How do we know that reviews improve SEO?
Well, SEO is a complex field that relies on a variety of ever-changing components. This is precisely the reason why it’s virtually impossible to directly correlate organic traffic increase (or decrease) to any one single factor.
However, Yotpo analyzed thousands of eCommerce sites across multiple verticals whose only common denominator was that they all started using reviews. Over the course of 9 months, you can see that all of their organic traffic increased.
Customer reviews provide your site with a variety of fresh, relevant UGC that shows search engines not only is your site active, but you aren’t just talking to your customers, but they are talking with you and about you. This is serious SEO gold that’s almost impossible to rival with any other marketing strategy.
Additionally, customer reviews help you organically build up long-tail keywords, or specific search phrases that have low competition but high search intent. These keywords generally consist of phrases that users search for but brands may not think to include in their keywords. For instance, maybe you have optimized for “mineral make-up,” but you are facing a large amount of competition for this keyword that makes it hard to rank high. In contrast, “mineral make-up that won’t clog pores,” may have much less competition and be searched by users with a specific intent to find and buy this product. Your users, by posting what they love about your product, can give insight into how your audience really talks and what they search for.
It makes sense for potential customers to listen to what your current community is saying, posting, and sharing, which is why even Google now considers customer feedback a valuable way to measure a site’s ranking. In this way, user content is a powerful shaping force for SEO because it helps you optimize according to what people are really searching for, not what you think they are searching for.
