Becoming a Google Star with online reviews: learning from the experts

Ever wondered how online reviews can help you become the star of Google SERPs for both organic and paid search marketing? You're not alone.

That's why we asked digital marketing experts from Home Logic, Evosite, and of course our internal experts at Trustpilot, to share their thoughts on the crucial role of online reviews in search marketing.

Let's dive in.

Google has such a massive impact on the digital marketing industry, yet many companies, particularly eCommerce companies, aren’t optimising their search strategies and incorporating Google in their business strategy.

Our established panel of experts have provided a wide range of advice that any company can incorporate to start seeing better results in their search visibility, traffic conversions, and paid search campaigns.

Reviews will improve your search marketing performance

Ash Rama, Global Head of Training at Trustpilot

Collecting reviews is an easy way to create fresh content every day, improve your on and off-page SEO, and build a reputation using your customers’ authentic voice.

Choosing to collect Product reviews on a trusted third-party platform like Trustpilot can also lead to Product Reviews Review Snippets in organic search.

If your brand has an active presence and profile page on Trustpilot (which is in the top 1% of the most visited sites in the world, giving it an impressive domain authority), it's highly likely that your profile will be displayed at the top of search results, complete with shiny gold Review Snippets.

Reviews can also optimise your PPC campaigns by powering Google Seller Ratings (GSRs).

Google Seller Ratings appear in paid ads, and are a powerful tool to boost your campaigns across Google and Bing. GSRs help boost your conversion rate and lower your bounce rate.

Bonus: Your reviews can also appear in Google Shopping, which helps shorten the decision-making time for a consumer looking to make a purchase.

Turning traffic into revenue with reviews

Charlie Clark, Digital Marketing Manager at Home Logic and owner of Minty Digital

Home Logic is a home solutions company whose mission is to bring innovative, eco-friendly and cost effective energy saving solutions to the homes of the UK.

Charlie was working hard to improve traffic, sales, and brand reputation for the organisation when he decided to invest in Trustpilot.

With over billions of websites on the internet, it’s crucial to implement the correct digital strategy to boost your online visibility. But ensuring you’re visible from a search perspective is only the first step towards a viable search strategy.

92% of consumers now read online reviews, and more than 80% of people trust reviews as much as personal recommendation. With competition getting tougher than ever, it’s essential to give a professional, trustworthy and reliable image to potential buyers.

Social proof led Home Logic to better marketing. Customer feedback helped the business increase click-through rate by 20%, and their latest PPC competitor campaign saw a 90% conversion rate increase thanks to Google Seller Ratings!

GSRs significantly lowered Home Logic’s cost per conversion, and online reviews helped the company’s website reach Google’s first page.

Their overall organic traffic also saw a 412% uplift YoY, helping Home Logic reach over £250,000 of revenue in Q1, compared to £300,000 in the whole of 2016.

Being successful in the world of digital

Aran Reeks, Head of Client Strategy & Tom Sangers, Head of Search at Evosite

Evosite is a digital agency specialised in eCommerce, conversion rate optimisation, business systems integration, web design, and development. Aran Reeks and Tom Sangers traveled to London from Taunton to share unique insights to help you succeed in the world of digital.

This year, the UK will become the first country in the world where half of all advertising spend goes on digital media. It’s clear that the digital realm takes first priority for companies and spend is likely to increase as the years pass by.

Search is now worth £3.77 billion, and in this new digital era, it’s getting harder and harder for companies to set their objectives and optimise their websites to achieve them.

To drive more conversions with optimised paid search campaigns, you’ll need to understand your customers and their needs in order to create relevant campaigns. This starts with analysing your data, understanding your audience’s behaviour, and finding new insights.

This data will help you personalise your ads (by location, demographics, age, gender, income or interests) to stand out from competitors.

The Evosite digital experts also recommend sticking to PPC’s best practices like mobile bid adjustment, ad extensions, test ads running, location targeting, negative keywords, and review extensions.

But optimising paid search isn’t enough to grow revenue. To transform new traffic into sales, you also need to make sure your user experience is close to perfection.

It’s getting tougher to keep the user’s attention, which is why your website should be entirely optimised. Keep visitors focused long enough to convert them.

Reduce uncertainty, uncover areas of weakness on your website, and improve customer experience to stay ahead of competition and grow revenue.

By keeping your customers happy and satisfied, you’re more likely to see them return, spend more and recommend your business to others.

So where does optimisation start?

Evosite advise reviewing all of your account's history, including all keywords, adverts, impressions, and clicks to identify where you can make improvements to your ROI.

And as digital continues to take over, consumers are proactively looking for reviews. Third-party validation has become essential, which is why collecting reviews is a good way to appease consumers who have taken up a new way of making a purchase decision, while also improving your search and paid search performance.

If this sounds of interest, you can learn more about reviews and SEO by checking out our complete guide to reviews below: