The Impact Of Online Reviews

Online reviews do more than just provide star-ratings for businesses.  Learn how online reviews can impact SEO and so much more.

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Host:                                     00:00                     Podcasting from Southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Host:                                     00:31                     Hi everyone. Welcome to your online presence. Thank you for joining us. This podcast is designed to make doing business online, easy for web designers, developers, bloggers, and online businesses of every shape and size. Whether you’re buying your first web hosting plan or you’ve been running a website for ages, this podcast show, we’ll be able to answer your most burning questions. I’m a guest podcast for this week. My name is Lisa Meyer and I’m the CEO of directive group. We’re a digital marketing agency and we help businesses dominate their online markets. I want to first thank Lunarpages for inviting me to speak with you today. They’ve been a trusted partner of ours for many, many years and I’m very honored to be their guest. In today’s podcast episode, we want to discuss the impact that online reviews have on your business. It may seem odd and it did to me at first, but people trust the opinion of total strangers be for deciding where to eat, where to go on vacation, what to watch on TV, and even when they’re making significant purchases.

Host:                                     01:39                     In fact, 8 out of 10 consumers today conduct online research about products before making a purchase. This new era was really shepherded in by Amazon over the last decade, and to this day, they instruct new merchants to optimize their reviews process before ramping up the programs. That’s a pretty significant statement. They want their new merchants to get their reviews processed before they sell products. That is just an amazing fact when you consider it. The fact of the matter is that now it is not personal recommendations from friends or family, but instead to comment of total strangers that are a major determining factor of whether people will buy from you or not, and that shows how important online reviews have become and how massive of an impact they will have to your business success. It’s not enough for business just to build a website. It’s not enough for business just to do paid advertising.

Host:                                     02:45                     You also have to be aware of the online conversation that’s surrounding your business and you have to become very knowledgeable about all of the instances in which your business appears, where people could be making comments about your business, including industry specific review sites on the various other platforms besi...