Imagine a hypothetical situation wherein you are surfing the internet, looking for a particular product. You know which product you want, but you are confused between the brands. You look for the highest quality brand offering this particular product, sometimes the most affordable ones, and sometimes the brand that offers the most features for this product. However, in an ocean of such brands, how do you go for ‘your match’? Your instinct would be to scroll past the review page for the most recent feedback regarding the brands. Or would you trust a brand with reviews dating back two to three years? Hell no! This is exactly why online reviews velocity matters.
In this article, we will discuss review velocity for SEO purposes, its importance for businesses to succeed and how to manage it effectively to grow your brand.
So, What Exactly Is Review Velocity?
As a business person, a marketing specialist or even a brand manufacturer, we know how crucial reviews are in the business spectrum. It is as important as the marketing budget or sales annual plan since it plays a key decided in many customers to make their decisions. But it’s not always how many reviews you have received; it’s also the pace at which those reviews reach the brand. No, we aren’t talking about the medium. We are talking about the frequency of getting online reviews for your brand. Compare two brands with different overall reviews on all of their platforms. Brand A has 200+ reviews on its website, and Brand B has just 50 reviews or so on their respective website. However, all of the reviews that Brand B received are recent. And for Brand A, all of them are from a year back. For a customer, this ensures that Brand B has been working effectively and up-to-date with their brand, whereas Brand A, although it poses a larger volume of reviews, lacks consistency. In this scenario, it’s an easy pick for the customer. That’s how much effect and influence review velocity has on brand decisions.
If businesses haven’t considered the importance of review velocity until now, it’s high time they start thinking about it. Many review management platforms also make sure to track how fast reviews come in, the different review trends for businesses, and also help guide businesses on when to ask customers for feedback.
Reasons Why Review Velocity Matters
Review Velocity is not simply pushing brands to get more and more reviews. It’s about steadiness in business and consistency with feedback and interactions with customers. Beyond the surface-level reasons, there are plenty of benefits for this. Like:
- Making Businesses Feel More Credible
Credibility often comes from transparency and honesty in dealings. Whether your customers leave positive feedback or negative feedback, the important thing is that it shows your brand is very much active and interacting well with customers. Acknowledging a negative comment and responding to clear your side of the story also helps bring a really good image for your brand. It ensures a feeling that the brand is always responsive and caring towards its audience. Recent positive feedback nails the image. People naturally assume that your brand dealings are regular and honest.
- Search Engine Visibility
Bringing out transparency in real life is important, as mentioned above. But equally important is to highlight your online activity amongst search engines so your business stays active in the social media spectrum. Google often monitor business and brand activity on its pages. And if customer reviews keep coming in, it signals Google that the brand is relevant and has credentials. This, in turn, improves your Google ranking. Your brand tends to come up on search lists easily.
- Consistency That Beats Volume
Imagine you sell a product and make a viral marketing cut and earn a larger volume of reviews. However, then all of a sudden, you disappear into the different phases of brand building and completely forget about review gathering and management. The customer will automatically forget the brand. It’s all about putting consistent effort throughout the process of brand making, building, moulding and selling. Moreover, being steady makes your brand look all the more authentic. Of course, no brand is flawless – but how you treat your customers earns their trust and loyalty. Review velocity makes way for long-term trust and legacies.
- Influences Buying Decisions
Recent reviews get your customers in an instant. More than stars and ratings, customers often go for fresh reviews. Imagine scrolling past a product and seeing a review that’s just 2 days ago, saying, “what a useful product – durable and great packaging,” – sells faster than any expensive advertisement.
Practical Tips to Improve Review Velocity
So, now that you know the importance of review velocity, it all comes down to the question, “How do you enhance the review velocity for a brand?”. Sure, let’s help you!
- There’s a Right Time for Everything
Asking for a review right after a mess or a solid complaint would just be senseless. A successful or satisfying service guarantees you a great review. Never miss out on such an opportunity, and don’t be embarrassed to ask for reviews.
- Keep It Simple
The review process shouldn’t be complicated. That will also make you lose customers and their feedback. Keep it direct and simple with easy links, texts, QR scanner or Google profile URLs.
- Be Responsive, Literally!
Never leave a review unnoticed – this will bring about a really bad image in the minds of a potential customer. Even if it’s a simple ‘thank you’ or replying to constructive criticism, do it so as to encourage them to leave more reviews.
- Capitalise on Smart Automation
Review management can be a draining process. If done manually, it can be a menace and extra work. Hence, it’s wise to rely on review management platforms that offer perks to both business and brand visibility. Software like ReviuAI will help automate review collection and also help you wth in-depth advantages.
Consider Partnering With a Review Management Tool
ReviuAI is not just any other review management tool. It’s one of the leading tools in this space that is designed to make review collection and management easy and accessible for all kinds of businesses. ReviuAI helps keep track of reviews, set up and analyse the process of review management and also caters to providing clear insights through the ratings and reviews platform. Moreover, the software also encourages customers to leave reviews. There are AI-generated reviews to help the brand stand out, put in target keywords to enhance the SEO process and bring your product up on Google’s ranking list, filter out negative reviews and also let you upload images to make your Google My Business (GMB) profile more appealing to customers. Overall, ReviuAI gives your brand enough push throughout its growth tenure and afterwards to gather a steady flow of online reviews.
So, next time you are wondering why your product ain’t getting sold despite having such a mountain of reviews, consider checking the review velocity too, make necessary changes, and even rope in review management tools like ReviuAI to fix the issue.
FAQ
- Is review velocity equal to review volume?
No. Review velocity is all about the pace and frequency of the reviews, where the latter is all about the quality of reviews received over time.
- Why is review velocity crucial for brands?
Since customers often look for consistency in brand reviews. A steady flow of reviews keeps the brand active amongst its audience.
- Does review velocity affect SEO?
Yes, because search engines monitor reviews, and without consistent reviews, they might mark your brand as inactive and not so relevant in the marketing space.
