It’s estimated that review signals account for 9.8% of the total ranking factors of Google. So, if you have serious goals with your SEO, you shouldn’t ignore customer reviews.
What to care about to boost your SEO ranking
What is a review signal? Review signals are different aspects of a business’s review profile, including:
- the speed of how frequently reviews are posted
- the number of websites that have reviews for your company
- the number of reviews on your website
- the number of reviews on websites that are not owned by Google (third-party websites)
- the authority of third-party websites where you have reviews (Google ranks different review sites differently)
- the frequency of how often reviews are posted both on Google properties and other review sites
- the volume of native Google Maps reviews with text
- the number of third-party review sites where you own reviews
- the number of reviewers who have high authority (if it’s differentiated)
- the number of product or service keywords in reviews
Though Google’s ranking factors are constantly changing, let’s see the main principles for what features the review content should have:
- It should be unique. So, it shouldn’t be found anywhere else on the Internet.
- It should be relevant and helpful. When a searcher looks for a certain topic, the content should help them efficiently in that without unrelated flaws.
- It should be valuable and unique, meaning that it should give advice that can’t be found somewhere else on the web.
- It should offer a great user experience. Optimized for mobile and other devices, while its speed is also fast.
- It should be likely to spread. It should feel like the right target audience would amplify your content and share it with other people.
Several studies have shown how customer reviews can enhance a business’s online traffic. One example is when 30,000 businesses observed what happened after they started using customer reviews. Their organic traffic from search engines increased by more than 50%.
How customer reviews help your SEO
Let’s see how reviews can boost your SEO ranking.
- They create relevant and timely content. User-generated content is great from a SEO aspect, and reviews are one of them. They’re written by your customers to your customers, so they meet several points that you have read already. They’re relevant, unique and helpful. People like to read them. Plus, they’re generated continuously, which makes them even more favorable for search engines.
- Reviews shape your SEO attributes naturally. Your website can be optimized for search engines through attributes such as titles, back-links, internal links and keywords. Reviews can naturally work as an army of link builder and keyword writers without any of your work.
- Customer reviews also boost your social outreach. You have the opportunity to incorporate reviews into your social strategy, and these can help your social interactions become more popular.
- Don’t forget that search engines prefer websites with high ratings. It gives you social proof and authority. You should take into consideration to not only use and post reviews, but to improve and organize them in a way that Google favors.
- You should also get a visible star rating for your website. When you have at least 30 unique reviews during the past year, with an average rating of 3.5 or higher, it becomes visible on Google. Therefore, people favor your website to click on.
To sum it up, you shouldn’t ignore the importance of online customer reviews’ influence on your ranking. They’re user-generated, meaning they fit the most relevant aspects of Google’s ranking. Therefore, they largely help your long-term results. Different packages of review software, such as Wiremo, help you organize and improve reviews, and you may also hire an SEO professional to take a leap forward in the increase of your organic traffic.
