Estate Agents: Scores and volume are key - but quality is equally important

The first thing all our clients want is a great score...

 

 Good - once your business has over 50 reviews there's evidence to show that cynicism - "they just asked all their friends and colleagues to write a review" - falls away

 ...and they're not wrong. An excellent overall rating will grab the eye of every prospective customer.

Next comes volume...

Even better - when comparing tow businesses with the same score it's only human nature to choose the one with the most reviews

...because marketers appreciate that low absolute numbers of reviews can send out a negative message.

But what about quality?


We have just conducted a survey of some of our clients and this is what emerged

• their reviews contained nearly double the word-count of the average Google review
• they also contained more high-value words and phrases - such as 'professional' and 'value for money'

This is important - because your prospective customers read the content of the reviews (and your responses). It's the content that inspires them to take the next critical step.

If you read these reviews you will soon see just how often key words and phrases - marketers call them 'triggers' - appear: 'professional', 'helpful', 'definitely recommend', 'knowledgeable', 'achieved the price we wanted', 'impressed', 'patient', 'bent over backwards', 'cannot recommend highly enough', 'shone', 'useful insight', 'exceptional' - and that's just from the five for one client shown above. 

It's those words and phrases that consumers are looking for when they read reviews. Great scores will attract attention - great content elicits action.

Name checks - there is at least one in each of these reviews - also boost confidence.

Compare them with this - very common - type of review:

 

 And you will see what we mean. They also flow through into great rich snippets:

 

A great business + great review management = great reviews - on your own site and on Google = more business.