Why Are Online Reviews So Important
Credibility & Trust
You may or may not remember the first time someone asked you for your credit card information online, in fact they may have not even asked, just presented some empty fields for you to fill out. Did you hesitate or leave the transaction altogether? Maybe, but eventually you did if not on that site maybe another and the reason is trust.
You trust the system, the credit card company, the business you are buying from or the third party payment system. Trust
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Without trust it just wont work, the whole thing will fall apart. Web designers design for trust, colors are picked based on trust, so much is put into building trust in the process of doing business online.
Nowadays it is expected that the credit card information is handled correctly and the amount charged is as quoted. Customers are looking beyond that now, they want to know who they can trust for a quality product and/or service.
Customers know an online ad when they see one, dont you? They are looking for information they can trust....reviews. Reviews are full of spelling errors, run on sentences, and whacky comparisons, making them real. Customer can connect with the frustration someone has had or the appreciation of good service. They want to hear the real deal, not a glossy brochure tag line.
Tools You Can Use To Get More Reviews & Manage The Ones You Have
The Effect On SEO
The list of things that impact your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is long and frankly quite complicated. Lets take a look a the list of review related items that impact SEO
1. The number of different third party sites that reviews are available. Diversity helps. Hotels alone should monitor over 21 review sites daily, need a small feat.
2. The third party sites your reviews are found on are not created equal, you need to be on the heavy hitting, high authority, sites.
3. The reviewers who leave reviews also matter. Elite level yelp reviewers and Google Local Guides can potentially have a bigger impact on SEO.
4. 5 Stars is better then 4 Stars, simple but worth noting.
5. The volume of reviews from third party and native review sites. 5 Star reviews from last year are not as good as 5 star reviews from last week. Consistently getting reviews on an ongoing basis is important..
7. Getting product mentions and keyword mentions in the review itself. One of the industry best practices is to respond to each and every review. Including keywords and links will impact SEO.
As of the 3rd quarter in 2019 Yelp showed 79% of searches were done on a mobile device and 72% of reviews.
Reviews have been called the "New SEO", "SEO Gold", and a host of other catchy phrases. The bottom line is that reviews need to be collected, managed and broadcasted. When you next think about ranking on search engines, think about your reviews.
