Happy Tuesday First name / friend,

I'd like to pretend that I (Abbey) was super prepared before vacay and wrote this last week. But truth be told, I am writing this to you the night before. And let's just say, thank goodness for West Coast jet lag that is keeping me going! 

However, I am super happy I did wait because something happened just today that is the perfect story for our topic of the week. 

I was waiting in line at the airport for my $57 burger and heard a chime on my phone. It was a message from Google My Business. A local customer had found our business profile online and messaged us directly through maps. 

It was magically seamless. 

I messaged them back, letting them know that I would respond via email when I am back and that was that. A simple text message and yet it was an opportunity to grow our business and serve a new client. 

If we didn't have this profile created we might not have ever had the opportunity to connect. So, today we are going to talk about this profile and the biggest piece of SEO magic that exists within it… ✨ reviews ✨

You most likely already know that word of mouth and customer reviews are gold when it comes to running a small business. But did you know that reviews can actually help improve your SEO? Let's breakdown how…

1. By having your clients and customers write reviews they are actually content creating for you. They are writing keywords that will help Google understand your business better.
2. Google trusts reviews and considers them high quality backlinks to your website (Psst, did you forget what a backlink is? Peek at the 'Gram feature above.)
3. Frequent reviews and responses to those reviews tells Google that you are an active business therefore improving your rankings over other businesses that might not be as active.
4. Good reviews improve click through rates to your website, yet another indicator that Google looks for. Did you know that 48% of people visit a company's website after reading positive reviews?

Asking for a review might seem like just another to-do list checkpoint, but reviews are actually incredibly important in maintaining and improving your company's SEO. 

So starting today, find a way to incorporate this into your workflow moving forward or offer your past clients and customers an incentive to kick off your review process and plus up your profile. 

And, of course, our favorite place to gather reviews is through our Google My Business profile. Dive into that blog post above to find out more about how to set up your own profile!

But hold up… we aren't done yet! We've got a little bonus for you below… keep scrolling!

If you've made it this far then you are more than worthy of a little reward! So as a thanks for being a part of our Tuesday Tips & Sips Club, we want to give you our review email template, just because! 

REPLY to this email with “help my reviews!” and we will send you over our simple email template that hasn't failed us in securing a very high turnout of customer reviews.  

Until next time, 

Check out the course that teaches creative entrepreneurs, like you, exactly how to optimize your websites in order to be found on Google, grow a blog through free organic search and what metrics to watch for in Google Analytics. Click here to purchase.

Ready for a rebrand and a social refresh? We have just the thing! Our Social + Mini Brand Pairing Package might be exactly what you need. Click here to read more about it on the 'Gram and then email us for the deets!