Started using a 3rd Party Review Company for our Website. Do we need to show the reviews or is a widget (badge) with a link back to review company sufficient enough from an SEO ranking point of view?

[PeteC12]

Hi All,

We have started to use a 3rd party review company and now have the choice of either implementing their re-supplied widgets (Java ) on our site showing customer reviews or use their an API to get this information.

1. The widgets (Java) , would be loaded once the page is actually loaded so I am not sure how and if google will read this information if at all?  If we use a widget then we won't be able to implement it with Schema.org although we will be able to use rich snippets to it will appear on any PPC (once we have had 30 reviews). If we go down the API route, it's more expensive for us but we can use the review schema.org for this. Does anyone have any experience of what works best for them ?..

2. We have a choice of having a widget showing latest reviews or just a badge (which is actually a link to the review site showing our reviews). From an SEO point of view, is one better than the other ? Does google actually read the content of the review or is the link back to the 3rd party review company sufficient enough to help with rankings etc.

3. Am I correct in assuming that by linking to a 3rd party review company and showing our reviews on our site , this will help with rankings as even though the content in the reviews doesn't really say much ,. I did see it was a ranking factor  on the survey but not sure how google uses this. ?

I've read up some information on reviews etc but wondered what the general consensus was with what others found works best for them

Any help greatly appreciated

Pete

[EGOL]

We use Shopper Approved and they provide a couple types of code that will do this for you.

*** They provide code for several badges and widgets that allow us to display recent reviews and summary reviews on our website.

*** They provide code that grabs our ratings from a Shopper Approved server and displays them on our website in search engine readable format.

*** They also provide schema code that causes our ratings to appear as stars beside our listings in the organic SERPs.

For SEO purposes here are my opinions....

**  I do not believe that Google reads the content of the customer reviews in the widget.

**  I do not believe that linking to Shopper Approved through the widget or through the badge is helpful.

**  I believe that having mentions and links on the Shopper Approved site is helpful, however, they generate enormous numbers of review pages that I can see in my webmaster tools account.  Generally, I would say that getting this many links on thin content cookie-cutter pages is dangerous, as it looks like manufactured links, but I am assuming that Google realizes that these are reviews and will not count them as negative as they are nofollowed.

**  Links to your sites in the Shopper Approved directory might be slightly helpful.

**  I believe that having lots of good rating, such as four or five stars, confirmed by a review site, might be helpful.

**  I believe that having four or five stars, out of a possible five, appearing  in the organic SERPs will help your clickthrough rate, which could help your rankings.

Our sales seem to be up a tiny amount since starting to use Shopper Approved.  Our rankings have always been good, so I can't say that we have received any measurable SEO benefit.

Our motivation for getting a review service was:  1) an easy method for collecting reviews,  2) an easy method for getting customer feedback on purchases,  3) an easy way to display reviews from TODAY's customers on our website, 4) use of the badge as a 'trust mark', and, 5) a way to use schema to get stars in the organic SERPs.

These are opinions only, nothing scientific.

[Fuel]

This article might address your third question:

http://www.komarketingassociates.com/blog/will-linking-to-third-party-sites-boost-your-seo-performance/

[PeteC12]

Many thanks for your thoughts and help on this. I will look into what you suggest.

thanks

Pete

[PeteC12]

Thanks Fuel for the article link.  I wll take a read

Pete