{"id":77,"date":"2020-08-28T09:56:19","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T09:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bridgeurl.com\/blog\/?p=77"},"modified":"2020-08-28T09:56:19","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T09:56:19","slug":"local-seo-hacks-why-reviews-matter-and-how-to-leverage-them-for-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bridgeurl.com\/blog\/local-seo-hacks-why-reviews-matter-and-how-to-leverage-them-for-businesses\/","title":{"rendered":"Local SEO Hacks: Why Reviews Matter and How to Leverage Them for Businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything in SEO goes back to this golden tenet: Google provides users with the best experience possible. And every element that contributes to this lofty goal improves your ranking.<\/span><\/p>\n

As such, reviews \u2014 no matter how peripheral they seem \u2014 matter. In a conventional white-hat SEO campaign, the strategies revolve around keywords and codes, and reviews may be brushed off. However, this customer-generated content helps advance your site to the top of the results page because it improves customer experience; reviews help them decide.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reviews accomplish two goals: compel your customers to take action and fortify your Local SEO services.<\/span><\/p>\n

For SEO: Reviews Make for Rich Results Listings<\/b><\/h2>\n

Rich results are listings on the results page that go beyond the standard blue link. They have ratings, images, carousels, and more. These were borne out of the need to help users decide whether that listing is relevant to their search.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The rule is, the more information on the listing, the easier the decision.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This applies to sites that use markup language for social proof. When Google crawls your site, it recognizes the markup for reviews, which appear as golden stars under the listing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These golden stars instantly make your listing stand out from the results page. After all, 84 percent of shoppers <\/span>trust online reviews<\/span><\/a> as much as a personal recommendation. And it doesn\u2019t take many reviews to convince them: 68 percent of shoppers form an opinion after reading between one and six online testimonies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Using <\/span>SEO software<\/span><\/a> to management and analyze higher rating (the closer to five golden stars) leads to a higher click-through rate (CTR). This amplifies your SEO efforts \u2014 analysts observed a strong correlation between CTR and search rankings. If Google sees that a lot of people are clicking your site, then your site must be providing a great experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

More importantly, a higher CTR generates a lot more traffic, which means more opportunities to convert and close a sale.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For SEO: Customer Feedback as Fresh, Keyword-Rich Content<\/b><\/h2>\n

The more content you publish, the more Google\u2019s crawlers will visit your site and reassess your ranking. Every time you make an update on your site, the search engine crawls it and evaluates your site. And thanks to the <\/span>Freshness Algorithm<\/span><\/a>, search engines prefer fresh content.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

High-quality content is prized because, going back to our golden tenet, it gives users an excellent experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although you did not generate the reviews, Google still sees these testimonials as fresh content. When users leave a review on your site, the search engine has something new to crawl and index. What\u2019s more, these reviews likely contain keywords relevant to your product, service, or location, like:<\/span><\/p>\n