Online Reviews - Which Platform Gives The Biggest Bang for the Buck

In short, the answer is probably Yelp right now but we'll take an in depth look at the benefits of having reviews on multiple platforms and which are the best. Having a significant amount of positive reviews will help not only your organic search efforts but when purchasing web traffic as well. Gaining reviews for your child care business is one of the most important aspects of daycare marketing. Your potential clients have a significant amount of time to decide before making this purchase and will most certainly investigate heavily their options, wanting the absolute best for their children. While a review on any website may have a positive impact on your marketing and advertising campaigns, there are three that offer a much greater return than all others. We'll take a closer look at those below.

Coming in third place is Facebook. It is the least likely to help you acquire a lead out of our top three but will help to close that lead once you have it. A review on Facebook is the most legitimate of the three because it is easy to find out information on the person who left that review i.e. their profiles are much more complete and active than our other two best places for reviews. A client will feel much more comfortable with reviews on Facebook than other websites because they can easily see they are from real people. 

The next best location for client testimonials is on your Google Business page. It is fairly easy to write a fake review on Google as you only need to sign up for an email account. While not always, fake reviews on Google are usually identified because of empty profiles and only a single review. Although there are many fake reviews on Google, it is the best platform for increasing your ranking and visibility in both organic and local search results on Google. It also allows you to respond to customer reviews and is recommended every time whether they are good or bad. This shows your potential client your are actively involved and care about your online reputation. 

Yelp is a new favorite this year for me as their traffic and search rankings have improved significantly over that time. People also trust Yelp as their mechanism for detecting fake reviews is the best out there. A Yelp directory listing page will typically rank in the top 3 for any daycare or preschool keyword with the location on Google. Yelp is not only increasing their traffic directly but has an incredible amount of referrals from Google. I believe the referrals from Google has also helped to increase customer trust in Yelp. At this time, many small businesses can depend on Yelp exclusively because Google is directing so much traffic towards it. Yelp also allows the business owner to respond to reviews and is important to have a complete profile with pictures, mission statements, warranties, etc.

Getting reviews is easy, don't just sit around waiting for them! Keep in mind that it is unlawful to leave reviews for your own business. It is also a bad idea for employees (past and current) to review your company. That doesn't mean that you can't ask your customers for one. Most of them will be happy to help.