A good review schema markup tutorial?

[AaronHenry]

Howdy Moz,

Still kind lost of review markup and the best way to get it implemented into a Wordpress site. Any suggestions on a good tutorial that walks you through the process?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Imedia,

Smart questions. Let me explain how to differentiate these two forms of user generated content.

Reviews: These should be posted directly by the customer on third party platforms (think Yelp, YP, etc.). You should never post a review on behalf of a customer and should not set up a station in your place of business to collect them from customers. Always let customers post reviews on their own, using their own accounts. Also, never take a review off a third party site and re-publish it on your website. You can link from your website to your review profile on third party sites, but do not re-publish the reviews found there. Further, do not encourage customers to post the same review across multiple sites. Be sure to read the guidelines of each of the major review sites so that you know what is allowed in terms of solicitation. For example, Yelp forbids you to ask customers for reviews. They want it to be completely spontaneous. Google doesn't mind review solicitation, provided you are not specifically asking for positive reviews. All reviews should be unbiased. Here is a super page in our new Moz Local Learning Center that links directly to the review guidelines of top platforms. This should really help you: http://moz.com/learn/local/understanding-review-guidelines

Testimonials: These are reviews of your business that you are receiving orally or in writing from your customers and then publishing directly on your own website. Do not ever publish these on third party sites, as if you were the customer. Only publish them on your own website. You can put them on a single testimonials page, or you can seed them on different pages, as appropriate, throughout your website.

It's great to earn both reviews on third party sites and testimonials on your own site. Both assets make you stronger!

There is a paid tool you might like to know about if you're getting serious about creating a review and testimonial acquisition campaign. Check out getfivestars.com. This is a unique and very powerful little tool that walks your customers through a process of leaving feedback and then being guided to either leave a testimonial or review. It also allows you to intervene with a customer who had a negative experience, lessening the chances of them leaving a negative review. You can, of course, handle review and testimonial acquisition manually, but you might at least like to consider GetFiveStars if you're considering implementing a really polished, concrete campaign.

Hope this helps!

[AaronHenry]

Sure does make sense! Quick question about the source of the review. You always want to get testimonials from clients as reference of your good work. However, these are self generated while reviews are done independently. Is it proper to use the testimonials or the review?

If testimonial, how do most handle ratings?

If it is the review, what about potential duplicate content issues?

Thanks for all of the education!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Imedia,

Basically, all you have to do is go to the app William has linked to. You can use this to take written testimonials your customers have given you, enter them into the tool, take the code and paste it into your website on a testimonials page you've created. This way, you can have on-site testimonials which Google may also display by means of stars in their main SERPs. Does this make sense?

[WilliamKammer]

Depending on the amount of reviews you need to mark up, this tool may be all you need: http://schema-creator.org/review.php

Just embed the generated code and you'll be good to go, or it will at least give you a good start.

There are also Wordpress plugins that allow this sort of generation in the backend.

Hope that helps.