Started using a 3rd Party Review Company for our Website. Do we need to show the reviews or is a widget (badge) with a link back to review company sufficient enough from an SEO ranking point of view?
-
Hi All,
We have started to use a 3rd party review company and now have the choice of either implementing their re-supplied widgets (Java ) on our site showing customer reviews or use their an API to get this information.
-
The widgets (Java) , would be loaded once the page is actually loaded so I am not sure how and if google will read this information if at all? If we use a widget then we won't be able to implement it with Schema.org although we will be able to use rich snippets to it will appear on any PPC (once we have had 30 reviews). If we go down the API route, it's more expensive for us but we can use the review schema.org for this. Does anyone have any experience of what works best for them ?..
-
We have a choice of having a widget showing latest reviews or just a badge (which is actually a link to the review site showing our reviews). From an SEO point of view, is one better than the other ? Does google actually read the content of the review or is the link back to the 3rd party review company sufficient enough to help with rankings etc.
-
Am I correct in assuming that by linking to a 3rd party review company and showing our reviews on our site , this will help with rankings as even though the content in the reviews doesn't really say much ,. I did see it was a ranking factor on the survey but not sure how google uses this. ?
I've read up some information on reviews etc but wondered what the general consensus was with what others found works best for them
Any help greatly appreciated
Pete
-
-
Thanks Fuel for the article link. I wll take a read
Pete
-
Many thanks for your thoughts and help on this. I will look into what you suggest.
thanks
Pete
-
This article might address your third question:
-
We use Shopper Approved and they provide a couple types of code that will do this for you.
*** They provide code for several badges and widgets that allow us to display recent reviews and summary reviews on our website.
*** They provide code that grabs our ratings from a Shopper Approved server and displays them on our website in search engine readable format.
*** They also provide schema code that causes our ratings to appear as stars beside our listings in the organic SERPs.
For SEO purposes here are my opinions....
** I do not believe that Google reads the content of the customer reviews in the widget.
** I do not believe that linking to Shopper Approved through the widget or through the badge is helpful.
** I believe that having mentions and links on the Shopper Approved site is helpful, however, they generate enormous numbers of review pages that I can see in my webmaster tools account. Generally, I would say that getting this many links on thin content cookie-cutter pages is dangerous, as it looks like manufactured links, but I am assuming that Google realizes that these are reviews and will not count them as negative as they are nofollowed.
** Links to your sites in the Shopper Approved directory might be slightly helpful.
** I believe that having lots of good rating, such as four or five stars, confirmed by a review site, might be helpful.
** I believe that having four or five stars, out of a possible five, appearing in the organic SERPs will help your clickthrough rate, which could help your rankings.
Our sales seem to be up a tiny amount since starting to use Shopper Approved. Our rankings have always been good, so I can't say that we have received any measurable SEO benefit.
Our motivation for getting a review service was: 1) an easy method for collecting reviews, 2) an easy method for getting customer feedback on purchases, 3) an easy way to display reviews from TODAY's customers on our website, 4) use of the badge as a 'trust mark', and, 5) a way to use schema to get stars in the organic SERPs.
These are opinions only, nothing scientific.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Potential Ethical Conflict: Google My Business Paid Reviews
I've been sitting on this for a while due to The Busies. So if this is nothing new, feel free to lash me several times with a somewhat moist noodle. And in that event, I promise not to make it weird. 😉 I use the Rewards application, from Google. Long story short, you fill in some demographic information and you receive Google Play credit when you complete surveys. It's a nice way to get a book, app, or music for little effort. But after giving a friend of mine a ride to a local hotel, I've received multiple survey requests that relate to that hotel brand. And it asks me to drop a local review, for extra Google Play credit. How is that ethical? Their own docs clearly state there is no way to pay for better local ranking, but they also admit reviews can improve local ranking. So isn't soliciting reviews, for any sort of compensation, at least a bit unethical? What are your thoughts? Attached are screenshots of the solicitation and GMB documentation. w4hEe
Reviews and Ratings | | Travis_Bailey1 -
What hosting provider do you use? I think mine is letting down my SEO!
Hello I am curious to what hosting plans you are using, and what you would recommend. I am currently paying £30 per month for shared reseller hosting with tsohost and having problems every week with my most popular website (1-10k hits a day). website gets internal errors and intermittently goes extremely slow. I have about 10 sites in total most very small traffic. So just looking for something fast, good for WordPress sites and ideally good for migrating over onto. Please let me know your recommendations. My budget is £100 per month, ideally a little less. Thanks! Steven
Reviews and Ratings | | stevenbinks320 -
How to get the most reviews for in home service providers?
Most of my clients go to the clients home to provide their service. For example a plumber or a bed bug extermination. Most of my clients find it hard to ask for and get reviews even though they do a great job. Is there an app or anything else out there that makes the process easier and gets better results than just asking? Are there any review aggregator applications? Maybe an application that a client can write a review in one location and the review is pushed out to multiple sites like Google My Business or YP?
Reviews and Ratings | | PSLab0 -
How to address reviews that show up in Google but come from a business's own website?
One of my clients has a competitor who has a fairly poor reputation based on reviews on Google and Yelp. But, this competitor allows people to review them on their own website, and their "4.8" rating based on 250+ "reviews" show up in search engine results. I assume they are using schema markup to encourage that. My question is whether there is anything we can do to report this to Google, or otherwise make sure the general public is not fooled by these reviews?
Reviews and Ratings | | irapasternack2 -
The chicken community needs your helpful ideas
Hey Mozzers! We are currently working on reputation management for a client that sells chicken coops. They've gotten a few nasty reviews from one of the most popular community forums. Given the high DA it will be hard work (understatement of the year) to outrank that forum thread enough to knock it off the first page of SERPs. I've been brainstorming some unique ideas for the chicken community that could bring a more positive rapport to the product. We've considered an interactive game, polls, content for chicken communities and publications. Mozzers always have such fantastic insight, I thought I'd open up the brainstorm and see if anyone has a great, unique idea to drive traffic and increase brand engagement and awareness! Thanks so much in advance for your awesome ideas!
Reviews and Ratings | | localwork0 -
New building ownership and NAP - strategies for removing old listings with bad reviews
I have a question based on this scenario: An apartment building changes ownership. Previous owners were terrible and online listings have had terrible reviews. Since the apartment building now has a new brand name, new office address and phone number, the new owners want to create new online listings instead of claiming the old listings with the bad reviews. Also they want to report the old listings as "closed". They would like to remove the old listings with bad reviews from the old management and old brand name and start fresh, since they plan many improvements. Has anyone tried this strategy? How much luck has anyone had rebranding an apartment building and reporting old business listings as closed?
Reviews and Ratings | | DragonSearch0 -
Reusing reviews from other sites for branded rich snippet taken from brands testimonial page
Hi my customer has had a new website built for their custom home building company which has a testimonials page http://www.precisionhomes.com.au/testimonials.html This testimonials page has duplicate review content taken from another dedicated review site http://www.productreview.com.au/p/precision-homes.html My question is this, if I add review microdata to http://www.precisionhomes.com.au/testimonials.html will google recognize this in Rich snippets and the Brands Knowledge Graph or will it just consider it duplicate content?
Reviews and Ratings | | ravydavy0 -
Grade Us vs 5 Star Reviews?
We need to get some more reviews, so we're looking at either getting Grade Us or 5 Star Reviews' services. Does anyone have strong feelings about either one? Or another service? Thanks, Ruben
Reviews and Ratings | | KempRugeLawGroup0