20 March 2024
Appearing among the top results on search engines is everyone's goal, but only ten will have the privilege of earning a place on the first page. To win one, SEO is essential, and that's where customer reviews come in handy.
Find out how it works in this article!
The best sites are the ones we trust, and customer reviews are a key element in building that trust in your online store. But reviews can do even more: they help you improve your e-commerce SEO.
Working on SEO is essential to ensure you get :
Several elements play an important role in optimizing your e-commerce site's SEO: unique text, relevant keywords, quality images and alt text are just some of them.
There's no doubt that optimizing your site takes time and effort. What some people don't realize is that customer feedback also helps to improve SEO, quickly and with very little effort on your part.
The aim of Google and other search engines is to present users with the best possible search results. To determine the relevance of online pages to the keywords entered by users, Google uses the content of these pages.
By collecting customer reviews, you ensure that the content of your e-commerce pages is new, up-to-date and constantly updated. In this sense, customer reviews are considered user-generated content (UGC).
In Google's eyes, there's no difference between user-generated content and content created by you: if there's a piece of content on your page, Google will take it into account in its ranking.
In this section, we'll detail the 7 benefits of collecting and displaying customer reviews on your e-commerce pages.
As we've already mentioned, optimizing natural search engine optimization (SEO) requires time, knowledge and commitment. Customer reviews, on the other hand, are free, constant and require no commitment on your part.
Customer reviews give you the opportunity to rank for keywords related to your brand and products. Indeed, before making an online purchase, consumers actively search for reviews from those who have already purchased the product, using keywords such as "product name/brand + reviews".
Gathering customer reviews is therefore a strategy that gives you the opportunity to outperform your competitors and redirect more traffic to your site.
It's important to rank well on Google, but what prompts users to click on your site rather than your competitors' is the rich snippet.
Rich snippets are additional information that appears in search results alongside the "classic" elements (title, meta-description, and URL of your site) and make your page more attractive. Rating stars derived from reviews are an example of this.
It is now widely accepted that reviews inspire trust. Even with the best slogan and marketing strategies, customer reviews are considered more trustworthy because they come from a third-party and neutral entity.
Customer reviews help you improve your click-through rate (CTR) and, consequently, traffic, lead generation and sales.
Another factor in search engine optimization that search engines take into account when ranking is the duration for which a user stays on an online page.
If a user closes your page after a few seconds (i.e., if you have a high bounce rate), Google will infer that the page did not meet their expectations and will lower your ranking for the relevant keyword.
By collecting and displaying customer reviews, you increase the dwell time of your visitors. Indeed, the more reviews you have, the more time users spend on your page.
By improving your site's performance (including click-through rate), Google receives a positive signal: your site meets users' expectations. This signal is a crucial parameter in Google's ranking algorithm, which must constantly work on user experience to maintain its monopoly.
Example: you're ranked 8th in the search results, but thanks to the star ratings (Rich Snippet) of the reviews, your site is clicked on more than the one that appears in 3th position. Google will then analyze your site as more relevant and review its ranking.
NB: Even as part of your SEA strategy, customer reviews offer a number of advantages. If you use a Google-certified partner, customer review stars are sent to the search engine, which can then display them in Google Ads, Google Shopping or Google My Business. Online customer reviews also have an impact on your AdRank, i.e. the ranking of your paid ads.
It's important that your customers talk about you and your products. Customer reviews act as testimonials and help build your brand's image - in other words, your online reputation.
Note: Always respond to comments, especially to less positive ones. Most review collection systems allow for this. Remember to use your customers' comments as constructive criticism to improve your service!
How can you start improving the SEO of your online store through customer reviews? If you're not collecting them yet, now is the time to start.
We recommend opting for a closed review collection system, such as Certishopping, which allows you to:
However, with an open system, anyone can leave a review, even if they have never purchased from you.
To offer added value, it is advisable to choose the Certishopping module which offers multiple features allowing you to better manage your online reputation as well as your ad campaigns, the SEO of your website, personalized management of your social networks, and more.
Customer reviews are essential to e-commerce. Their reassuring power enables rapid and visible results on key performance indicators. Moreover, they provide a better shopping experience for your customers and allow you to control your online reputation and identify areas for improvement.
But as you may have understood, their interest does not stop there, because this SEO-optimized content provides added value highly appreciated by search engines looking for relevant and high-quality content for their users.
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