It's human nature to look to other clients for assistance in making decisions to purchase things. In the case of Amazon, that group of people is other book lovers. In the case of bodywork offerings, that community of people is local massage and bodywork consumers.
People on the web don't believe a business will give objective info on their webpage. They don't believe everything they read. So they turn to buyers for the honest to goodness truth. They recognize that clients who have used the business services before will openly share their blatantly truthful thoughts about a business they've used and will tell the whole truth.
In this article I am going to focus on a unique type of review web site: The 'map site'. There are three in particular we must pay attention to. We've beaten this dead horse a few times, but it doesn't hurt to say it again: People search online for local businesses. They like doing a little virtual window shopping before stepping foot into a real store. I'm sure that people in other places in the world do exactly the same thing.
Search engines like Google must deliver relevant results to it users. So they put a large emphasis on local businesses because that's what so many people are looking for. Google a local service right now. You'll notice that the local business listings are an integrated part of their mapping systems. Yahoo and Bing (Microsoft's search engine) do exactly the same kind of thing.
Notice that these listings are given special prominence on the search results page. This is big! It's surprisingly simple to show up in these local search results. You have the chance to get listed at the top of the Google search result pages even if your site has never seen a first page listing ever.
And it may not take long to get listed in those local search results.
Your company name appears and is hyperlinked to your website. You can see that the phone number is likely displayed beside your website URL. And what's really important is the links to reviews for that business. People want to know what others have to say about your business, so they click to read reviews immediately.
Check it out in Google. Type 'massage [your city]' or 'restaurants [your city]' and take a look at the results. Click the reviews link and you will see a Google business listing. This listing contains information that Google has found from various sites across the web. If you look through that business page a little you'll discover customer reviews.
Be sure to claim that listing following the instructions Google gives you and if you do, you can edit it, correct any mistakes and beef up the information to help prospective customers to make call to your business.
Fill out the information completely in the listing to get people's attention. The reviews on the page are invaluable for improving your credibility and you can certainly do a little work to make certain that those reviews are positive and reflect well on you and your business.
Eric Brown, a massage therapist for over 20 years, is the director of BodyworkBiz, a web-based massage business resource that delivers massage marketing ecourses, massage therapist business cards, client education tools and more. Head over to his website at: http://www.bodyworkbiz.com. Be sure to subscribe to the free Massage Marketing Tips newsletter.