SEM Blog

Effects Of Consumer Reviews On SEO/SEM

Posted by Bryan at May 22nd, 2008

Links! Links! Links!

It’s all you ever hear anyone say when they talk about off-site SEO/SEM. Many people have been successful with basing their entire plan on getting just text links, but the truth is you can benefit so much more from those links being in a review of your company, product, or general website. Especially if the review is written by a consumer.

You’re link becomes that much stronger when in an article with more of your keywords and more relevancy to your site. Considering a review is a direct look at your site, you really can’t get much better of a link than that.

Let’s examine this from a few different angles:

• Credibility Of Review Location

Pro: The website that reviewed you is reputable enough and credible enough that you’ve just solidified another result in the first page SERPs that points right over to you.

Con: Unfortunately some sites just pump out reviews to fill up content and don’t even spend time with the product. Many of these sites are filled with ads and can leave a bad taste in peoples mouths, making them avoid anything listed on that site in their future searches.

• Quality Of The Review

Pro: Good reviews help sell people. The more enthusiastic the person is who reviews your site, the more likely someone else is going to make a visit over. Reviews don’t have to be epically long or contain anything special, they just have to be genuine to the person who reads it and actually focuses on the key points the people want to read about.

Cons: One of the top sites in your niche just wrote a review about your site. Perfectly written, clear points, everything. Issue is, it wasn’t in your favor. No you’ve got a negative review out ranking your main site on your keywords and everyone’s going to click there first.

If you run into any of these negatives, you can easily take care of the situation by getting involved yourself. Nearly all sites that post a review also have a comment field, so take advantage of that area to answer any issues or differences of opinions you might have with the person writing the review. Just remember not to get too mouthy or you’ll hurt yourself even more than that review did.