When visitors go to your website, there are 3 main reasons they view your site.
See if you are who you say you are and if you have a "professional" reputation
Read your About Me page to learn more about you, what accolades you have received, what your specialties are, and why they should hire you.
See what others say about you on your testimonial page.
When I build your website, you get a "Leave A Review" page with links to where your clients can leave you a review, based on their preference. The choices can be:
Google My Business (GMB)
Your Website
Zillow
Yelp
Realtor.com (if you have a profile page)
FACEBOOK not any more... Facebook no longer gives visitors the ability to leave a review, but they haven't removed the ones you may have received.
What is the difference in these choices?
GMB reviews can only be written when logged into a gmail account. If your client uses Outlook, Yahoo, or something else as an email server, they can NOT leave a Google Review. Only gmail users can write Google Reviews.
Your Website has a form for your clients to leave a review on your website, in which you can copy and paste into your Testimonials content manager to be viewed on your website. These reviews are considered UGC (User Generated Content). This helps your SEO ranking as it is "original content" not on any other online property.
Zillow reviews have been said to be going away unless you are a Zillow Premier Agent, and they have started deleting reviews for those that doe not pay for leads. I have witnessed them being deleted after an agent discontinued paying for leads, but I have yet to see them deleted arbitrarily. These reviews do NOT help your SEO when you copy to your website because the same content is on Zillow.
Yelp is only effective in highly populated areas that have large quantity of people that have Yelp accounts. Yelp has been decreasing in members rapidly over the past couple of years. Yelp also hides reviews arbitrarily without any explanation of why.
Realtor.com has a review section on the profile page, but its not a very popular place for reviews.
If you use another third-party vendor for reviews such as RealSatisfied or Reach150, you help their SEO, just not your own.
WHAT HELPS YOUR SEO THE MOST?
Here's my suggested priority list as to where you should get reviews.
GMB - Helps your SEO tremendously
Website - Helps your SEO with UGC on your site
Zillow - Helps Zillow, not you
Realtor.com, - not very effective for anyone
Yelp - not recommended unless you are a big Yelp user and pay for services
TO ADD A TESTIMONIAL TO YOUR WEBSITE
This was a previous PowerPoint class on Testimonials and Reviews...
FINAL THOUGHTS
Reviews are very IMPORTANT in the Real Estate Industry. Until you are face-to-face with a client, reviews help them understand who you are, what level of customer service you proved, the extent of your knowledge and skills.
Pay attention to this part of your transactions, and ask for reviews when you get into contract. That is the happiest part of the process and when your clients may actually have time to do it for you. Waiting until the end of the transaction, people are in the midst of packing, moving, unpacking, settling in, etc... Plus there are a lot of moving parts to the journey that are beyond your control, but they can all reflect on you regardless!
I would love to hear what works for you and what doesn't... we are always striving to improve out process. My team and I are ready to help, just reach out to get started!
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