harnessing the power of online reviews by rob kerry

#SMX #12C2 @RobKerry

Rob Kerry • Co-founder • Ayima (SEO Agency)

Harnessing The Power Of Online

Reviews


• Based in the UK

• Worked in SEO for over 15 years

• Used to be known as evilgreenmonkey

• Co-founded the SEO agency, Ayima

• Grown to a team of over 100 people with offices in

London, New York, Raleigh NC, San Francisco,

Vancouver & Sweden – Hong Kong coming soon!

Rob Kerry - About Me


1. The basics: Schema & Rich Snippets

2. What not to do: Spam & Deception

3. Review platforms: Third Party, DIY or Both?

4. The perfect score: Keeping your ★★★★★

5. Getting creative: Automating Review/Reputation Management

6. Easter egg: *Exclusive* Free Code To Do This ⬆

What We Will Cover


The Basics


Business

Types of Review

Product

Event Offer Place Critic


Business Reviews


Product Reviews


Review Sources

Your Website


• Google can index reviews on your own website as well

• Add product reviews or create a business review site

• They follow an industry standard Schema.org format

• Used on 2.4% of all websites and 18.4% of the top 10k

• Choose from Microdata, RDFa or JSON-LD

• http://schema.org/Review

Reviews on Your Website


• Easy to add to WordPress/CMS templates

• Add it to your existing HTML tags as extra attributes

• One of the first structured data formats, so more commonly built-in to CMSs

Reviews - Microdata


• HTML5

• Basically the same as Microdata

• Not many websites use it

• Moving on…

Reviews - RDFa


• Based on a JavaScript data array/object for storing keys and values

• Placed within dedicated <script> tags in either the <head> or <body>

• Google now say that they prefer JSON-LD, over Microdata and RDFa

Reviews – JSON-LD


• Do you want to copy Amazon?

• Tough!

• They’re big enough that Google specially extracts Amazon’s review data

Reviews – Amazon


What Not To Do


• No guarantee that Google will show your Review/Rating data in SERP Rich Snippets

• Rich Snippet visibility is linked to your site’s perceived “Trust” (Domain Authority)

• Don’t be evil – Google does sense-check your Structured Data

• Abuse can result in sitewide Rich Snippet removal or even a Google Penalty!

Let’s Talk About Trust


• Placing the same structured data / reviews on multiple pages is Duplicate Content

• Google less likely to display Rich Snippets, considered incorrectly implemented

• Fix with Canonical and/or Hreflang link tags.

Structured Data Duplication


Outsource or DIY?


• They do all the heavy lifting for you

• Futureproofing – Let them keep your review data compliant with the latest standards

• Some platforms help you to increase review numbers, even paying users to post

Review Platforms


• Many e-commerce sites use 3rd Party review platforms e.g. BazaarVoice and Feefo

• If using a 3rd party, do not use their JavaScript integration

• Whilst Google renders/indexes JavaScript but it’s unreliable

• Always use an API integration, so that the review content is hosted on your page

Integrate Carefully


• Larger upfront cost (dev resource), but far cheaper long-term

• Full control over the data format and appearance

• Easier to moderate/censor/address negative reviews

• Lots of free plugins to implement reviews on WooCommerce, Magento etc

(plus already built into hosted stores such as Shopify and BigCommerce)

Do It Yourself


• Manage your reviews in-house, whilst also encouraging 3rd party reviews

• Email customers the day after delivery/service with a link to Google, Facebook,

TripAdvisor, Feefo etc. to encourage new reviews

• Be wary of customers with existing/open complaints, if encouraging 3rd party reviews

Best of Both Worlds


The Perfect Score


• A popular gambling website recently decided to end its Affiliate program

• Thousands of websites would no longer earn money for sending them traffic

• Affiliates were so outraged, that they organised a joint negative SEO campaign

• This included most review websites marking their brand as ★☆☆☆☆

• Brand traffic plummeted, with users seeing 1/5 ratings in Google SERPs

• A huge reputation repair project was needed, to push these bad reviews off of

Google’s Top 10 for brand keywords

A Short Story


1. Rich Snippets for Reviews/Ratings can be used for evil as well as for good

2. Never take your ★★★★★ for granted, monitor your reviews and ratings daily

3. Have a plan in place to rectify bad reviews

4. If you can’t fix, increase your aggregate rating or push the bad reviews out the SERPs

Moral of the Story


• Always refund/exchange – costs less than repairing your reputation and arguing all day

• Don’t sit back and take bad reviews/ratings – respond, rectify and ask to redact

• Fake reviews destroy trust and everyone can spot them a mile away

• You can’t sustain a perfect★★★★★ , but hundreds of 4+ stars can drown out 1 stars

Don’t Take Risks


Automating Review Management


• Monitor your reviews and ratings across all local, web and product directories

• Get alerted to new reviews, so that you can respond immediately

• Prices start from $99/month, depending on budget, features and support needed

Review Management Software


• Client: A large hair and beauty salon franchise in the UK

• Request: Increase customer reviews on Local listings, plus weed out negative reviews

• Response: Worked with their web team to create a review management flow

DIY Review Management – Client Example


DIY Review Management – Flow DiagramCustomer buys

product or books appointment

Email sent to customer after

delivery/appointment

Customer rates service out of 5 stars

1-3 Star Rating

Asked for feedback and escalated as

complaint

4-5 Star Rating

Asked to review salon or website on Google,

Yelp, Feefo etc.


• Unhappy customers are intercepted before they vent online

• Gives company a chance to turn a 3 star rating into a 5 star happy customer

• Dramatically reduced low star ratings and negative reviews

• Increased the number of positive reviews which increased their aggregate star ratings

• Protects them from future low ratings bringing down their star rating

• Unexpected bonus: Customer loyalty and Life Time Value increased

DIY Review Management – Result


Here’s Your Bonus


• I’ve turned this Flow Diagram into a simple app

• Coded in PHP, no database needed, just upload to a subfolder of your website

• Free, open source (MIT License) and built just for you

• Download it now at: https://github.com/ayima/fivestars

DIY Review Management – The Code


DIY Review Management – Landing Page


DIY Review Management – Bad Rating


DIY Review Management – Good Rating


Download Code: https://github.com/ayima/fivestars

Contact Me: [email protected]

Twitter: @robkerry

Website: www.ayima.com

Thank You!

harnessing the power of online reviews by rob kerry

Marketing