The importance of online reviews to a business’ marketing strategy has been common knowledge for years. The SEO boost from getting online reviews can be substantial. According to a study by YotPo that followed 30,000 online business getting reviews over a nine-month period, it showed significant search rankings boosts. Clearly, reviews are a powerful form of customer content that has huge implications for SEO and boosting organic traffic. So now that we know the facts – it’s time to dig into understanding why.
Provides Fresh Content to Search Engines
Many owners of online businesses spend hundreds of dollars a month on fresh content to maintain or increase their search rankings. However, they can get their customers to create fresh content for them in the form of online reviews. This saves online business owners a great deal of time and money. Most importantly, reviews often contain much-desired long tail keywords that are used naturally within the review. These keywords can greatly improve a business’ rankings.
Provides Backlinks
Most online reviews contain social media links, which are among the most desired form of backlinks. Backlinks have been vital for search rankings for some time, and are still quite important. The new algorithms used by the biggest search engines prioritize social media backlinks over other types of backlinks, and online reviews are one of the best ways to organically grow the number of social media backlinks your site has.
Reviews Increase Site Click Through Rates (CTR)
Click through rate (CTR) is the number of people who actually click on a link to your website, especially one found in search results. Positive online reviews lead to a good rating being displayed next to your website’s name, which can dramatically increase your click-through-rate (CTR). Keep in mind that 90% of people consider online reviews in their buying process. In this instance, it does matter whether the reviews are positive or negative, but consider if you would hire a divorce attorney with only 1 negative review or one with 20 good reviews. It’s a no-brainer, right?
Improves Local Maps Rankings
Another feature common to the new search algorithms used by the biggest search engines is the focus on localization. When you have a brick and mortar presence as well as an online presence, you want to try to bring people into your shop as well as onto your website. Potential customers searching for the best local whatever will come up with your business if you have a lot of good reviews.
Do Negative Reviews Hurt SEO?
Negative reviews do not hurt your search rankings. The more reviews you have, the more long tail keywords you’ll rank for and the more social media backlinks you’ll have. Also, you should look at every negative review as an opportunity. You should respond to every negative review. A well-crafted response can turn someone into an advocate for your business.
Start Getting Online Reviews for Your Business
As you can see from the points made above, online reviews can have a huge effect on your business’ search rankings, and by extension on your bottom line. If you want to see huge rankings boosts, check out our website, You Review. The tool automatically contacts customers and directs them to review sites if they had a positive experience. If they had a negative experience, their review is sent directly to you. You Review even includes widgets that add reviews to your website automatically. See why thousands of businesses just like yours are profiting from online business reviews. Get started with You Review today.
Chevelle Garnett
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