Do you want the good news or the bad news, first? The good news is that this is a relatively short episode. The bad news is, when it comes to how you rank in local search, it really does matter what people are saying about your dealership. So, let’s talk ‘Reviews’.
By now, regular viewers are pretty familiar with this: your SERP listing. It’s where you’re given the means of managing various features including – your guessed it – the option to ‘Read Reviews’. Annnnnd you should do this. All the time. And – yes – you should reply to them, making it a point to add a “Like” to each one. It’s good for ranking, helping your dealership to show up in the Map Pack, and it’s good for customer relations and overall optics.
Maybe you’re attempting to handle this in-house. Maybe you’re partnering with a company that offers Reputation Services. Just steer clear of bot-based services, or anything that could potentially generate activity that Google could interpret as SPAM. That will work against you. But whether you’re managing reviews directly from the dashboard, or through a 3rd party tool, the most important thing is that you’re paying attention.
In the event that you encounter a SPAM review, or a review that you consider to be genuinely slanderous in nature, you won’t be able to delete it but you can click those 3 little dots and select ‘Report Review’.
In the event that you really like a review, you can also choose to ‘Share Review’ and spread the word about yet another satisfied customer.
And since Google wants you to have reviews, you’ll also see the ‘Ask for Reviews’ button. Click that, and it will give you a shareable link and a variety of options as to how-and-where you can share it so that you’re making it easier for customers to leave that review.
And of course, if you’re on the Listings Dashboard, you’ll see the Reviews tab to the right which gives you another place from which you can view/ manage them all. Keep aiming for those 5-stars in all that you do, and encourage your customers to help you earn them.
Next week, we’ll move on to another popular & valuable feature: Questions & Answers.