SEO: Why You Should Encourage Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are important for a range of reasons. They strengthen your credibility as a business by increasing trust, which can influence future consumer decisions. Even if some of your reviews are negative, it’s a chance for you to show how you handle customer complaints in a positive manner, further enhancing a potential customer’s confidence in you.
Boost Your SEO Performance
Believe it or not, customer reviews are also important in terms of your SEO performance and can potentially increase your Google rankings. Any actions taken to build up your digital footprint outside of your actual website are great ways to improve your SEO. This could be anything from a credible backlink, activity on social media, or consistent customer reviews. Google uses these off-site signals to determine the authority and relevancy of your website, and therefore your brand.
Increases Referral Traffic
If you have a profile on a third-party website, such as Trustpilot, you may notice a spike in referral traffic. These third-party sites tend to have a high domain authority, meaning they rank well in Google. So, if someone is searching for a review of your company and they land on your review profile, they can easily find their way to your own website.
Reduces Bounce Rates
When reviews are present on a website, customers are more likely to browse your site and make a purchase. This is because they can place their trust in you. Having a lower bounce rate is a fantastic way to improve your overall SEO performance.
More Keywords
Customer reviews act as content created by your customers; don’t just view them as feedback alone. Every time one of your customers posts a review, Google has additional content to crawl, especially if you also reply to the feedback. Whether the review is good or bad, it is highly likely to contain keywords that are relevant to your business’ products/services and perhaps even your location, helping you to rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
So, as you can see, encouraging customer reviews can benefit you in a variety of ways. Just be sure to share these reviews on your site and across your social media channels, to make the most of them and build up credibility. If you need any assistance with your SEO campaign, don’t hesitate to contact us at your earliest convenience.