The Importance of Customer Reviews for SEO

Online customer reviews play a big part in driving website traffic and influencing consumers’ buying decisions for products and services. But they can also benefit your SEO program, both as relevant content on a webpage for web search algorithms and also benefitting local search.

How Do Customer Reviews Impact SEO?

There are several ways that reviews can affect the visibility of your website in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

• Keyword Relevancy: Reviews are written in the language of your customers, using keywords naturally. These key phrases that are included in the reviews can help you rank for long-tail keywords that potential customers are searching for. Best of all, this user-generated content is content that business owners do not have to create for their site.
• Fresh Content: Search engines love fresh content. An influx of on-page customer reviews signals to the search engine that your site is consistently being updated, which can boost visibility in the SERPs. 
• Potential to Increase the Clickthrough Rate (CTR): Reviews with schema markup and structured data may appear as rich snippets with visible star ratings directly in the SERPs. These review featured snippets can increase clickthrough rates for your site’s pages, as consumers can see the customer rating at first glance. If consumers like what they see, they can be swayed to click through to your site, thus improving your CTR. 
• Demonstrate a Level of Trust & Authority: Reviews provide consumers with credible feedback on products and services. Search engines want to provide trustworthy and authoritative information for users as part of its E-E-A-T initiative, and reviews can offer just that. Consumers can read reviews and testimonials from previous customers to learn more about products and services before they purchase them. 
• Reduce Bounce Rates: Positive reviews that reflect your offering can entice customers to stay and find exactly what they are looking for rather than bouncing from your site. 
• Local SEO: In order to compete for a spot in the coveted Google Local Pack, which shows the top several businesses for local searches on the first page of the SERPs, your business must have an abundance of recent 4- and 5-star reviews. Those reviews should naturally be positive, and you must be responsive to all reviews. 

In summary, the quantity, quality, relevance, and freshness of your reviews all send signals to search engines that help to increase the visibility of your website. 

Tips for Utilizing Existing Reviews

Leverage your existing customer reviews by featuring them in prominent places on your website, like the homepage and key landing pages. An on-page SEO tactic to add more keywords naturally on the page is to include your top two or three reviews that include keyword phrases that are positive and contextually relevant. If you have access to your customer review database, downloading and exporting keyword-rich reviews and matching them to the keyword themes of your pages is a beneficial SEO tactic you can easily implement across your site. 

Ask for Reviews

While your business may earn reviews naturally, it’s still important to encourage satisfied customers to leave glowing reviews. Make it easy for them to leave their feedback. You may also choose to send follow-up emails after a purchase, asking your customers to leave reviews mentioning the specific products or services. 

Respond to Customer Reviews in a Timely Manner 

Gaining reviews is important, but going the extra mile by responding to these reviews is equally important. Google’s local search ranking algorithms promote sites that are customer-focused, as measured by review responses. It’s important to respond professionally to both positive and negative reviews. Be sure to compose personalized responses for each review. 

Express gratitude for positive reviews and customer loyalty. Address negative reviews in a timely manner, asking for additional feedback, apologizing, and offering up a solution. Taking the conversation offline may be necessary to come to a resolution, so you may offer that as an option. Be sure to continually check for new reviews and respond to them. Responding to reviews can improve your online reputation with potential customers as well as search engines. 

Google is also consistently working to detect spam reviews. If you find that some reviews are completely unreasonable and appear to be spam, then report them following Google’s guidelines. 

Customer reviews have the power to do much more for your business than simply act as a glowing testimonial (though that’s beneficial, too). Doing everything you can to gain positive keyword-rich reviews can impact your SEO in regular web search and boost your visibility in the local search SERPs, too.