Link Building for SEO

It’s no secret that online customer reviews are a hot item on the web, and that quality online customer or product reviews are a major considerations for conveying the trustworthiness of your website or company.

People have always asked friends, coworkers, neighbors for recommendations on reliable services or products.  Online reviews are basically word of mouth marketing expanded to include anyone with a computer, smart phone or tablet computer.

Online customer reviews are very important to your online marketing program, and their importance and impact to your online business is growing.  Online reviews are extremely important SEO link building tactic.  This article explores some key components of customer reviews you should be ware of.

Customer Reviews Affect Search Engine Ranking

You probably already know that your prospects or buyers are deciding who to call or where to buy based on your online customer or product reviews.  Did you know Google is using customer reviews as a factor in deciding how to rank your website in the search engine results pages.

Customer reviews displayed on Google search results pages affect your ranking because the reviews can influence the click-though rate to your website or local business listing.  Google uses the click-though rate as a measure of your websites relevance to the search keyword.  Low relevancy lose ranking while higher relevancy websites are rewarded with higher rankings.

Sorry, You Can’t Ignore Online Customer Reviews

Your business is impacted by online reviews whether you like it or not.  You don’t need a website to receive customer reviews.  There are manyportals that have become the preferred locations for customer reviews. Google Places, Facebook Places, Yelp, Amazon, ePinions and Trip Advisor are just a few.

Google pulls customer reviews from a variety of sources, and emphasises different sources for different industries.  Google frequently changes these sources and even rotates the reviews it chooses to display.

Fake Reviews are for Losers

Don’t write fake reviews.  Google is very clear in its official policy on online reviews, posting spam, fake, impersonator or advertising online reviews are against their policy.  I won’t dwell on this topic, suffice it to say fake reviews can be costly, embarrassing and lose consumer trust.

Monitoring Your Customer Reviews

You need to stay alert and monitor your online reviews.  Luckily, this is easy to do by using Google Alerts for your website, business name and key people on your staff.  Go here to setup your Google Alerts.

How Do You Get Good Reviews?

This article explained the importance of reviews and some key factors about reviews including the fact they can impact your ranking in Google and other search engines.

Now you need to focus on getting good customer reviews that will improve your sales and keep your customers coming back.

Read the second installment of this topic, How to Get Good Customer Reviews and Deal with Negative Reviews.

• < Prev