Google Reviews

Online reviews aren’t just for consumer products and restaurants anymore. Today, reviews are impacting revenue for all kinds of businesses, and their influence should not be underestimated. As Google becomes more powerful, customers who “Google” us and see our Google reviews and rating may judge us on those numbers, just as Yelpers judge businesses on their Yelp reviews and ratings.

When you do an internet search for anything, there are programs behind the scene that “look” for you. The search is done by the “search engine” which is the actual program behind the scene that searches for you. SEO is Search Engine Optimization. SEO means that your web site is more “visible” to the search engine. Being more visible puts you at the top of the page when someone searches for a generic phrase such as “san diego jeweler.” I just did a search and we came up number 5. That is NOT good for our business.

When you do a search like that, the results that come up are called “organic results.” Organic search results are defined here:

“Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being advertisements. In contrast, non-organic search results may include pay per click advertising.”

So even with all of our advertising, we may appear down the list under much smaller stores.

We investigated this recently and one of the big ways for us to improve our ranking in search results that is FREE to us is to get customer reviews on Google. We don’t pay for these AND they help the search engines find us easier. Google’s own reviews system shows the location of the businesses in their list, their Google reviews rating (number of stars), and how many Google reviews have been posted for the business (in parenthesis).

Yelp reviews are number two on Google, so we still want those, but Yelp filters many of our 5-star Yelp reviews. Google may filter some but not as many. So we have an opportunity to raise our organic search results by getting Google reviews.

Effective immediately, it is mandatory for every salesperson, sales assistant and buyer to ask each customer to give their store location a Google review in-person, right on the spot. Each salesperson, sales assistant, and buyer will keep a weekly graph of how many Google reviews he or she got that week.

As of April 2018, Google offers a new feature in the search engine results that those who work in Search Engine Optimization are using to boost the rankings of Google My Business places. It’s complicated to explain the process, but the bottom line is that 5-star Google reviews with pictures will help us SEO our site tremendously. Therefore, we want to ask every customer to add a picture to their review. It can be a picture of our store, of you, of them with you, of what they just bought, etc. See the policy “How to Post Google Reviews” for details of how this is done.

PROMOTING THE COMPANY THAT YOU WORK FOR

A long time ago, when I worked for another company, the boss once told me that promoting the company you work for is a natural part of your job. Every staff member has that responsibility IF they want their company and co-workers to do better. Obviously, it helps the owners, but helping to promote the company that you work for makes everyone’s job a little easier, because it makes us more and better known by potential customers. Getting Yelp and Google reviews is a great way to help everyone and it costs us nothing. Every other form of advertising costs us money and that means less money to go around.

So, please look at this as something that IS vital and needed. You will win and so will everyone else at the company one way or another.

Look at it as a game, not as a chore or drudge. Make it your goal to win at this and approach it from an enthusiastic game attitude!

Any of you are free to call or email your friends and family, in or out of town, and have them do Google reviews on us. This will help a LOT and your friends and family will count towards your target. Past customers can be contacted for reviews as well. These should be the easiest. If they don’t have a Gmail email, you can even set it up for them and give them their password. Then they search for Leo Hamel Fine Jewelers on Google and you can point out where the link for reviews is on that page.

Current employees of LHFJ are not to leave reviews for themselves or each other.

NO BONUS FOR SALESPEOPLE AND ESTATE BUYERS

Salespeople and estate buyers do not get a bonus for reviews. They now earn additional commission for reviews instead.

EVERYONE OTHER THAN SALESPEOPLE AND BUYERS GETS $10 PER REVIEW

Admin personnel, sales assistants, repair admin, and everyone other than salespeople and buyers will receive $10 per posted 5-star Google review with written content that also ideally names the person who helped the customer.

KEEPING TRACK OF YOUR REVIEWS

Each buyer and salesperson must track and report to Marketing when a review is received. All others will report to Marketing when he or she gets a Google review in order to get the $10 bonus.

In order to report, each person should keep screen shots of the reviews that he or she got, because it shows that the review posted, in case it disappears later. You can still count reviews that were once posted even if they disappear later. Add the customer’s names, and add the buy # for buyers.

Here’s an example of keeping screen shots of the reviews with the customers’ names.

WHAT MAY CAUSE REVIEWS TO DISAPPEAR

Google removes reviews that “exhibit spammy behavior.” Although Google does not share all of the specifics about what signals they use in the review spam detection, we do have some clues. Here are things to avoid if possible:

• Duplicate review – the exact same review appears in another place on the Internet (Yelp, Facebook, etc.).
• Employee review – the person who wrote the review works for you, which is a violation of Google’s review policies.
• Using the same computer (same IP address) – the person who left a review used the same computer – or even a different computer at the same location that has the same external IP address (an address used to identify your internet connection).
• Same IP address as other users who left you reviews – More than one person using the same external IP address to review – even on different computers.
• Posting the same review at different times – For example, if a review posted on May 1st and it was filtered, then the person tried to leave another review on June 2nd.
• Receiving a large number of reviews in a short amount of time – once a customer posts a review, the next customer needs to wait at least 15 minutes before posting another review.
• Following a link in an email – if all the people posting reviews clicked a link from the signature in one of your emails, Google can tell that all arrived from the same URL.
• Reviews on multiple Google+ pages for different locations – Multiple reviews by the same person on different business locations may cause a problem.
• New to Google – The person who wrote the review just set up a Google+ profile or they were not active after they set it up.
• Onsite review station at your business – having an iPad or computer in a convenient place for customers to write reviews would be a violation of Google’s review policy, “don’t set up review stations or kiosks at your place of business just to ask for reviews written at your place of business.”
• Google profile deleted or review removed – If a person removed the review or, if they deleted their Google profile, the review will disappear.

Thank you. When you get some reviews on Google, please let me know!