The key to getting Google Reviews is doing good work as a company and asking people to write reviews regularly. When I say ask for them regularly, it is best to find a point or points in your regular business process where you can make the ask, ideally automated. This is essential for local businesses to gain organic traffic through ranking in what is called the map pack.

The map pack is the top 3 results that get featured in the map section of local search results. To get here, you have to have an optimized Google Business Profile and have more reviews than other competitors in your region. Below is an example of the map pack.

People want to work local which is great for small local businesses like yours. Using Google Business helps small local business reach new customers. Here, I will share my personal, local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experience and techniques to help you gain traction with your Google Business Profile.

Creating a System to Get Google Reviews

Creating a system or process is the best way to get Google Reviews because, without a system, you may be good at asking sometimes, but forget to ask others. With a system, you ask every customer at the right time.

Depending on your business model, this point in the process will look different. If you provide a one-time service or product, asking after you are done working with the client is the easiest and best time to ask. However, if you provide ongoing work, that time is less clear. In this case, it may be at regular 3-month intervals you check in to see how they are enjoying the partnership, and if the feedback is positive, ask for a review. If it is negative, then work to better serve the client and ask for a review in the future.

Either way, you have a standard process of when to ask that you just rinse and repeat, and over time, you will gather up more and more reviews. You would be surprised how many customers are happy to provide a review if you ask and make it easy for them to write one by providing a link.

How to Ask For Google Reviews

Now that you have an idea of where in your process you may want to ask for reviews. You now have to put yourself out there and ask—and ask often.

The best way is to have an automated system. I recommend building this yourself and not using one of those fancy and expressive reputation management platforms. Let me give you an example as part of my work with First Response, where we now have over 4,000 Google Reviews and rank highly in map packs across Georgia. For First Response, we provide safety courses; some of these courses have a test that they take at the end. When they finish taking the test, which is a form we built, it redirects them to a page with 5 stars to choose from. 1-4 goes to a feedback form, and 5 goes to Google Reviews. This allows us to gather reviews regularly and gain valuable feedback when someone thinks the class is not as good, to better our courses. This being said, we work hard to provide the highest quality courses and have very little negative feedback.

Additionally, you could have an email that you send to people a few hours after working with them that has a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon that asks for feedback with the same idea. If you don’t have emails, send a text that just has the review link.

If you don’t have any contact info, then having a QR code on cards to hand out that links to taking a review with you is the next best thing. You just have to be diligent about asking regularly.

Find something that works for you that you can do often, and Google will reward you.

Instructions to Give People When Writing Reviews

Many people often don’t know what to write in reviews, and so they often will just give you 5 stars without any words or say things like “it was great”. While this helps for your overall number count, which is important, it doesn’t help as much as a keyword-rich review.

If you can tell them to mention key phrases like the service or product they received from you, along with the name of the city, town, and/or state they worked with you in, that is the ideal Google Review. This is because Google will use those keywords as a ranking factor for the map pack, and they will often choose one review to feature that is keyword-rich as well.

Ranking Factors for Google Business Profile

Here are the most important Google Business Profile ranking factors in order of priority based on what I have seen in my personal SEO experience:

1. The Correct Primary Business Category – There are a ton of business categories, and choosing the right one is important. I usually use the Chrome Extension GMB everywhere to see what the top people are companies are using and replicate that. However, Google comes out with new ones all the time, so if you find one that is more relevant, then you may want to try that out or try a few ones. This is probably the most important because without this, you may not rank at all, no matter the number of reviews you get.
2. Total Number of Google Reviews – This is obvious, but the more the merrier. Ask people often and regularly, as we have discussed.
3. Trending Reviews – Meaning they have fewer reviews overall but have a lot recently. This shows Google and users that this is something new and exciting. However, if the trend drops off, you may lose rankings until you can compete with the people with more total reviews.
4. Proximity to Searcher – Depending on the business, this can be more or less relevant, but the area they are searching from definitely has a factor. If you are a service area business, even if you have a physical location, it is important to set your service area. You may want to set this smaller and then grow it over time as you gain more Google Business reviews.
5. Google Reviews With Keywords – As discussed earlier, having reviews with important keywords is really helpful. Keywords for services, products, and/or locations is key.
6. Add Your Services – For service-based businesses, adding in your services and descriptions for each service helps you rank for searches about those services. Having at least the services that you have service pages on your website for as services in your Google Business Profile, is a good start, but you can go into further niche services as well.
7. Completely Setting Up Your Profile – If you are reading this, I assume you have done this, but make sure to have pictures, logos, description, products, and anything else available to your profile. Based on your categories selected, you may have different options.
8. Where People Leave Reviews From – If you provide services across a region, when people leave reviews in different aspects of that region, that can help your results in that region.
9. Additional Non-Primary Business Categories – In addition to your primary location, add other subcategories that could be relevant or that you see competitors using. However, make sure your primary is the most important and specific.

Other Ways to Rank Locally for Service Based Business

Outside of the map results, web pages also come up for location-based searches, so web pages targeting your location are very important. When someone (and Google) lands on your site, they want to confirm you provide services in their area. Having your service area very clear in the headings and text on your page is a good place to start. Embedding a map from your Google Business profile is another good way to add to this.

People don’t want to reach out to you for services to hear you don’t work in their area, and Google knows this, so they reward people who are clear about where they provide their services.

At a bare minimum, your targeted area should be in the copy 2-3 times and in the meta title for that page. If, over time, you need to broaden that area, that is great, but start with a small area, gain authority and traffic for that area, and then broaden from there, or create a new, unique page for a new area. I saw something unique because it can be temping to just duplicate a page and change out the location a bunch of times, but that will result in duplicate content, which will get flagged, and you will lose traction for both pages.

Additionally, look at what other people are doing and take that strategy and improve upon it. Simply do a search for “[keyword] [service area]” and see what the top 1-5 people are doing and do better than that. One way to do better than other web pages is to create comprehensive content, which I explain in detail here.

Your Next Steps

Take all of this and put it into your regular processes, and keep providing great work and products for your local customers. Then, as a result, you should climb the local organic ladder. Remember, it all boils down to serving clients well and asking them to tell others about it.

Let me know your thoughts or share your local SEO ideas in the comments below.