Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252554
Reputation will play a huge role in local organic search rankings. It is a fact that all businesses get a bad review every now and then, and some businesses have a hard time attracting reviews from their clients. However, with local SEO becoming more influential and significant, consumer reviews indeed have a huge impact for SEO.
Benefits Of Reviews
It boosts the local rankings of your business in search engines. Google makes use of customer ratings as a determining factor for which site to place on top 3 spots.
Once you are ranked, you will certainly get more clicks. Indeed, ranking is nice; however, qualified traffic is better.
Better reviews will mean more business. Even though customer reviews are subjective, they are reliable credibility score which let possible customers know if your business is a great choice or not.
User experience, the structure of your site, your link-building program and your content strategy play a greater role in determining your ranking as compared to online reviews. But still, if all the “basics” are taken care of, the quantity as well as the quality of the reviews your site gets will have an added influence to the list. The general rule says that the more positive reviews you get, the more online traffic and conversions you are going to get.