So, your self storage facility has 200 Google reviews. Or maybe it has 300. 500?
You implemented this amazing program to get reviews. You made sure to ask every single customer. You’ve got more than any other competitor in your area, and you’re sitting at a nice 4.5 to 5.0 rating, too!
That’s not enough.
Getting a ton of reviews isn’t a silver bullet for your local ranking efforts.
More importantly, getting more reviews than all of your competitors isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. It’s not like you’ve succeeded and can retire your review initiatives once you have more than the competition. Don't stop getting reviews just because you're on top!
Even once you have those reviews, you still need to keep getting them to maintain good review recency.
What is Review Recency?
The name kind of says it all! How recently did you get your latest reviews? It also goes hand-in-hand with review frequency, as in how frequently you get reviews.
If you work hard to get lots of great reviews and then stop your efforts once you’re on top, well, you may have just thrown out all of that work.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer for how often you should be receiving Google reviews.
For this reason, the best choice is just to try to get reviews as often as possible.
For some of you, that answer isn’t good enough. Maybe it’s even anxiety-inducing. After all, without a target to reach for, how do you measure your effectiveness? Well, here’s a tip for how to judge how well you’re doing in review recency:
You should be getting reviews at least as frequently as your competitors.
That’s it! That’s why there’s no single answer that fits for every self storage facility. If your market is full of facilities that barely get a review every few months, then just getting one review a month is enough to boost your review recency to the top! But if you have competitors getting, say, two reviews a month? You better aim to get at least that many each month, too.
The best way to ensure you’ve got good review recency is to focus on review frequency.
Instead of worrying about if you have the newest reviews in your market, focus on getting reviews as frequently as competitors do. Here are some simple steps if you’re not super familiar with navigating the local pack:
Once you have all of this taken down, you can compare and see how you stand versus your local competition.
This will help you choose a benchmark for your own review-gaining efforts.
Like many SEO topics, the exact impact of review recency might seem hazy. Hard to really quantify.
But does review recency really matter?
Yes.
In a case study shared by local SEO agency SterlingSky, the company’s client saw a drop in local rankings that correlated with them halting their review incentives program. When the client resumed the incentive program and started getting reviews again, their rankings improved once more.
Here’s a snapshot of how their client’s rankings improved over three months once they resumed their review incentives program. Note: red = bad, green = good.
And this is just one example from across the SEO world. SterlingSky themselves have had numerous clients with this same experience.
That's not even mentioning all the other SEO experts who can back it up, too. And it's also in addition to how much a Google review is actually worth to your business.
While no one can say for sure how much weight a given ranking factor really has when it comes to optimizing for Google (or any other search engine, for that matter), it’s now pretty widely accepted by local SEO experts that the recency of your Google reviews is a Google Business Profile local pack ranking factor.
The best way to get more reviews for your storage facility is to ask.
In many cases, just asking a customer in the right way at the right time is all you need to do.
IMPORTANT: Do not incentivize customers to leave reviews. Google does not allow this (for good reason).
While you can’t incentivize customers to leave reviews, you can incentivize your team. If you’re an owner with managers who work under you, there are some things you can do to encourage them to get more reviews via an incentive program:
In addition to these programs, it could help to have your managers brush up on their self storage sales skills. The comfort they gain on sales calls will make asking for that review even easier!
So, does having lots of Google reviews matter? Yes.
Should you stop worrying about getting reviews once you have hundreds? No.
If you want the best chance to rank in your market’s local pack results, make sure you’re also continuing to get reviews to maintain your review recency.
How frequently you need reviews depends entirely on your market and the competition within it. Try to beat how frequently your competition gets Google reviews if you’re struggling against them, and try to at least match it if you’re already beating them.
Here are some of my other favorite posts to check out!
At StoragePug, we build self storage websites that make it easy for new customers to find you and easy for them to rent from you.
