Benefits of Customer Reviews for SEO

We have mentioned before how critical customer reviews are in improving the reputation of your dealership. However, this is probably the first time we will discuss how it can be a powerful weapon in your SEO arsenal. You may not be aware of the several benefits of customer reviews for SEO; nonetheless, these two have been linked for a long time. Based on the study of Moz, 10% of your SERP is affected by reviews.

Different Benefits of Customer Reviews for SEO

We don’t need to tell you how important SEO is to improve your authority and succeed in the online world. With Google adding suggested videos, featured answers, and snippets on their search results, it is crucial to ensure that your dealership remains competitive. Here are some ways on how you can enjoy the SEO benefits of customer reviews.

Customer Reviews Offer Additional Content and Keyword

Your customers may not be content creators, but the reviews they are leaving on your company profile, blog articles, and social media profile serve as added content. Instead of simple feedback, the crawlers will see them as content. Therefore, every time someone leaves a review, you send signals to Google that your content has been updated and will recrawl it. Regardless of whether it is a negative or positive review, it is possible to contain keywords related to your business. With this, Google can have an accurate interpretation of what your dealership is all about. Achieving a higher position on the search result is one of the benefits of customer reviews to dealerships.

Gain an Edge Over Your Competitors

Your competitors may have been focusing on the traditional side of SEO, like content creation and backlinking; you can take advantage of the benefits of customer reviews to be a step ahead of the SEO competition. Accumulating content and posting the snippets to your website will contribute to your SEO efforts. An increased number of reviews will also translate to higher trust, which will mean a higher CTR.  As you all know, CTR is another factor used by Google on their SERP. As long as there is an increase in your organic traffic, there’s a greater chance that Google will see you as popular or someone with authority in this market. Google also want to provide their audience with better user experience. An increase in organic traffic results in better ranking.

Benefits of Reviews: Search Engine Sites

In the past couple of years, there has been a significant change in the game of SEO. However, some things remained constant such as the quality of the backlink. While we are not mainly talking about the link here, the same thing works on customer reviews. Google has become highly clever now and can understand the quality and value of the reviews. Positive testimonials will mean that your website is valuable and of high quality. It will not be surprising why Google will mostly show dealerships with high-quality reviews. It is also due to their policy of offering a better experience to their audience. You better focus on providing top-notch service to your audience and collect positive reviews to enjoy the benefits of customer reviews for your business.

Responding to Your Customer Reviews Increases Your Engagement Rate

We understand how Google can be secretive and ambiguous in letting us in about the factors that may affect their ranking. Nonetheless, we still encourage you to respond to the reviews that you are getting. Interacting with your customers by replying to the reviews will improve your engagement rate. It also sends a signal to your customers that you value their opinion. Responding will also allow you to experience the different benefits of customer reviews for SEO, such as:

• Introducing Keywords that Google will crawl.
• Regularly interacting with your customers prompts Google that your website has fresh content.
• Resolving negative reviews can encourage your customers to change their feedback, which will significantly help your authority and CTR. Let us remind you that Google uses these metrics for its ranking.

It Affects Your Bounce Rate

Most SEO experts and website managers are aware that a high bounce rate can harm your page authority. You will be less prominent on the search result if you have a higher bounce rate. However, if you integrate the customer reviews into your site, there’s a higher chance that the visitor will navigate on the other page of your site. There is also an increased percentage of completing a purchase, which is one of the benefits of customer reviews to dealerships. Reviews will boost your brand trust and customer knowledge. There will be a higher likelihood that they will spend a longer time browsing your website. A decreased bounce rate means a better Google ranking.

While it may be true that there are different benefits of customer reviews for your business, its advantages for your SEO strategy could be even more. Customer reviews may contain lesser but more accurate information than the listing that comes with a meta description. Moreover, 48% of the customers will visit your dealership websites after reading the reviews.

How to Enjoy the Benefits of Customer Reviews for SEO

The importance of customer reviews in the dealership industry is undeniable. However, since Google can be ambiguous in their algorithm, incorporating them into your marketing strategy could be challenging. In the past couple of years, there have been strategic advice and studies on the SEO benefits of customer reviews. Let us talk about how you can make this a powerful tool of your SEO strategy.

 Create a Strategy That Will Encourage Others to Leave Review

If you are not getting enough customer reviews, it will not be contributing to your SEO efforts. Google and other primary search engine sites would like to see that people take some time to leave reviews about your business. Sadly, not a lot of your customers will leave you customer reviews. They are more likely to leave a review if they experience something disappointing. Therefore, you need to have that conscious effort to encourage your customers to leave them to experience the benefits of customer reviews. Based on the study, 70% of the customers would be willing to leave a testimonial if you politely asked them.

Asking to Enjoy the Benefits of Customer Reviews

Whether you are making follow-ups through your email campaign, after-sale support, SMS messaging, social media support, the timing when you ask for the reviews must be impeccable. You might want to give it a day or two before you ask for a review. Remember, you don’t want it to be too long since they may forget details about their experience. Sending messages during the morning also produce a better result.

Pay Attention to Your Approach

You should be very cautious about how you will ask for customer reviews. You want to extract their authentic experience, and you want them to provide all the information they can share. Nonetheless, you don’t want to ask too complex questions since this will only turn them away. Ask them to give a summary of their experience, which highlights the Pros and Cons. It is one way to provide your prospects information about your company and experience the benefits of customer reviews for your business.

Be Persistent

If your customers are not responding to your request, you should remind them again about this. However, you don’t want to sound too pushy. Limit your follow-ups to 1-2 emails, and make sure to send them a couple of days apart.

Knowing How to Respond Properly

We’ve already talked before about how you should respond to different customer reviews, regardless if they are negative or positive. This method is just as crucial as collecting reviews. Google has already confirmed the SEO benefits of customer reviews. Moreover, it improves the connection between the customers and the dealership. So, once you receive a review, you should already have a plan to respond to it. Remember that you need to answer the reviews with a rational and level mind. If you are emotionally charged, take some time to calm your nerves before you respond. However, do not wait for a day before you respond to the review, especially if it is negative. You want to prevent any possible harm that it can cause.

Choosing the Platform

There are different review platforms for company reviews nowadays. However, it would be best to focus your efforts more on a database of dealerships. It would be better for you to go for a niche-focused than on general review sites. Nonetheless, you still want to be present on top listing sites such as Yelp, Facebook Reviews, and Google Reviews. For a dealership, Auto Sales Reviews would be a good choice. Regarding the SEO benefits of customer reviews, it does not mean that a listing site would be better if it is a certified partner of Google Review.

Find out the answers to these questions before choosing the platform:

• What methods are they using to fight fake reviews?
• How many dealerships are found on their platform?
• How many reviews do they receive each month?

Be sure to spend some time doing research. You want to make sure that the reviews that you will receive can help improve your SERP.

What are the Benefits of Customer Reviews on Your Google Ranking?

Google highly trusts word-of-mouth marketing. They will take your reviews’ quality and quantity into account when evaluating your position in the search result. Like how customers will be using reviews before proceeding with the purchase, search engine sites will also use this to validate your SERP.

Google has been committed to delivering factual, valuable, and accurate information to its audience. When you enter a search term on Google, the search engine site will use three factors that will directly affect your ranking; prominence, distance, and relevance. They will show the importance and reach to those who are using the local search term. For instance, if you are looking for a New Jersey used car dealership, the search result will show options within your proximity. Moreover, a dealership with low reviews will be outranked by a dealership with stellar reviews. Keep these in mind if you want to reap the SEO benefits of customer reviews.

How Much Will Reviews Affect SEO?

To tell you frankly, it affects SEO a lot. One of the most significant parameters that affect a website’s SEO would be online reviews. Last 2017, the impact of reviews on SEO has increased to around 20%. It is no longer surprising since more and more customers rely on online reviews to make an informed decisions. Some of the benefits of customer reviews for your business include improving your visibility, boosting your ranking, and ensuring that you are a step ahead of the competition. Here are some reasons why it can affect your position on search results.

User-Generated Content

Google’s algorithm will often monitor and crawl fresh user-generated content to determine if a website is still active or not. Therefore, most dealerships will invest in their content marketing strategy to produce high-quality and relevant content. Unfortunately, remaining consistent could be a challenge. It will take a considerable amount of your time, and hiring a professional content generator could be costly. Therefore, you should understand the benefits of customer reviews to dealerships.  Your customer will be posting text, videos, and images when doing a review. All these materials are fresh content that Google will crawl.

Online Review Quantity

Dealerships receiving a high volume of positive reviews will continue to rank higher on the search engine result. Most of the reviews will contain keywords that will help Google accurately define your business’s nature. When Google implemented its new policy of removing Anonymous Reviews, a lot of websites were downranked.  With this, you will already have an idea about the SEO benefits of customer reviews.

Online Reputation

Reputation, whether bad or good, will affect your online reputation. Therefore, acquiring new reviews regularly can be the life of your online authority. A single bad review may not prompt you to lose your position. However, credible, convincing, and consistent reports of wrongdoings will cause you to lose your first-page status.

You should never underestimate the benefits of customer reviews for SEO. Now more than ever, customers are heavily relying on customer reviews to assess the reputation and authority of the dealership. Follow our recommendation above if you want to implement reviews on your SEO strategy.