NOTE: I’ve recently learned that adding the “5” at the end no longer generates a 5 star review. However, the link still works and can still be sent to clients, the star rating won’t be filled out though.

Jump to 2:52 to start tutorial right away: https://youtu.be/OhPvmsB8yss?t=2m52s
Learn more at https://geekunicorn.com

Having a Google business page with a healthy amount of reviews helps your website search engine optimization (SEO) and social proof for your brand, which generates more sales for your business.
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a quick link you can send to clients and customers to create a pop-up Google review and populate a 5 star rating.

Transcript [edited]
Hi, there. Rachel from Geek Unicorn. I’m going to show you how to create a quick link for customers to leave a Google review for your business. If you don’t already have a Google business page you definitely want to go get one because you can take advantage of location-based engine optimization. It really helps to improve your overall brand presence. And what’s really important to add credibility to that business page is to have reviews.

If you were to say to a customer “Hey, could you go leave a review on my Google business page?” you’ve just introduced to this person several steps that they have to go through in order to do that.

So let me show you here if I had asked you to go leave a review for Geek Unicorn. You’d type in Geek Unicorn, look over here, and then it’s not really obvious where to go. So I see here, it’s reviews and then write a review. Then I have to choose what star rating to give you. If you’ve ever been in the customer service industry, you’ll know that getting a 5-Star review or a 100% is really hard…

The distinction between star ratings for each individual person is very unique and particular. Some customers wouldn’t overlook the slightest miscommunication or error that was made and therefore give you a 4 or a 3. That could be something that was outside of your control. You’re your email servers went down and you didn’t get their email, or you didn’t have your holiday hours posted and they tried to call and you were closed. Those aren’t necessarily things that constitute you being a bad business, but that may be something that makes them start to think “Oh, I’m not going to give them a 5-Star”.

And you want a 5-Star rating, especially if you’re good at what you do. So we want to actually populate a 5-Star rating automatically. This is just going to pop up with the 5-Star rating with the option to start typing whatever they want. “Was great.” And then all they have to do is hit post or add an image or whatever they want to do.

Okay, so let’s head on over to my browser. Now you’ll notice at the top we’ve got this in the url, in the browser…or in the (laughing) address bar – we’ve got this [? GWS _ already equals SSL]. Get rid of that. Make sure that it just says google.ca. This is important because we want to clean up the link that we’re going to generate.

Put Geek Unicorn. You can see here, my url is still very clean. I’m going to hit the Google reviews and then write a review. Then I’m going to copy this link. I’m going to put it in a notepad. I’m going to add a five to the end.

The 5 at the end is your star rating. You can have this be a 2, 3, 4 or 1 or nothing. But obviously you want people to start putting in a 5-Star rating.

I’m going to put that into a new window and you can see here it populates right up. I’m going to double check it in Explorer and just double check that it works. And I’m signed in with a different Google – Gmail account. And yes, it works, it’s populated the 5 stars.

Okay, so I’m going to cancel that. So I’ve got my link. Now I’m going to go into Google Link Shortener because it’s long and bulky. So let’s shorten that link up for people. And here it is. I’m going to hit that copy button. And you can see here that when I paste it out it’s going to go right to.

There we go! And so you want to now craft your follow up emails with customers and clients, or if you do workshops or whatever and…send them that url, just that little short url saying,”Hey, can you leave me a business review? Thanks so much.”

Now another thing you can do is, if you are a brick and mortar business, you can turn that url into a QR Code that you can then add to… well, you could add to your receipts if that’s – if you’re able to. Or you can add to, you know, like a little sign up by your counter.

So if you just go to QR Code, QR Code Generator – it doesn’t really matter. They’re all sort of the same. Then I can put my link in there and then I’m just going to save it wherever. Save it on my desktop.

get those Google reviews because they’re going to:
Help you in your business; they’re going to help your SEO; they’re going to help with your client acquisition. It’s all around a good thing.