Tuesday 29 January 2019

Reviews - and how they boost your SEO

We are going to begin this article by making a prediction: one day Google will return the best business (in the opinion of that business's customers) at the top of organic search. And the only way it will be able to do that? Based on the business's Google reviews of course.

Meanwhile Google inches closer to doing so with every change it makes; in the beginning it incorporated reviews, then it introduced its reviews filter (enabling its users to modify their searches to exclude all but 'top rated' businesses, or those that score 4.5 or more), but all the while Google continued to recognise good SEO.

SEO and reviews

SEO - how ever much a business spends, is not gong to achieve either of the following...

  • a great Google score
  • a great reviews score on the business's own website
...that's down to you and HelpHound, but what it can do is flag up both - especially the reviews on the business's site - to Google.

It's what takes this...



113 Reviews on the business's website - properly displayed and schema tagged, so Google can find them

...and turns it into this...




Leading the Google 3-pack and heading organic search


HelpHound's role...

We are your review managers, and we will provide you with the best platform on the planet to get the raw ingredients - the reviews themselves. It is then up to your web designers and/or your SEO agency to implement our tech (our drop-in or, even better, our API) so Google can pull through the kind of information it wants - and display it for its users to see.

Adding value

In our journey with clients we have learned an important lesson: that some web designers struggle with this aspect of their role. Not to worry - we have met some really top-notch developers who can implement the code - and the tags for the schema (which produces the stars in organic search you can see next to Winkworth's listing). We will happily introduce you - or your web designers - to them, all you have to do is ask. 


Further reading...




This is what the mighty Forbes has to say...




But for those of you that haven't the time to read all of it, here are three vital extracts...



 ...and...



...and the financial impact?...



So, the inescapable conclusion is that reviews - your own and Google's, when combined with good SEO, are vital for any business that wants to compete in the modern marketplace.


And an important word of warning...

Please resist the temptation to short-cut the process; inviting selected customers to post reviews - anywhere - is against the law. Using mechanisms that favour the business over the consumer is equally illegal (there's much more on this here). But given that the cost of proper professional review management is about the same as that for the phone in your pocket (or as one client said 'the round of coffees I buy the office every Friday') there's every incentive to 'do it right'.



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