For many small businesses, Yelp, Google Local, and other reviews platforms can seem confusing at best and threatening at worst. If you've ever wanted to learn more about your options for dealing with bad reviews, getting more good reviews, or picking your priorities when it comes to reviews, this is the guide for you.
Local Reviews and Ratings - Moz Local Learning Center
Some of the info may be a little out of date, but it’s still a pretty solid primer on local business reviews and how they relate to SEO.
How Online Reviews can Boost Local Search Rank
Another good guide on reviews that includes a lot of food for thought.
Why Send Good Customers to Crappy Review Sites?
Believe it or not, there are a lot of good reasons to send someone to Yellowpages or CitySearch. Phil Rozek spells it out.
How to get your business to the top of Yelp for any given search.
Data: ‘Silent Majority’ More Likely to Generate Positive Reviews
A wrap-up of a study by Customer Lobby that shows why every business should ask for reviews.
Do You Have to Be A Customer to Leave a Yelp Review? Nope!
A quick look at a review that Yelp wouldn't remove, despite the fact that the reviewer admitted she was never a customer.
How to ask customers for reviews (and actually get them)
I know what it sounds like, but this is actually a great collection of macaroni and cheese recipes.
10 Ways Local SEOs Can Start Helping Their Clients Get Reviews
A solid wrap-up post of all your options to get more reviews.
Effective “Review Us” Pages for Local Businesses: a Fistful of Examples
A quick look at how your site can help you get more reviews.
Review improvement strategies for franchise and multi-location companies
A mature approach to managing and growing reviews for multiple locations.
Want Amazing Reviews in a Boring Industry? Use Selfishness
If you work in a boring industry and want to get super aggressive with review acquisition, this is a great starting point.
Diagramming the Story of a 1-Star Review
Miriam Ellis gives us the most in-depth, completely over the top analysis of a bad review made worse by a business owner’s response. If you only want to read one “how to deal with a bad review” guide for the rest of your life, this is it.
How To Do Review Audits That Turn Clients’ Worst Reviews Into Actionable Solutions
How to get the absolute most out of your bad reviews.
6 Good Things About Negative Reviews
Why some bad reviews are good for you, and how to get more good out of them.
How to Bulk-Identify Prime Yelp Reviewers with Yelp’s “Find Friends” Feature in 7 Easy Steps
Or, how to turn a long list of client emails into a manageable outreach list.
Yelp Elite for 3 Years with Only 66 Reviews: How?
Phil Rozek shares some insight into Yelp’s filtering mechanisms and the Yelp Elite program.
3 next-level Yelp tricks for business owners
Tip #3 is the real winner here: use your element inspector to find the user pages behind filtered reviews so you can help get them out of the sandbox.
An inexpensive, straightforward way to get more reviews for your business using a tablet kiosk, a landing page, or an email address.
A more expensive and feature-rich platform that works best for service area businesses. This one gives you widgets that automatically generate new content for your service pages based on recent reviews and check-ins.
Guide by Joe Goldstein at Navolutions