In this digital era, consumers are heavily dependent on what others are saying about your business to help them make wise and informed decisions when making purchases. Online reviews provide consumers with an easy way to publish their personal experiences, good or bad. This helps to share their unbiased experience with others looking to buy or engage in similar service.
Online search has radically changed the way people shop and look up information. 90% of consumers will read a review before making a purchase decision, while 91% of
In this blog, we will break down the important aspects of online reviews and how they impact SEO.
Search Engines Love Consumers
Search engines such as Google and Bing strive to keep up with consumer trends, and how and what people are searching for, all while providing authentic and trustworthy information. Quality backlinks are an important component for SEO, as they help search engines have more trust in your website. And so, search engines will favour businesses and brands with good reviews coming from a variety of relevant review sites.
If your business is getting positive feedback, then search engines send a signal to consumers looking up information for businesses like yours. Google uses online reviews to gauge whether or not your brand is meeting the needs of consumers. This is where online reviews play a pivotal role in helping raise businesses with a good rating in search results.
More Website Traffic
Reviews make your business website more attractive in search results, which then leads to more website traffic. Here’s a recent experience – About a week ago I signed up for adult swimming lessons (yes, I am a hopeless swimmer). The first thing I did was search for adult swimming lessons on Google. Instantly, my eyes were drawn toward schools with 4+ star ratings or reviews.
I then narrowed down my options to schools with the highest number of positive reviews, and from there I went on to their website to find more information such as class times, cost, and of course, see the images for my reference. Listings with top results from reviews are a powerful way to funnel consumers to your website.
Keywords Matter
Online reviews that contain keywords associated with your business are also a determining factor for SEO. The more content search engines can read, the more it understands your business. Customers unintentionally describe your products and services with ‘keywords’ to Google, and those reviews add SEO value to your business.
This means, your focus isn’t just to get more positive online reviews, but also focus on the keywords to help boost your local SEO.
Get More Online Reviews
The most common and simplest way to get more reviews is by simply asking your customers to write you one. If your product and service offering has been of quality experience, then most times they will be happy to leave a review. For more tips, read our blog on 5 Ways to Get More Online Reviews.
