reviews, realtor reviews, oregon real estate

Realtor Reviews
The Importance of Getting Reviews

Colin Marcum
January 21, 2019

How often do you reference reviews before you purchase a product or commission work for a service? Do you remember standing in a store aisle, looking at a multitude of options, and tried to assess whether the product was worth its price? Have you looked through Google for internet service providers in order to see which offered the most for the least cost to you? Finally, have you ever been turned off to a product or service due to either poor reviews or a lack of reviews altogether?

Sundance Realty LLC

SUNDANCE REALTY

Realtor Reviews

The Importance of Getting Reviews

Colin Marcum

January 21, 2019

Oregon Realtors provide a valuable service because they provide subject matter expertise in what for many is the most important transaction in their life; the transfer of real property. They are looking to get the most for the sale of their property or paying the least for the purchase of a new one. There is no impulse selection of a Realtor, and most will take significant time in researching. Some will check out well-established firms with strong brand recognition, and some will be referred to a Realtor from friends or family. For the rest, they will go online and check out the reviews made from clients.

The purpose of this article will be to discuss the three primary reasons to cultivate your reviews, where to establish review accounts, and review site policies that you need to be aware to avoid being penalized.

Reasons to Cultivate Your Reviews

Reviews Increase Your Local Ranking

You may think that the primary reason you would want reviews, at least good reviews, would be as a tool to compel new clients to choose your services over others. That is valid thinking, and indeed reviews as an influencing tool are great. Let me ask you this: How will potential clients get to see your reviews if your business doesn’t show up on search engines? As a result of this, the first one you need to influence is not your clients… you need to influence the search engines and reviews allow you do to this. By acquiring reviews, Google and Bing increase the rank authority of your website site and/our business page, and as a result, bring your business to the coveted first page of searches. In a way, reviews are much like inbound links (aka backlinks) in how they rank your business.

All things being equal, a business with more reviews will rank ahead of those with fewer reviews.
All things being equal, a business with a greater review score will rank ahead of those with a lesser score.

As a result of this, you must make an effort to seek out reviews from clients with whom you feel have received a positive experience while contracting you. Most satisfied clients will carry on with their happy lives without thinking to leave a review. Why would they? They closed, bought or sold their home, you got your commission, end of the relationship. But for you this is the time to get that review; when they are most satisfied and it is most fresh in their minds.

Clients Look for Reviews

As previously mentioned, clients do look at reviews for Realtors before coming to a decision. You’ve successfully brought in numerous reviews on the quality of your service. Clients are praising your diligence, real estate expertise, and negotiating prowess. And more importantly, these reviews are making it to the eyes and minds of future clients through online searches.

To provide you with some numbers of how many people search online for real estate support in some capacity, I have provided a list of rounded average keyword searches per month.

Salem Focused

Home for Sale Salem Oregon: 5,400

Realtor Salem Oregon: 390

Salem Realtors: 110

Houses Salem Oregon: 590

Houses Salem: 1,600

Portland Focused

Home for Sale Portland Oregon: 190

Realtor Portland Oregon: 85

Portland Realtors: 720

Houses Portland Oregon: 110

Houses Portland: 400

Oregon Focused

Home for Sale Oregon: 110

Oregon Realtors: 590

Houses Oregon: 37

These monthly averages represent individual searches from Google to Bing and also represent potential clients who know nothing about you. You need to not only get your business in front of their eyes, but you need to come with a strong score.

Why You Shouldn’t Wait for Reviews

The final reason to take an active effort in building your reviews is simply to counteract any negative reviews you may receive. When it comes to restaurants or entertainment, satisfied people will review alongside the disgruntled one. This is one of the reasons why Yelp became so popular; anyone could be a critic. The problem comes when you enter the option to review services; like Realtors and brokerages.

We have all been to the doctor and dentist before, utilized plumbers and electricians, maybe even sought out the services of divorce lawyers and funeral homes. How many times have you personally, after having received satisfactory or exemplary service, went out of your way to review them accordingly on Yelp or Google Reviews? Most people don't, and in fact, the more appealing the service the less likely someone is to provide a review. Honestly, who is going to tell the world of a successful rooting of their clogged toilet after perilous Taco Tuesday!

Disgruntled and angry clients, on the other hand, may make it their mission to discredit you. When you are hurt or damaged, your desire to reciprocate is powerful, and in the world of business, their revenge is quenched through negative online reviews. If a plumber destroyed or damaged your bathroom or charged you what you feel was an excessive amount, you may be emboldened to warn the world of their incompetence and thievery.

Moral of this story is that the likelihood of happy people providing good reviews and scores is less likely to occur than those disgruntled people. They will unfairly weigh your rank toward the negative, and you must cultivate good reviews in order to counteract the bad. You aren't skewing the numbers, you are just trying to make them reflect the reality of the situation. To put in simpler terms, say in reality you satisfy 99 clients out of a 100, but that one dissatisfied client; in an act of righteous vengeance, writes a scathingly negative review. You still satisfied 99% of your clientele, but your rating is 0% if that dissatisfied client is the only review for your business. To reflect reality you would need the other 99 clients to write positive reviews. That is unlikely to happen, but if you can at least get nine of them to write positive reviews then you are at least at a respectable 90% positive rating. This is why you must cultivate positive reviews, as they’re your hedge from current and future negative ones.

Review Sites to Focus On

Google Review for Google Searches

There is no doubt that the best review site, in order to rank well on Google, is Google Reviews itself, and it becomes incorporated in Google's algorithm when bringing up a business based on keyword searches. If you don’t have a Google business profile already then go to Google My Business in order to set one up. In this way, when people search for your business, they will be able to gather all the information they need while also being able to leave a review.

sundance realty google review, google review, realtor review

It is these Google Reviews that are the ones that apply scores and ranking to a Google Maps search. So in the case of a client trying to search for businesses in their area from the maps section, it is these reviews that increase the prevalence of that business appearing ahead of other, as well as simply the score applied to it.

As well as having a place for clients to provide reviews, you are also able to respond to those reviews, showing that you are an engaged business owner. This is also important for those disgruntled clients who leave bad reviews as you will be able to respond and answer their complaints effectively. If you are convincing enough, they may even remove their review after they have had time to cool their heads. Basically, there is little reason to not have a Google business account (it's free) and there are even Google My Business apps for smartphones.

Yelp and Facebook for Bing Searches

Yelp is primarily used as a tool for assessing the quality and/or locate the services of a business that satisfy immediate needs; restaurants, bars, coffee shops, gas stations, shopping centers, lodging, and emergency services. Many wouldn't think to search for a Realtor on Yelp, but they are there; brokerages too. In order to set up your free account, simply search for Yelp for Business Owners, and they will be able to set you up. Though you may have to wait around 24 hours for them to verify your business.

Facebook is a social media platform and great for developing awareness of your business. You don't need to create a whole new account for your business as you are able to create pages from within your existing account. Just like any other business account on Google and Yelp, you will be able to set descriptions, hours, locations, services, and add photos and videos in order to generate flow to your page.

Outside of the occasional person searching for realty services on Yelp and Facebook, there is a secondary, and possibly more beneficial use. The primary benefit of Yelp and Facebook is that, in the same way that Google uses Google Reviews, Bing uses Yelp and Facebook. Based on research on search engine use, Google dominates at around 74% of desktop searches and 90% of mobile device searches; while Bing hovers around less than 10% on desktop and 1% on mobile. It may seem that putting your effort into Google Reviews would be better, and it may very well be, but since everyone is focusing on Google you can also work the Yelp and Facebook angle to garner those small percentages in Bing; less competition means more business from this small pool of internet denizens.

Also for ease of staying mobile, as with Google My Business having its own app, Yelp also has its own app for business owners to manage their profiles separate of the regular Yelp app your clients would be using on their smartphones. For your Facebook business page, you simply manage it straight from the same Facebook application you manage your own personal social profile. Google Review, Yelp, and Facebook have the means to allow you to manage your business reviews from your phone, as well as your desktop. Aww, 21st Century!

WARNING ABOUT ASKING FOR REVIEWS

There is a caveat to be mentioned. Soliciting reviews is against the terms and policies of many review sites; including Google Review, Yelp, and Facebook. They believe that reviews should be made spontaneously in order to reflect the quality of service or product that the business has provided. This is understandable, as they want to ensure that the reviews and scores reflect reality. However, as we mentioned, this is rarely the case except for venues that feed or entertain customers. For those that provide services, like Realtors, the propensity for a dissatisfied customer to post reviews will outweigh those of satisfied customers.

As a result, don't necessarily ask if they could write a review, but instead remind them that they can. Remind them that they can leave reviews on Google Review, on Yelp, and on Facebook, and that their reviews will help other potential clients in their time of need. Email them after the closing with "thanks for commissioning my service" and wishing them well in the future, while simultaneously dropping that reminder "if you liked or had complaints with my services please feel free to write a review at these locations" then provide links.

Remember, DON’T SOLICIT REVIEWS, but feel free to remind those that you feel are satisfied with your service that they could leave a review if they so desired.