Customer reviews can go a long way towards establishing a business’ reputation online. They can also, in some cases, have SEO impacts on a business’ website. And, with local search expected to become more prominent in the New Year (as we recently discussed here), understanding how customer reviews can impact optimization and site rankings can be essential to positioning your site for the best results in 2016.
Top 3 Benefits of Customer Reviews: How Good Reviews Can Benefit Your Site & Business
When customers or clients of a business post positive reviews online, that business can benefit from:
- Better search engine rankings – And as the good reviews for a business increase, it’s increasingly likely that Google will continue to feature that business’ site prominently, as customer reviews are among the primary factors used to place businesses in the 3-stack local pack (for local search).
- More traffic to its site – More prominent rankings in search engines, coupled with positive client reviews, can mean more click-throughs from SERPS to a site. In fact, if your business has positive reviews and a competitor’s does not (have any or any positive reviews), your site (and business) will likely be preferred by users.
- More business and profits – Positive customer reviews, better rankings and more traffic to a business’ site can all end up adding up to more new leads, more business and increased profits for that business.
Customer Reviews & SEO: More Important Information
- Good reviews won’t make up for a poorly optimized site – While customer reviews can be important to boosting sites’ visibility and rankings, reviews will not outweigh the features and optimization of your site. This means that it is still critical to focus on developing the best user experience via your site and that customer reviews should be supplemental to that.
- Not all online reviews are ranked equally – In other words, reviews posted on different platforms can carry different weight in terms of SEO benefits. For instance, reviews posted on Google+ will generally be more significant in terms of SEO value than reviews posted on less prominent sites.
- Don’t forget to consider your industry – While customer reviews can be very powerful (and helpful to users) when it comes to service industry-related businesses (e.g., restaurants), other businesses may be more insulated from reviews (e.g., the finance and banking industries). Additionally, for some industries, there may be industry-specific review sites (again, think, restaurants). The bottom line here is to know your industry and, if there are review sites specific to your industry, to make sure your business has a strong and growing presence on them.
Contact Epic Web Results for Effective Internet Marketing Solutions
When you are ready to realize the best results from your website, contact the professionals at Epic Web Results. We are up to date with the latest advances in Internet marketing and SEO best practices, and we are highly adept at designing and maintaining optimized websites that will soar to the top of search engines.
To learn more about our customized, innovative Internet marketing solutions, contact the professionals at Epic Web Results by calling (800) 501-9724 or by emailing us using the contact form on this page.