More than nine out of 10 buyers say online reviews impacted their buying decisions. While that shouldn’t come as a shock, what may surprise you is how many ways reviews affect buyers.
Reviews go far beyond an authentic assessment of the quality of a product and insight into a brand. Reviews play a significant role in increasing clickthrough rates (CTRs), search engine optimization (SEO), and improving overall visibility and reputation.
Reviews and Clickthrough Rates
Your online reputation is key to whether people will click on your paid listings or organic search results. If someone is unfamiliar with your brand, reviews give them confidence that they can trust you.
When products or companies have a sufficient volume of positive reviews, they become more attractive to potential customers and increase the likelihood of a click.
Why? So much of a purchase decision comes down to risk avoidance. There are still perceived risks when making an online purchase or deciding to do business with a company when you find them online versus visiting their location in person. Too many people feel they’ve been ripped off or scammed from online activity. Rarely do people make purchase decisions when they don’t trust the company or its products.
Reviews Provide Social Proof
Reviews provide that oh-so-important social proof, showing that others have used these products and had good results. Reviews reduce risk by providing assurance that a company can be trusted to deliver on what they’re selling. Trust is key to CTR. If you don’t believe a company is trustworthy, you aren’t likely to click on the link to its website or product pages.
Better Reviews = Better CTRs
One recent study looked at the impact of reviews on CTRs in the Google Map Pack. The higher the star rating, the more clicks listings received. Businesses with four- and five-star reviews got as much as 69% of all clicks. The study also reported that going from a three-star to a five-star rating produces 25% more clicks. When searchers were asked why they chose to click on a particular business after searching on Google, 56% said positive reviews and star ratings were the determining factor.
Similar results were shown from organic results — four- and five-star ratings got more clicks than those with one, two, three, or no stars.
Negative reviews, on the other hand, create significant liability when it comes to CTRs. Just 3% of consumers say they would consider buying from a business with an average rating of two or fewer stars. That’s one reason why it’s so important to respond to your reviews and resolve any issues.
Reviews Impact More Than Just Google
Reviews don’t just impact CTRs from Google. Whether people are using a search engine, visiting a review site like Sitejabber, or spending time on your website, reviews influence the decision to click. Prominently featuring authentic reviews provides a competitive advantage and encourages deeper engagement.
Reviews and Search Engine Optimization
When you’re trying to figure out how to improve your SEO, it’s a good idea to see what Google recommends. For reviews and SEO, Google says: “High-quality, positive reviews from your customers can improve your business visibility and increase the likelihood that a shopper will visit your location.”
Google focuses on three key ingredients in its algorithmic recipe for determining search rankings:
- Relevance
- Proximity
- Authority
And guess what? Reviews impact all three. Information in reviews can help confirm that local business location details are accurate. Most importantly, reviews heighten your business’s relevance and authority.
Reviews Provide Context
Reviews add context and often provide additional details and keywords that answer the questions searchers have. That context gives search engine information when deciding which results to show for queries.
When it comes to ranking signals, reviews are the second most important factor, only to details in a company’s Google Business Profile.
Reviews Help with Off-site SEO
Businesses spend a lot of time optimizing their websites or storefronts. It’s important to do and within their control. Off-site SEO is a little more difficult but just as necessary. Reviews help with off-site SEO by providing credible backlinks to your website or product listings.
Search engines use these off-site signals to measure relevance, authority, and trustworthiness. Whether it’s from Google or third-party review sites, both drive traffic and impact SEO.
Third-Party Review Sites Drive SEO
Research from Moz shows that third-party reviews carry as much as 50% of the ranking weight. After all, Google wants to show the highest-quality results to meet searchers’ expectations. That’s what keeps searchers coming back to Google time and time again, so search engines are placing a high priority on trust signals such as reviews to determine which companies or products to show.
Reviews on third-party sites such as Sitejabber not only help send trust signals, but also help with referral traffic. When someone searches for a brand or product, third-party review sites often show up near the top of results. At the same time, credible third-party sites have high authority levels. Links from third-party sites carry more weight than links from other sources when it comes to SEO. Not only can third-party review sites create more qualified leads, but they can also help your SEO.
Another area where reviews can help SEO is generating long-tail keywords that target specific search queries. It may be impractical to focus marketing efforts on long-tail keywords, but reviewers mentioning less-commonly-searched terms and keywords can help your site or products rank when someone searches for them.
Search engines also take into account recency. Reviews provide fresh user-generated content even if your website or product listings haven’t been updated in a while.
Reviews and Visibility
SEO goes hand-in-hand with visibility, and reviews impact both. Positive results can boost your search results, which also increases your overall visibility.
Getting the Word Out
At one time, being the best-kept secret may have been a great word-of-mouth marketing tactic, but in today’s online world, that’s no longer the case. If you’re not visible, you simply don’t exist to anyone looking online.
Reviews are a great way to spread the word about what you’re offering. Because reviews can show up in a variety of places — your website, product listings, search engines, and review sites — each one improves your visibility.
Reviews Play a Role at Every Stage of the Buying Process
Reviews impact purchasing decisions at every stage of the buying process. Gartner’s research demonstrated just how important this is for consumers:
- 53% use reviews when they are undecided about which products or services they want to buy.
- 41% use reviews before they know which product or service they want to buy.
- 32% use reviews when they know which brand they want to buy from, but not the specific product or service.
- 25% use reviews even after deciding which brand and which product or service they want to buy.
Reviews even play a part after the sale. Buyers use reviews to validate purchases and mitigate any buyer’s remorse.
Converting Searchers to Buyers
One more thing reviews do? Reviews convert searchers to buyers. From CTRs to SEO to visibility, reviews provide social proof and trust that makes consumers feel confident in making a purchase. Reviews play an important role in forming impressions that drive sales. And, isn’t that what it’s all about?
Sitejabber lists reviews from more than 130,000 businesses and helps companies of all sizes to manage their reputation by collecting, monitoring, and sharing business and product reviews. Learn more about how Sitejabber can help your business today.
