The short answer is, YES! Reviews will not only impact your business by reflecting what others’ opinions are, but Google and other search engines use them as a ranking factor in search results. Why? Because Google wants to give people the best results for their queries and is constantly looking for ways to do just that. They factor in User Generated Content in their SEO algorithms, and user reviews fall into that category.
Customer reviews can affect SEO in a number of ways. Here are five important reasons they can boost your SEO.
Reviews inspire trust, in that customers care enough to write about your product or service. And if you monitor them regularly, it shows that you care what people are saying and strive to maintain the high quality and excellence they’re looking for. Reviews generate conversation between you and customers, as well as among other customers. That’s huge to the search engines because they want to provide the most accurate information to people searching online to assist them in their purchase decisions.
Content is king, and the fresher, the better. Publishing blogs, posting on social media, offering e-books—these are all great ways to offer content that helps your SEO. Customer reviews also provide content that the search engines factor into your rankings. They show that your business is active.
Customers work as an army of link builders and keyword writers by writing reviews. SEO strategies consist of keywords, titles, backlinks and internal links. Customer comments will reflect how they are phrasing concerns, which can then be integrated as keywords for increasing your SEO.
Social SEO is a critical element of your overall SEO strategy. User reviews are often incorporated in social media accounts in the form of shares, likes or comments. The will be linked to your website and brand, as well as generate discussion about your business.
Search engines use automated algorithms when crawling the web for customer input, like reviews and testimonials. The more reviews that are out there, the better your ranking. There are also human teams that will manually evaluate websites for authority and trust; and customer reviews help provide that legitimacy and build SEO.
Now that you are hopefully convinced that reviews are an important piece of your overall SEO marketing strategy, you’ll need to do more to build more positive reviews. Here are some tips for doing just that (you can read a full blog post on getting a killer testimonial here):
Your online reputation matters to both search engines and customers, both current and prospective. Let us help you build the trust and secure your spot in the search results. Contact us today to learn more!