While word of mouth can still help a business flourish, it’s no longer the best, let alone the only, way to grow your business. With the increasing ubiquity of search engines like Google, services like Google Business Profile (former Google My Business) are necessary for businesses to succeed. One way these tools help businesses is by aggregating reviews from customers.
To start using the power of reviews for your business, you’ll need to know how to link to the review page and what the best ways to use that link are.
What Is a Google Review Link?
A Google review link is a direct link a customer of your business can use to leave a review on your Google Business Profile (GBP) page. Since the link takes customers to your GBP page instantly, customers only need to take a minute to leave a review for your business.
While these reviews might not seem important, they can help a business draw more traffic, especially with positive reviews. Many customers rely on online reviews to form their opinions, and Google promotes businesses with higher average ratings and review counts.
How to Get a Google Review Link
The good news about Google review links is that they only take a moment or two to generate them. There are two ways to make one of these links for your business: from your GBP page or Google directly.
Generating a Link From Google Business Profile
To make a review link from your Google Business Profile account, you’ll need to sign into said account first. If you run multiple businesses, ensure that you open the listing you need to generate the link for.
On the home page for your business, there is a button in the top-right corner of the listing labeled Get More Reviews. When you click this button, a pop-up window appears with a few hyperlinks to popular social media sites and a Google page URL. Click on or copy this URL to get your review link and share it as you see fit.
Getting a Link Directly From Google
If you don’t want to sign into your GBP account, you can also pull the link directly from Google. This process starts with you searching for your business using Google.
On the search results page, look for your business. If you have your business listed correctly, there should be a thumbnail of your business and its relevant info on the right-hand side of the screen.
Look for the Google reviews hyperlink and click on that to open up the review page for your business. Once the page loads, you can copy that URL from your web browser and share it around to receive reviews from your customers.
Sharing Your Google Review Link for More Reviews
So, you have your Google review link and know why the reviews you can get with it are important. Let’s equip you with the best strategies you can employ to get more reviews for your business.
Shorten and Customize Your Review Link Shortcut
We already talked about how to create your review link. Following those steps means you’ll be set up for any of the strategies we cover later, but you may notice that the default review page URL looks like a random string of characters. This makes the URL look strange to those not familiar with GBP reviews.
To encourage those users to click the link and leave a review, you should use a URL shortener to change the link to something more user-friendly. Many of these applications also let you change the link to something that better matches your branding.
Shortening your review link will also make it easier to share the URL on social media where character limits can be a hurdle.
Add a Google Reviews Page to Your Website
Rather than curating reviews and creating static pages of positive customer feedback, you can integrate your Google reviews onto your website, Often, you can add this page using a plugin for whatever website platform you chose.
Adding these pages to your website not only shows customers that you care about the reviews you receive, but it also gives the customer a way to see how your business treats customers from the website. This will not only help get more reviews but also increase traffic to your website.
Ask Happy Clients for Google Reviews
If you have a good interaction with a grateful customer, that’s a great opportunity to obtain a positive review of your business. Asking a customer to leave a review has a greater chance of generating a review than a customer motivating themselves to do it normally.
Whether you do this through an automated process, in person, or through an email or message exchange, asking the customer to leave a review takes a minute. You can also emphasize how easy the process is when you make the pitch to further lower the barrier of entry for the customer.
Respond to Existing Reviews
Finally, a well-known strategy to get more reviews is to reply to the ones you already have. Customers love to see that a business hears their feedback, even if all the customer had to say was something positive. It helps create a sense of community and mutual respect.
Even if you receive negative reviews, using those reviews as a chance to correct a problem or resolve an issue can help convert a negative review to a positive one.
Final Thoughts
Google reviews can help your business receive more traffic, appear more reputable and trustworthy to customers, and overall provide more business opportunities for you. The Google review links come from your Google Business Profile page, meaning you need to build these pages up first before you can receive reviews.
Regardless of the strategies you use to get reviews for your business, taking the time to set up the process and make it simple goes a long way. Take the time to set up your review links so that, when a customer wants to leave you a glowing review, it only takes a few clicks and a minute!
