Three ways of collecting and displaying ratings and reviews can improve your SEO and Organic Search Ranking.

In recent years ratings and reviews have turned into must-haves for every ecommerce business. Among the benefits that come with collecting and displaying customer feedback are: a boost in sales, increased trust in your business and reduced return and cancellation, rates to name just a few. But did you know that collecting and displaying ratings and reviews can also aid your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and can ultimately contribute to higher organic search ranking of your web shop/website?

Back to basics

For those of you who are less familiar with the digital marketing world, “organic” search results are the “naturally” matched web page listings that are considered most relevant to the user’s search query (and which are not Ads; see example below). Appearing as high up the page as possible on organic search rankings will increase the visibility of your business, which makes it easier for you to be discovered by potential clients and position yourself ahead of your competition.

The “natural” ranking of your website in search engines depends on your SEO efforts and factors like web page traffic, the quality of your content and its relevance. Google uses a complex algorithm that combines hundreds of indicators according to which it ranks the relevance of websites to specific search terms. It is no secret that the search engine keeps these indicators in confidence, so a list of what factors are considered is not available.

So how can collecting and displaying ratings and reviews improve your SEO and organic search ranking?

1. Easy keyword research

Keywords are terms that match the content of your website to the search queries of potential customers. Hence, the more relevant your keywords, the higher your website will rank on search results. But how do you choose the most relevant words and appear in front of your future customers? Well, let your customers answer that question!

Reviews are customer-generated content in the form of free text that capture the sentiments of your current clients (aka projection of your target group) regarding your products or services. This feedback can not only be used to give you insight into your business performance, but also provide you with keywords that clients relate to your company, hence saving you time in pinpointing these terms yourself.

2. Fresh content for your website

To appear higher on the organic search rankings your website should be continuously updated with fresh content. A note of caution here: not everybody agrees that fresh content directly influences organic search rankings. However, the “Freshness” of your content can have an impact on to the click-through-rate (CTR) of your website and vice versa- if your website suddenly gets higher CTR your it might indicate to Google that content changes have been made. Fresh content is also more engaging, easily indexed and more relevant.

However, feeding your web page with unique and at the same time relevant content on an almost daily basis is hard, challenging and takes a lot of time spent on planning, preparing and executing. The good news is - reviews count as dynamic content! Thus, integrated reviews can continuously provide fresh content for your website.

An important question might pop up here: is review integration difficult? The answer is not at all! Ratings and reviews can be integrated through a widget which can display your latest reviews. See an example below:

As mentioned before Google ranks your website based on its relevance. The information on your website should be highly connected to the product and/or service you are selling. Furthermore, it should also be relevant for your customer pool and their searches. Sounds demanding, right? Again, customer feedback can be the solution here! Often through reviews one can discover what problems or frustrations customers might encounter with a concrete product or service. Once you discover these, you can focus your website’s content on addressing these issues and providing answers.

Bonus point: according to different sources, having ratings and reviews on your website is in fact one of the factors Google uses to rank your web shop!

3. Drive traffic

One of the best ways to drive more relevant traffic to your site is by setting up Rich Snippets. These are a schema markup code to structure data embedded in a website. Or in simpler terms, it provides a short summary or extra bit of information about a search result. Review Rich Snippets, for example, show your average star rating and count as social proof for your business. They show on organic search like this:

Rich Snippets cannot directly influence your organic ranking, but they make your page stand out among similar results. Hence the code increases your visibility which translates into more visits to your website, more traffic and higher CTR.

Conclusion:

Collecting and publishing ratings and reviews can have a substantial impact on your SEO and organic search rankings. As explored above customer feedback can be used for keywords research, can help you feed your website with fresh content and can drive traffic to your website. Collect and publish ratings and reviews to accelerate the growth of your business and use it as a tool to constantly generate fresh, unique marketing content.

Discover & download the official eKomi Module for PrestaShop here