Everyone’s a critic, and this has never been truer than it is today, but there is a way to use it for good by hacking sales growth using customer reviews.
Due to modern consumers having more choice and availability to find articles and reviews on just about anything from the local coffee shop to the country that they live in, reviews are everywhere, but there is a way to use them to help your business and improve website SEO.
It seems that these days just about everything has a score out of ten.
This is great in many ways; it allows small businesses to thrive based on their service, commitment and product.
Free advertising, brought about by word-of-mouth is a hugely valuable way to spread the good word about your business, but the flip side is that a bad review can destroy all of the great work spent building up those positive ones.
The importance seems clear, but for the sceptical, a quick search on the Internet will yield surveys and reviews showing data that a massive number of those consumers questioned consult reviews before deciding on a purchase or service.
The Impact of Reviews on Listings
Something significant to note about this is the considerable impact online reviews can factor into your business listing on search engine results.
Again, you can find a lot of data about this online, but most sources agree that review signals make up a pretty significant percentage of overall ranking factors.
For the uninitiated, Review Signals make up a selection of the aspects that make up a business’ online review profile.
These Review Signal factors include:
- The number of reviews:
Simply put, the more reviews, the better. A minimum of eight to ten reviews is usually suggested to build trust in your company.
2. The variety of reviews:
The number of different websites that have reviews for your business
3. The rate of reviews:
Dependent on how fast your business accumulates reviews. Too many, too fast look suspicious to Google.
4. Ranking of review sites:
There are review websites with a higher level of authority than others. Better-ranked sites are a far more suitable place for your business reviews to be posted on.
5. Keywords in Reviews
Having a keyword placed within the body of a review can be very useful. However, this can have an adverse effect if overdone.
6. Focus on industry related sites
Google also likes it when reviews for your business are found on relevant sites to the industry that your company works within, and more weight will be given to any reviews that can be discovered on related sites.
For instance, those looking to compare electricity offers might find positive reviews for the service on both social media and Trustpilot, but it will be the reviews on the latter that will have greater authority on Google.
Take note of Higher Ranking Review Sites
It is worth remembering that reviews on sites that provide the facility for a business to remove or change reviews hold a lot less authority with Google and are unlikely to offer small businesses with much in the way of Search Engine Optimization or web search advantages.
Adding Review Content
Adding review content to your website is also a great way to boost the way a business can appear on new keyword searches. Asking reviewers on your site to submit 100+ words for each review also improves the chances of strategic keyword inclusion within the content.
The useful element of doing this can also improve on-site SEO as the copy is included within a website content when crawled by Google.
In all, review copy can be a great way of promoting your business and creating a supply of searchable content and by incentivising your customers toward providing solid, slightly longer reviews could dramatically improve your website and business SEO.
