New Website Improves Local Business Websites While Helping Shoppers Make Better Buying Decisions

Online, October 15, 2010 (Newswire.com) - San Luis Obispo, CA - As search engines begin to place less emphasis on search engine optimization and more on reviews and recommendations from past and current customers, a new local website aims to be the primary review engine for San Luis Obispo County businesses.

SLOpinions.com, which is currently live despite officially launching October 19, 2010, is open to the public and allows members to rate local businesses on a scale of one to ten and leave a personal review of as many SLO County businesses as they like. Currently, there are only approximately 20 businesses up for review, but the website's owner, Aaron Emerson, plans to add between five and ten new businesses daily to keep up with demand.

"Instead of populating the website with a bunch of businesses of our choosing, I think it's better to let locals let us know what businesses they want listed for review and then add them as they are requested," Emerson said.

As owner of Prevail PR, a San Luis Obispo-based marketing company, and a Cal Poly graduate, Emerson keeps a watchful eye on local internet marketing tools and trends. One that he sees as being vital to the future success of local businesses is securing online reviews from customers.

"A search for 'San Luis Obispo restaurants' on Google returns 489,000 results, the top 7 of which are included in a map with dozens of other restaurants," said Emerson. "The main factor for showing up in this map is the amount of reviews these restaurants have received from their customers, ranging from 55 for Splash Cafe to 147 for Firestone Grill. As proof that search engines are relying more on reviews as opposed to traditional search engine optimization, Firestone Grill doesn't even have a website yet still ranks very high due to the vast amount of reviews they have gained over the years."

SLOpinions.com was specifically created to fill this need in the marketplace, as well as help shoppers make better buying decisions based on recommendations from their peers. Most of the businesses in the county have less than three reviews across the board, hurting their ability to show up in search engine queries. Emerson believes that a locally focused and operated review website will inspire businesses to ask their customers for reviews while giving customers a better alternative to the current review websites which are nationwide in nature.