Ask every happy customer immediately after the job, by text, with a direct link to your review form. Texts get answered far more often than emails. Automate the ask so it happens every time rather than when you remember, and never offer anything in exchange, which breaks Google policy.
Ask within a day of finishing. The goodwill is at its peak and the job is fresh enough for them to write something specific. A week later you get nothing, or you get four words.
Send a text, not an email. Texts get read. Emails asking for a favour do not, and a review request is a favour.
Include the direct link to your review form. Every extra step loses people, and asking someone to search for you on Google is three steps.
A business with 40 reviews from this year outranks one with 200 from 2021, because Google reads recent reviews as evidence the business is still active and still good. This is the single most misunderstood thing about local search.
It also means the job is never done, which is exactly why it needs to be automatic. Everyone asks diligently for two weeks and then stops.
Text them within a day of finishing, thank them, and include a direct link to your review form. Keep it to two sentences. Do not attach it to an invoice, because that reads as a condition of payment.
No. Google prohibits incentives for reviews and removes them when detected, which can take your genuine reviews with them. Ask without an offer attached.
There is no threshold. What matters is how you compare to the businesses you compete with locally, and how recent your reviews are. If the top three in your suburb have 50 each, that is your target, not a number from an article.
Reply calmly, publicly and briefly, and offer to sort it out offline. Future customers read the reply more carefully than the review. A measured response to an unfair review does more good than the review did harm.
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