Sneaky Local SEO Review Strategy (IT WORKS)

Facebook and Yelp reviews are more important than you think

January 07, 2025

First video for 2025, here we go!

I have a somewhat sketchy but effective review diversification strategy for you today 😅

Most people only focus on getting Google reviews because:

  • They get the most visibility.

  • They impact your Google rankings.

But there are so many benefits to asking for reviews on other platforms. Most importantly:

  • Third-party reviews show up in your Google Business Profile knowledge panel, which increases the credibility of your Google reviews.

  • Google digests the data from all your reviews across the web to determine whether they want to show your business to searchers or not.

So, to ensure you get reviews on all the platforms, you can do 3 things (the third one being the sketchy but effective one) 👇️

1. Rotate review requests.

Ask one customer for a review on Google, then ask the next for a Yelp review, the third for a review on an industry-specific site, etc.

This strategy works, but it’s not ideal because you will be cutting down the number of Google reviews you get.

2. Send a follow-up request to anyone who has left you a Google review, and ask them to review you on another platform.

To increase your chances of success, assure the reviewer that they can pretty much copy and paste their Google review, and it will only take a minute.

3. If you have a multi-location business, ask the employees working in location A to write a review for location B.

You can even pay your employees for taking the time to write those reviews.

‼️ Important: Be careful with this third strategy.

Employee reviews can go up on sites like Facebook or industry-specific sites, but NOT on Google or Yelp. Those platforms have very strict guidelines against employee-written reviews, and you will get in trouble if you try this strategy there.

Other than that, this is a super effective and almost risk-free strategy that is guaranteed to bring in some reviews on all those platforms you’ve abandoned!

Happy New Year,

Darren

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