Product Reviews for SEO

5 star review that I recieved for my book, Web Marketing On All Cylinders.

Product review creation and optimization is a powerful opportunity to drive traffic to your site and drive readers to convert into buyers. Regular blog posts using long tail keywords to capture people searching for opinions on products and product specifications can generate tons of traffic and help convert customers. Some of the biggest blogs on the web are tech blogs with reviews. But what is also amazing is content that your customers create. Outsourcing long tail optimization to your own customers via reviews, ratings, and comments has a solid place in e-commerce SEO and is a foundational part of social media as well. Not to mention that reviews placed in product pages can increase conversions in addition to SEO! Just make sure the reviews are being indexed by Google. Many product review software packages such as Bazaarvoice display the reviews right on the product pages in a way Google can see/crawl, but some don’t. Google and Bing are getting better at crawling the JavaScript that can block reviews. Having separate review pages, such as on a subdomain for each product, is typically not a benefit. It is usually better to give the benefit to the product page itself. Google a sentence from a review and see if it appears in the search results. If so, you’re on your way to having it help your ranks.

Testimonials and Recommendations

Some of the most influential components in all advertising are testimonials and recommendations. From Google reviews to LinkedIn recommendations, you simply can’t afford not to make this social connection.

Are you asking your target customers what would have prevented them from buying this product/service?

It is important to get your customers to talk about their objections because it makes them more believable and relatable by someone in the early stages of the buying cycle.

Ask your customers what they liked as a result of buying this product/service.

Now customers can talk about why the purchase was worth it, despite their initial objections.

As I mentioned in the LinkedIn review section earlier, you can write intelligently crafted reviews for customers and send them for approval. As long as they agree with what you say, then the review will be more powerful if you have used at least these two questions. For more information on the science of testimonials, check out the ebook The Secret Life of Testimonials by Sean D’Souza. In The Psychology of Persuasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini discusses the key factors involved in getting people to buy and make decisions. One of his key principles is that of social proof, such as testimonials and reviews.

Still think your IT guy can do your web marketing?

As you can see, the world of Internet marketing ranges from studying psychology and technology to copywriting and design!