3rd Party Approved Reviews - Widget or API Feed - Any thoughts ?

[PeterCol12]

Hi Mozzers,

We use a google approved 3rd party review company to collect reviews for our branches and now also for our products( this is about to be implemented).

We currently use one of their widgets on our site (its javascript) to show the reviews. I don't think google can read this and  I don't think we currently, therefore, get any direct seo benefit from it.

My questions are as follows :

1. I obviously want to get any SEO benefit from any review text which customers leave but as the data itself is housed on the review site with a widget on my site pointing to it,should I use an API feed as opposed to a widget. If google can read the review text on my page - then surely i should some benefit from it even though, it could technically be classed as duplicate content

what are peoples thoughts ? .

thanks

Pete

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

"The only benefit is trust , increase CTR etc and obviously reviews markup."

This is a huge benefit though.  It's abut users at the end of the day and having those stars showing in the serps and having the reviews scrolling on your site (using a widget) has helped me enormously with CTR.  It's one of those where you need to think less about the technical SEO stuff and more about how having the reviews there will increase the CTR and conversion rates.  It also helps time on site - all MASSIVE ranking signals.

If I said to you that a piece of technical wizzardry could increase CTR, TOS and conversions then you'd learn how to do it and implement it like immediately.  Well that's what reviews do.  So i'd not worry about marking them up or just use a wordpress widget and get them on there. I'm not massively technical but we do have 500 5* reviews with a widget on every page of the site and are in the top 3 for most non-branded searches because of our CTR. Also google says they want to eventually live in a world without markup when the algo gets smarter so it's all going to be a moot point.

Sorry If i've missed the technical nuances of this but we're doing super well just having the nice comments up there on the site (which is more than lots of your competitors have)

[Roman-Delcarmen]

I think that a good options is create a plugin
So you can ask to your clients to give you a review in your site but using a third party API, so the first Idea is use the Google Business Review API.

to show off your Google My Business Reviews rating in stars, thumbs or squares.

For Local SEO I think is the best option and you will not share your DA with nobody.

[RuthBurrReedy]

Do the reviews appear anywhere else on the web? Are people leaving reviews on the reviewer's site, and they're visible there, and then you're pulling them in via this widget? Or are they only visible on your site, through the widget?

If the reviews are elsewhere on the web (for example on a review site such as Yelp or Angie's List), Google is going to understand that that content belongs on that site. Pulling it in via this widget probably won't send much in the way of a unique content signal; it's unlikely that it would be seen as duplicate content, though, as long as the page it appears on also has its own unique content. Appearing through the widget also means you likely won't be able to mark up the reviews using schema.org.

If they appear somewhere else, and Google can easily associate those reviews with your product, you'd probably be better served having a function on your own website where people can review your products there. Then, let those reviews live on your site, and the third-party reviews stay on the third-party reviewer site.

[PeterCol12]

Yes, that's what I thought, My only concern with using a widget though is the data is "owned" by the review company so whilst I'm displaying the rewiew on my site,  I am not getting any SEO benefit in terms of unique content whats' so ever.

The only benefit is trust , increase CTR etc and obviously reviews markup.

I am wondering if it's better to write something in addition to this 3rd party review software we use so customers can write the reviews and then the pages will benefit from the unique content and freshness..

Otherwise , All I'm really doing is having duplicate content

thanks

Peter

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Not because, the widget will point the source of the content
(if you add a google my business widget with the reviews of your clients)
the tag of the widget will tells google where the information is coming from.
At leasrt is my expriencie integrating widget from yelp, and google my business