Best Place To Aggregate Customer Reviews?
-
There is a plethora of choice today for aggregating customer reviews. BBB wants to collect ratings from our customers; there a commercial options that put me in more control; yelp wants to rate me locally. Google...
Given that I have some ability to steer customers toward my preferred review site, which one should I use? From an SEO perspective, have you noticed whether some these sites carry more weight or credibility than others?
I realize it may depend on the type of business we are. In this case I represent a software company and their customers are USA/global, rather than local.
-
I appreciate the synopsis and the good feedback.
In our case, we feel that we have a very strong ability to guide users to the site of our choice. Local seems like a misfire for a global software company.
Since there doesn't seem to be a loud consensus that we should be working with any specific site at the moment, I think we'll send reviewers to BBB, since customers sometimes tell us that is an important trust signal for them.
-
Really great links. Thanks!
-
Hi DarrenX,
You've gotten some very good feedback here. In sum:
-
Let your customers review you where they want to. A diverse review profile is good insurance against massive review loss (which happens in big waves on Google). If you lose some reviews at one site, at least you still have some at other sites.
-
When you have a chance to gently steer a customer toward a review site, Google+ Local is always going to be a top choice, because they dominate all local business verticals. Yelp is the obvious runner-up, given how much prominence Google currently gives their pages, but it is against Yelp's policies to ever ask for reviews, so you have to be careful there. Then, depending on your industry and geography, as members have said, you will find that certain directories happen to attract more reviews than others. See where your competitors are prominent and keep those directories in-mind.
The above is best practice advice for local businesses. However, you indicate that your current client is virtual rather than local, and develops software. I am not experienced with your industry, but would suspect that product review and technical publications/websites would be your target review sources. Maybe things like: http://reviews.cnet.com/?
I think the key here for you is to figure out where your customers are. Where do people go to find software reviews? That's where you need to be prominent.
-
-
I think this is a great perspective. In addition, I think there is great potential with G+ reviews if you can get them.
-
It really depends on the industry and location.
Check out these two resources. I know some of them don't accept reviews, but this should give you some info.
http://getlisted.org/resources/local-citations-by-category.aspx
-
My strategy has always been to point them at whatever suits your industry (amazon for product reviews, tripadvisor for travel/tourism, Google and Yelp for local biz, WeddingWire for wedding vendors, etc.) Then make a page on your site that is site.com/reviews and syndicate your reviews to that page. When someone Googles me + reviews, I want MY site coming up so I can highlight what I want when I want. It's just good reputation management. They can still see the rest further down the page but if I can come up #1 for highonseo reviews I sure want to.
-
When it doubt Google. Syndicating all your reviews with a plus profile will only help your SEO strategy. The only time I would prefer another review site is if it was specific to my industry like urbanspoon for restaurants or angies list for contractors.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How should the Heading Tags be used in Blogs to gain the Best results in SEO?
There are various Heading Tags from H1 to H6. In what order and priority should they be used in order to get best reach and ranking in google. Is every Tag a must in a blog?
Algorithm Updates | | sne79790 -
Best way to handle outdated & years old Blog-posts?
Hi all, We have almost 1000 pages or posts from our blog which are indexed in Google. Few of them are years old, but they have some relevant and credible content which appears in search results. I am just worried about other hundreds of non-relevant posts which are years old. Being hosting hundreds of them, our website is holding lots of these useless indexing pages which might be giving us little negative impact of keeping non-ranking pages. What's the best way to handle them? Are these pages Okay? Or must be non-indexed or deleted? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
More pages or less pages for best SEO practices?
Hi all, I would like to know the community's opinion on this. A website with more pages or less pages will rank better? Websites with more pages have an advantage of more landing pages for targeted keywords. Less pages will have advantage of holding up page rank with limited pages which might impact in better ranking of pages. I know this is highly dependent. I mean to get answers for an ideal website. Thanks,
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Best way to geotag
Hi guys - this question isnt strictly SEO its more of a programming one. I am currently building a directory with a number of different retail shops listed there. At the moment I have google map installed there but I have to drag and drop the pin - rather than google searching the address I input and putting it in themselves automatically. Can anyone point me to documentation on how to get this to word properly? Whether or not I can get the above to work aside - could someone tell me how to use the google drop pin to get the co-ordinates and and correctly add them into the page header? Finally - I want to geotag all images on the page with the same coordinates as the droppin too (as the pictures are taken on premises). Can anyone recommend software that might be able to do this en mass automatically? Thanks in advance Alex
Algorithm Updates | | socialgrowth0 -
Decrease in Organic Traffic Due to Google Places
Hello there, we are national junk removal company and have franchises in most major cities in the US. We wanted to check to see if anyone else has seen a drop in organic traffic with the changes that Google has done with the amalgamation of Google Places with the organic rankings. All our places pages are ranking quite well and we are ranking higher organically but it appears that people go to the Google Places page and then either leaving or picking up the phone and calling our 1800 number to book a job instead of going to our website to make the booking. The interesting thing is that although Google started these changes back in October 2010 we have seen the drop in organic traffic mostly starting in April, even though we have seen a steady increase in organic ranking across the board. Has any other franchise based company seen this happen as well? Your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | imspecialistgotjunk0 -
Best way to find new studies?
I'm wondering how sites break news without dedicating too much time researching. Are there any tools that you use? For example, if you wanted to be one of the first people to know when a celebrity was diagnosed with a health condition, how would you go about doing that?
Algorithm Updates | | nicole.healthline0 -
What's the best way to discover which search terms competitors are highly-ranked for?
I'd like to know for which search terms competitors appear in the top 10, but I haven't found an efficient way to do so. Any help is appreciated...thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | actionagainsthunger0 -
Google place page Images
Is there any real difference in uploading an images directly to your google places page or linking an image from another site? I have heard that you get better results if you upload a photo to photo bucket then to insider pages then post that link to your google places page. To me it just seems a bit odd to do things this way. I get that it's suppose to give you more back links however I don't think it would necessarily be relevant or useful for the user. Any thoughts??
Algorithm Updates | | christinarule0