It is important to have clients leave reviews of your service/product on Google+ My Business and/or Yelp. The more reviews you have, the more exposure you get on the web. This is very important… and yes, it’s worth the effort to encourage reviews. But as difficult as it may be to get clients to take the time to leave a review, there is another hurdle set up by Google and Yelp. And it’s best to inform your clients about it beforehand.

Google and Yelp try to avoid having people leave bogus reviews. For example, they don’t want a friend or family member to leave a false review. In order to try and minimize these issues, they each have their own requirements to leave a review.

Google+ My Business requires that you be logged into a Google account to leave a review. If you have a gmail account for example, you can log in (if you aren’t already) and then leave a review. If you do not have a Google account, they will ask you to create a Google+ account before you can leave your review. It’s free and will not cause any harm.

Yelp requires that you have a Yelp account (referred to as your profile) to leave a review. If you don’t already have one, it’s easy to create it. In order for your review to display on Yelp, you must have previously left at least one Yelp review. So it’s important to tell your client to begin leaving reviews on Yelp so they will all be visible and useful.

by Joe Seidler