Angie’s List reviews are now visible to anyone and everyone. In March the site announced it would no longer require paid memberships to access their online business listings and reviews. While this announcement was met with little fanfare, the potential impact on residential and commercial painting contractors is huge. Here is why this matters to every painting contractor:
More people are going to see your Angie’s List Reviews.
Access to Angie’s List reviews about your painting services was previously limited to the sites 3,000,000+ paid subscribers. Now consider there are roughly 86,000,000 homeowners in the United States. Potential exposure to your Angie’s List reviews just increased more than 26 times. What do you want them to see?
Angie’s List is all over the first page of Google.
Like it or not, Angie’s List has done a great job entrenching itself on the first page of Google. This is especially true for searches related to generic contracting terms and name specific searches for contracting businesses. They also buy Google Adwords for contracting specific keywords in many markets.
Online reviews matter, so Angie’s List reviews matter.
Research on consumer reviews indicate that 92% of consumers read online reviews and 80% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. With Angie’s List going to a free model, more people than ever will have access to their reviews on your painting business. It is important Angie’s List reviews on your painting services encourage prospective customers to hire you.
What should my painting business do?
- Claim your Angie’s List profile. This will allow you to checkout your current reviews and register for alerts when new reviews are posted to your listing.
- Develop a plan to drive more reviews to your business. Reputation Stacker is an affordable online software that helps drive reviews from satisfied customers. It also never hurts to ask happy customers to leave a review about your services.
- Negative reviews are virtually unavoidable today, so make sure your painting business has a plan of action in the event of a bad review Here are 10 tips for responding to negative online reviews.
What does all this mean?
Put simply, your Angie’s List reviews are now more important than ever. They are fully accessible to anyone with internet access and Angie’s List will continue to have a consistent presence on the first page of Google. The goal for Angie’s List in making this move is to increase site traffic which will indirectly increase the number of people reading Angie’s List reviews about your painting business.
Need a specific question answered? Feel free to email the author or post it in the comment section below. Expect a quick response!
Interested in a dedicated strategy for generating positive online reviews about your painting business? Contact AltaVista Strategic Partners to set up a free consultation!
I’ve done just fine with out Angie’s list or any other outside lead service. Google reviews are king!
I agree Angie’s list is important and they have done a great job of ranking with Google. But I believe Google will carry more credibility because Google is the one everyone turns to when searching. AL is a second option.
Florence Paint Pros
Google is moving more towards promoting reviews. Just recently my painting review sites (even reviews on Facebook) began to show up in my maps area. Having great reviews on sites like Angie’s list is something that I think will be promoted more by Google.
Hunter – Great point here.
Google has stated it wants to provide users with more local results. if your business has multiple positive online reviews about “house painting in Annapolis, Maryland” it provides a positive signal to Google.
It then becomes more likely your business will show up in search results, particularly in the Map Results, if someone searches for “house painting Annapolis”.
Reviews definitely matter and will only continue to be important for multiple reasons.
Thanks for the comment!
Yeah, I think Angie’s list allowing contractors to have a free subscription is going to open up the door for a lot of contractors to have a better source of reviews. The more places we are able to get reviews the better.
Aaron, great point. I think this helps us as painters as we talk with our clients about our reviews. If they can put these keywords in their reviews, then I think it has added weight with Google about our painting business. Thus, it will increase rankings in maps and organic results.
This is great with regards to focusing on reviews. I think if you really are planning to build out a painting business in your area, then reviews from multiple platforms is really important. I would start with Google reviews first and then move out to Angie’s, Facebook, and other review platforms.
I think focusing heavily on reviews is the best way to grow your business. Although we are not where we want to be, we continue to focus on building out our reviews.