We know how important reviews can be to a business and all the usual stats – 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations for example – but, as we discussed at BrightonSEO recently, they’re actually even more important than that. Reviews (even the bad) can be the difference between your business being found online and left to gather dust in digital purgatory AKA the second page of Google results.
In fact, review content on your website and third party sites is a bigger ranking factor for Google than a mobile website or social!
Why? Well…
…they’re unique – reviews will always be one-off and won’t appear anywhere else online. And we all know the value search engines place on uniqueness.
…they boost your long-tail keyword traffic – Reviewers will be buyers/customers who use the same language as your targets. If they aren’t, perhaps it’s time to consider your key word targeting in line with the language your customers are using in their reviews.
…they generate loads of fresh user generated content – reviews are basically crowd-sourced content full of information that search engines consider on-topic
…they generate social conversation - We’re not talking about reviews going viral - like this. Or this - although that’s no bad thing. Reviews left for your company/product are simply more fresh content for you to share on social.
If these points have got you thinking you need to pay a bit more attention to your own reviews strategy, you can download our presentation from BrightonSEO. As well as expanding on the points above, we explain how Google’s star rating system actually works and share our tips and tricks for using reviews to improve your organic and paid search results. Get the presentation deck here: Reviews - BrightonSEO
Posted 15 September 2016 by Ben Waterhouse