outlet, reviews are critical to your digital marketing efforts. Not only is the feedback great for improving your business, sustaining outstanding reviews will attract more and more customers. If you don't have a way to easily collect reviews, you should absolutely subscribe to a service like TrueReview.
TrueReview Review Collection Features
TrueReview makes it easy for businesses to request reviews for any website, receive direct customer feedback, and improve online reviews. TrueReview enables businesses to send SMS and Email review or survey requests, making it simple for customers to provide feedback. Best of all, you can intercept negative reviews to ensure the problem is resolved.
- SMS Requests – Send customized SMS review requests right from your dashboard. Your customers will receive a custom link to leave a review on websites you specify.
- Email Requests – Send customized Email review requests right from your dashboard. Your customers will receive a custom link to leave a review on websites you specify.
- Send Bulk Requests – Sending review requests one by one is time-consuming. Import your contacts via CSV and send hundreds of review requests at once.
- Drip Campaigns – Get more out of your review request by automating SMS and Email messages. TrueReview makes it super simple to create automated drip campaigns for your customers.
- Avoid Negative Reviews – Happy customers leave reviews and those who are unsatisfied can give direct feedback, or contact you to make things right. Don’t let upset customers leave bad reviews and damage your online reputation!
- Collect Feedback – Show your review websites if survey results are positive, or provide a quick way for your customers to give direct feedback if the survey results were negative.
- Review Sites – Review sites that are already configured include Google, Facebook, Yelp, Angie's List, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, Zillow, Compass, Realtor.com, Redfin, Amazon, and more. And if one doesn't exist, you can add a custom review link!
- View and Respond – With TrueReview, you can view and respond to all of your reviews centrally within their platform.
- Integrations – Connect your favorite CRM software to automatically send requests to your customers, or create new contacts in your contacts page whenever you complete a job, close a ticket, get paid for a service, and much more! Integrations include GoCanvas, Setmore Appointments, Google Contacts, Housecall Pro, Square, Jobber, Real Estate Webmasters, ServiceTitan, Mailchimp, Google Sheets, Hubspot, Acuity Scheduling, LionDesk and more.
Disclosure: I'm an affiliate for TrueReview and using my affiliate link throughout the article.
