Review signals in local SEO: recent, specific, and actually yours

Ask after a real job

The useful request goes to a customer who just finished, at the moment they can still describe the work. A blast to an old list produces vague praise and a few angry surprises.

Do not offer a reward for a positive review. Ask for an honest one, and make the profile easy to find.

Answer with the specificity the review used

Reply to the detail: the district, the service, the problem. Those replies show future customers how you behave, and they keep the service language consistent with the site.

Do not argue in public or paste a keyword into the reply. A reply is a conversation, not an anchor-text opportunity.

• Ask customers who had the experience.
• Respond to the specific job.
• Never buy reviews.

Read reviews as a content brief

Repeated questions in reviews — parking, languages, turnaround — belong on the location page. The review told you what the page omitted.

A sudden spike of similar reviews from new accounts is a risk, not a win. Profiles lose trust when the pattern looks manufactured.

Do reviews affect local ranking?

They are part of prominence and of whether a customer clicks. Volume without authenticity is a liability. Steady reviews from real jobs are the healthy pattern.

Should you mark up third-party reviews in schema?

Only when the format is allowed and the reviews are genuinely yours to display. Do not invent star ratings in template markup.