Google is the king of search. It’s how people find information on the web, and as a result, Google has become the most important tool for businesses to find their audience. With Google’s search bar at the top of every user’s results page, it makes sense that Google dominates this market. In fact, they own over 90% of it!

And that’s not even taking into account their many other products such as Maps, YouTube, Android and Chrome Browser. For any business looking to get found online in today’s competitive marketplace, understanding how Google thinks is crucial.

Google knows what people are looking for, so if you can answer those questions with your content and keyword strategy—you have a better chance of showing up higher in searches. Below we’ll explain some strategies you can use to get more traffic from Google Search and rank higher for your keywords.

How to Rank on Google

There are a few ways to rank higher on Google. The first is to use their keyword planner tool, which is a free tool that allows users to input keywords and see how valuable they are. You can also use tools like SEMRush or Moz tools to get more accurate keyword data. Search engine marketing (SEM) is another great way you can achieve success by driving traffic back to your website.

Another strategy you can use is getting links from authoritative websites that Google values highly. This strategy improves the quality of your website’s backlink profile and gives you an edge in ranking for the keywords you’re targeting. As we’ve mentioned, having a well-rounded backlink profile will help you dominate online searches for your target keywords, which leads us to our last point!

One of the most important tips for ranking on Google is creating content that people want to read so that they’ll come back again and again with their search engine query. You need to make sure your content has good topic relevancy, it isn’t too long, and it’s updated regularly.

Finally, you need good site navigation so that visitors can easily find what they’re looking for quickly! If visitors don’t feel like they have time to explore your website because it’s too busy or complicated—they won’t stick around!

Google’s Core Results

First, it’s important to understand Google’s core results. If you want your website to rank on Google, you need to create content that improves the user experience, which is what Google looks for in all their search results. The goal of a search engine is to provide relevant information.

Google wants the most easy-to-find and relevant information they can find so they can improve the experience for their users. The easiest way to do this is by providing multiple answers and giving users more information than just one page or website.

One of the most important things to remember with Google’s core results is that they only show 10. In order for your site or business to be found, you need to be better than what 10? This doesn’t mean you should just spam your site trying tons of different keywords but rather focus on optimising for a few keywords that will get you the most traffic.

Google’s 3 Key Results Types

Google has 3 key results types. They are:

  • Direct Answer
  • Knowledge Graph
  • Knowledge Panes

Now, these 3 result types have different weights across the search engine, and Google also uses other signals to help determine what rank you’ll get in the search engine.

Direct Answers are the most closely related to your keyword, and they weigh heavily in your position on the search engine. In fact, they’re ranked by how many people search for them each month. So if you want to rank faster and more consistently, it’s important that you use your keyword in your content a lot and make sure it’s visible on the front page of Google Search.

Knowledge graphs are a new type of result that is appearing more frequently in searches now that we’re moving towards a knowledge-driven world where people will want answers from experts rather than just searching for keywords or information that might not be accurate or up-to-date. The advantage of using knowledge graphs is that you can show up when someone searches for something specific in relation to an expert guest on your website or blog, or social media account–which would then bring them back to your site to read more about their topic of interest!

Knowledge Panes are very similar to traditional websites with their own domain names, but instead of being called “www.” they’re called “knowledge.” They’re designed as a starting point for users who don’t know where else to search.

Google’s 4th result is its paid ads.

Google’s 4th result is its paid ads. Advertisers pay Google to be the top ad in their results, and it pays off! When you’re looking for a new venture, or are just launching an online advertising campaign, consider how much you’re willing to spend on your advertising. If you have a budget set aside, make sure to create a budget for your Google ads.

Your budget should include things like keywords that will generate traffic, target audience demographics to reach, and the maximum amount of impressions you’ll allow per day. This will give you more control over what gets shown in your ads and better chances of being seen by people searching for your keywords.

Tips for Ranking Higher in Google Search

Keyword Research – It’s important to know what people are searching for on Google. If you have a niche or industry that is competitive, then it can be difficult to rank #1. You need to identify your target keywords and know the search volume and competition levels.

Content Selection – Google looks at content heavily in their ranking algorithm. They do this to make sure they’re only showing people content that’s relevant and matches that person’s search terms. If you use SEO best practices, your website will be more likely to rank higher in Google Search results.

Internal Linking – Google ranks websites with high-quality content, so if your site has a lot of quality content, there’s a good chance it will rank higher in Google Search results. To increase your internal linking opportunities, consider linking out from all the pages on your site—not just specific pages that are relevant to your keyword research.

Page Optimisation – Page optimisation refers specifically to how well optimised each page is for search engines like Google. If you have optimised every page with keywords and other important information like “Related Searches,” then Google will give you points for optimising each page which increases your overall ranking power with the right amount of effort!

Title Tags – The title tag is the most important part of any webpage because Google uses it heavily in its ranking algorithm. So, if you want to get ranked higher on google searches, make sure your title tag includes the keywords you want people to search.

Rank high in Google for Local Demand

Google’s search algorithm has a lot of moving parts. As a result, Google uses many signals to determine the ranking of websites, sometimes even giving human beings the final say in what ranks where. One of the most important aspects that Google takes into account when determining rankings is relevance. In order to rank high for your keywords on Google, you need to be relevant to those searches.

What does this mean? Well, it means you want to make sure your content answers people’s questions about your products or services. You need to show the provider the information they are looking for. So if they type in ‘online marketing,’ you want to make your content as helpful as possible by providing valuable information and resources on how to get started with online marketing right away.

This strategy is especially useful for local businesses because people are searching locally first before looking nationally and internationally.

Rank higher in Google for Niche Demand

If you want to rank higher in Google for a specific keyword, you need to understand the needs of that niche. Consider what people are asking for, and then make sure that your content provides that answer. You can also try creating a list of potential keywords and then brainstorming ideas for how to optimise them.

Rank higher in Google for Brand/Keyword Demand

One way to rank higher in Google is by understanding the demand for your keywords. If there’s a lot of demand for your keyword, then you have more chance of ranking higher.

In this case, you would need to create content that answers the questions people are searching for in order to rank higher. This means you want to answer these questions with the best possible information and use powerful words that show up on page one for high-demand keywords. In addition, you can also include common misspellings and synonyms of your keywords as long as they fit into your on-page SEO efforts.

Another strategy to increase your chances of ranking in Google is by creating a blog. Blogs are becoming more and more popular with search engines because they help users find what they are looking for quickly and provide relevant information about topics they care about.

Additionally, blog posts typically get shared on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And when it comes to rankings in Google, it’s important to remember that blogs tend to rank better than websites because people are looking for quick answers rather than large volumes of content.

Conclusion

A well-planned SEO strategy can provide your business with a steady stream of qualified leads. With proper SEO, your business will be able to rank on Google and get the most traffic possible. But success doesn’t come without effort. Here are some tips to help you get started.

Posted in SEO

The success of your website depends on the quality of traffic it receives. Therefore, mixing and matching the right digital strategies can generate substantial website traffic. While you might deliver the best message, product, and service, it would mean little until you attract your target crowd regularly and reliably. Learning how to increase your website traffic is one of the best ways to achieve these goals.

1. Prioritise Content Marketing

Content remains king. This concept applies to all types of online content, including visual, video, and written articles, because engaging content keeps site visitors coming back for more. While SEO strategies can improve your site’s searchability and align with the crawlers to raise SERP rankings (search engine results page), you should also tailor your content to your readers’ interests. 

2. Leverage Paid Ads

Paid ads are some of the most effective ways of getting your site across to your target audience. First, you should thoroughly research your target demographic before deciding on a paid ad platform. Identifying your audience’s interests, locations, and ages can help you pinpoint their most frequented platforms and increase your chances of engagement. 

Also, consider the type of ads applied in your campaigns. While video ads may seem highly popular, market research shows that 49% of people click on text ads, 31% on shopping ads, and only 16% on video ads. 

Similarly, you should have a systematic tracking method for paid ad metrics to ensure that the money you spend goes to good use. Regularly checking your paid ad campaigns helps you evaluate their effectiveness and re-strategise if necessary to optimise their impact. 

3. Constantly Refine On-Page SEO

SEO provides a proven formula to connect your site content with your audience, and it usually has three components: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO

On-page SEO refers to your website’s attributes, including meta descriptions, tags, well-positioned headers populated with keywords, and short paragraphs. The effectiveness of your SEO campaigns largely depends on the on-page SEO components. Therefore, managing on-page SEO as a set of living documents that require constant tweaking for the best results is essential. 

For instance, combining evergreen and seasonal keywords can help you reach a broader audience, especially during peak seasons like the summer holidays. Also, search engines like Google tend to revise their SEO practices, so keeping up with the latest updates helps drive more traffic to your website. 

4. Develop Effective Link-Building Strategies

Links make up a considerable part of off-page SEO. Internal and external links are the two main types, and both can help you improve site traffic in different ways. Therefore, applying each kind to your website might be advantageous. 

Internal links facilitate the site navigation process for your audience. For example, clicking on an internal link on your blog may take your reader to a deep service page (i.e., pages that take four or more clicks for access from a home page) and generate website traffic for that part of your site. 

External links bridge your site content with other websites and work well with search engine crawlers as part of technical SEO. Google rates the equity or value of an external link differently from an internal one, prioritising them for ranking purposes. The search engine also determines the usefulness and credibility of your website by assessing the quality of your external links. 

You might consider external links similar to a peer-review article’s citations, supporting its content’s authority and authenticity.  

5. Optimise Email Marketing 

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for generating business revenue, with an estimated $36 for every $1 spent. This marketing type can be a real game-changer if you wish to generate website traffic from your target demographic, with a mailing list engaging and attracting constant traffic. 

Periodic email newsletters can also help keep your audience interested in your offerings by providing exclusive tips, discounts, content, and tutorials that redirect your readers to your site. 

An advanced mailer allows you to manage your mailing list easily and offers customisation features to give each email a personal touch, further driving engagement. 

6. Keep Your Google Business Profile in Top Form

Your Google Business Profile represents your company’s online public image, and optimising it will help generate website traffic. For example, organic user searches on Google will turn up your Google Business profile, where potential site visitors will form their first impressions of your business. 

While conventionally, site visitors and customers would navigate to your business home page to acquire more information, they will now turn to your Google Business Profile for the same purpose. 

Consider including information that optimises your business reputation, such as high-resolution photos of your company and products, customer reviews, and valuable contact information such as operating hours and a link to your website, which directly generates website traffic. 

Videos are also highly effective ways of introducing your business to potential customers, where studies show that 53% of customers want to see more video content from companies they support. 

Closing Thoughts on How to Increase Your Website Traffic

Having an easily navigatable site is only half of the battle won. You will need to provide the guiding lamps that lead your most valuable audience to your winning content. Engage Digital can help you discover the most effective methods and tools to connect with your target audience without the guesswork. 

Book a call with us to say hello to the Engage Digital team! Together, we will discover the full potential of your business’s marketing growth. 

Marketing can be a complicated business.

What elements will give us the best results. Should we be posting to social media more regularly? How much should we spend on Google Ads? Is our website good enough?

As a growth marketing agency, we’ve tested them all and surprise, surprise, there is no one magic bullet. Even businesses within the same industry are faced with completely different products, opportunities and challenges.

That being said, over time we’ve narrowed our digital marketing approach down to a proven growth marketing formula, that we represent in our proprietary canvas. And from this model, we use comprehensive planning templates to analyse and deliver personalised tactics for our clients’ businesses.

There are many parts to our Growth Marketing Canvas and it’s defined over 3 discipline segments:

  • We’re continuously strengthening the Growth Pillars; improving the product offering, continuously tweaking a compelling Value Proposition.
  • It’s a step-by-step application of prioritised marketing tactics and campaigns across a Customer Conversion System (a sales funnel).
  • And it deploys a Technology Stack to build efficiencies, reduce costs and report on progress.
The Engage Growth Marketing Canvas

With all this potential marketing complexity though, I’m often asked where an organisation should start! What growth marketing parts should get the most attention? It’s like applying the Pareto Rule – what 20% of action will give me 80% of the overall results.

What if the key to future business growth and success lies in focusing on just the core marketing components and doing them well.

So, we’ve distilled our comprehensive Growth Marketing Formula down to just the 5 core ingredients needed to grow your business – execute these well and you’ll set your marketing up for success…

1. Understand your Customer

Ensuring you are targeting a willing, hungry and profitable audience is, without a doubt, the most important step of any marketing campaign.

Analyse your customer base and find out everything you need to know; What social media platform are they on? What their values are in life, what they watch, what they read, what issues do they face related to your industry and product.

Find out what your customers want and what moves them, before you go spend a lot of money marketing. Draw up personas for your top 2-3 customer groups – rank their importance and the share of marketing they should receive from you.

2. Define your Value Proposition

A value proposition is a clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using your products or services. It’s outcome-focused and stresses the value of your offering to the customer.

For [target customer] who [statement of the need or opportunity], our [product/service name] is [product category] that [statement of benefit]. 

What are our customers’ pain points and desired gains?
What key customer problem do we provide a unique solution for?

Hit people over the head with what makes you different. 

3. Set a North Star Metric

Your North Star Metric is the metric that your company uses as a focus for growth.

This measure should be an indicator of the performance of our growth marketing tactics, not necessarily a KPI of the overall business.  e.g. Spotify: Time spent listening. Uber: Rides per week.

To qualify as a North Star, a metric must do three things: lead to revenue, reflect customer value, and measure progress.

4. Attraction Marketing

It starts here – if you’re not drawing in a market then the rest of your sales funnel is starved.

Attraction is a critical part of a systematic, scalable sales system. You need tactics in place that are attracting quality leads to your content, website or location.

Fundamentals here include SEO and Google Ads but may also involve display ads and retargeting, emails to targeted lists, cold call outreach, social media, content marketing and PR.

5. Testing and Optimising

Rapidly iterate through experiments to optimise marketing throughout the funnel.

Use A/B testing to improve landing page conversions.

Apply incremental changes to Google Ad campaigns for continual improvement to Cost-per-acquisition over time.

Experiment with cold call outreach and compare performance to other channels.

Test at a low cost and scale the tactics that show promise against your North Star Metric and other KPIs.

While there is always room for fundamental leaps, much of the gains from growth marketing are marginal and incremental.

Run experiments, prepare to fail, pivot quickly, amplify successes.

Takeaways

Our 5-ingredient extract is a distillation of our wider Growth Marketing Formula. Its where 20% of effort will get you 80% of all possible gains. So, if time and money are limited then make sure your focus is on these 5 essential components of your marketing plan:

  1. Understand Your Customer – target willing, hungry and profitable audiences.
  2. Define your Value Proposition – define what’s in it for your customer, why should they buy from you?
  3. Set a North Star Metric – the one measure that will define success – if it increases, your business grows.
  4. Attraction Marketing – just one part but responsible for fuelling your whole sales funnel – no traffic, no conversions.
  5. Test and Optimise – run experiments, prepare to fail, pivot quickly, amplify successes.

The simplest way to think about Google’s Core Web Vitals / Page Experience updates is that user-friendly sites will rank higher than sites that aren’t user friendly.

The good news is if you’re already providing a high-quality page experience for your visitors, you may not even have to do anything differently.

However, if your website maintenance and SEO is something that has had little attention over the past year, then now would be a great time to invest in improving your users’ page experience, while boosting your page ranking, or at least ensuring you don’t slip into Google oblivion!

Google Rewards Your Website for Being More Usable

Over the past few years, Google has developed several user experience signals, including measures of mobile-friendlinessHTTPS-security, and browsing safety.

Most recently, the company created Core Web Vitals, which helps monitor website speed and functionality. These metrics offer concrete ways for owners to measure the user experience of their site.

But Google ups the ante in 2021 to categorically state that after the mid-year update, Page Experience will be a direct ranking factor.

The Importance of a User’s Page Experience

If Google thinks your website users will have a poor experience on your pages — measured by a new set of metrics called Core Web Vitals — Google may not rank those pages as highly as they are now.

The new metrics aim to measure how a user will perceive the experience of a specific web page through technical considerations like how fast a page loads, if it’s mobile-friendly, is it running on HTTPS, the presence of intrusive banner ads and if content jumps around as the page loads.

The New Core Web Vitals

Page experience has been important to Google (and users) for some time and Google algorithm updates during 2021 are adding refined metrics around speed and usability. These refinements are under what Google calls Core Web Vitals.

Core Web Vitals metrics

Core Web Vitals include real-world, user-centred metrics, that give scores on aspects of your pages including load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads. They fall under these metrics:

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures loading performance. LCP is a measurement of how long it takes for the main content of a page to download and be ready to be interacted with. What is measured is the largest image or block of context within the user viewport. Anything that extends beyond the screen does not count. To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have LCP occur within the first 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load.
  • First Input Delay (FID) measures interactivity. FID is the measurement of the time it takes for a browser to respond to a site visitor’sfirst interaction with the site while the site is loading. This is sometimes called Input Latency. An interaction can be tapping a button, a link or a key press and the response given in response. Text input areas, dropdowns, and checkboxes are other kinds of interaction points that FID will measure. To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability. CLS is the unexpected shifting of web page elements while the page is still downloading. The kinds of elements that tend to cause shift are fonts, images, videos, contact forms, buttons and other kinds of content. To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have a CLS score of less than 0.1.

Cumulative Layout Shift Issues
Cumulative Layout Shift Issues
Cumulative Layout Shift Correct Function

Other Page Experience signals

How to Measure Your Core Web Vitals

While there are some excellent 3rd party apps that help SEO agencies like Engage quickly define and record website performance issues, Google now has a comprehensive suite of SEO Tools that we can use to directly detect what Google sees when it crawls our client’s websites.

LCP and CLS can be measured in the lab or in the field, while FID as a metric can only be measured in the field as it requires a real user to interact with your page.

Field tools

Lab tools

  • Lighthouse to identify technical details that web developers and technical SEO experts need to find out how to improve LCP
  • WebPageTest allows you to compare performance of one or more pages in controlled lab environment, and deep dive into performance stats and test performance on a real device.
  • TestMySite allows you to diagnose webpage performance across devices and provides a list of fixes for improving the experience from WebPageTest and PageSpeed Insights.

Run your Own Page Experience Tests

Check out your site on Google’s TestMySite tool for free. Even share your findings with your developers or send Engage an email to discuss your results…

It’s in Google’s best interest to help you improve the overall User’s Experience so they have other performance measurement tools like web.dev. – this will measure how well your website supports your users. If there are areas where it can improve, you’ll get immediate steps to increase your metrics. For a comprehensive free report try out Google’s Web.Dev

Prioritise These 3 Website Elements:

1.  Responsive Website Design

Your site visitor should be able to view your pages properly before you worry about your Google mobile ranking. Google recommends using responsive web design instead of maintaining and optimising a separate mobile site.

2.  Page Load Speed

Every millisecond of delay in your page load speed or website load time negatively affects the user. You can rely on PageSpeed Insights as a straightforward Google performance test tool for website load time.

3.  Quality Content

As potentially impactful as the page experience update is, high-quality content is still more important than user experience alone. Google stated in its original announcement that it will continue to prioriti1se sites that offer the best information, even if the page experience is slightly worse than pages with lower-quality content.

Google Page Experience Checklist:

Use the following checklist as a quick guide to the things you need to do to optimise your Google Page Experience metrics. With Google’s algorithm focusing on a page-level basis, prioritise your most important pages first.

Page Experience Signal Checks

  • Main page content loads in 2.5 seconds or less
  • Page input delay is 100 milliseconds or less
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) score is 0.1 or less
  • Zero failing URLs on the Google Core Web Vitals report
  • Zero failing URLs on the Mobile Usability report
  • URLs pass the Mobile Friendly Test tool
  • URL Page Speed Insights scores are 90 or higher
  • No issues detected on the Security Issues report
  • Website passes the Safe Browsing site status checker
  • HTTPS implemented and no mixed content errors
  • No intrusive interstitials or pop-ups

We also recommend checking:

  • Website content is relevant, useful and readable
  • Use responsive web design
  • Upgrade your website hosting
  • Keep your website framework and plugins up to date
  • Minimise the number of requests your page makes
  • Compress or remove large files
  • Optimise your media elements – video, animations
  • Fix all broken internal links and redirects
  • Monitor your Page Experience report weekly

Article References

As clever as we are, Engage didn’t make this stuff up – we’ve gathered content for this article from other SEO experts including: Google Developers, Spyfu, Neil Patel and Thrive Agency.

Takeaways

Over the past few years, Google has developed several user experience signals, including measures of mobile-friendlinessHTTPS-security, and browsing safety.

More recently, they have created a new set of signals, called Core Web Vitals, which help monitor website speed and functionality. These metrics offer concrete ways for SEO experts like Engage to measure the user experience of our clients’ sites.

Google prioritises five areas that contribute to a website’s page experience:

  1. Core Web Vitals
  2. Mobile friendliness
  3. HTTPS
  4. Safe browsing
  5. Intrusive interstitial content

Page experience is now a key factor in search engine rankings.

If you want to rank well, you need to have both great content and a good page experience. You might still rank well with just one or the other, but it’s not enough anymore. To truly maximise your results, both are necessary.

So, if your website hasn’t had a lot of content or SEO love lately, perhaps now is the time to put some investment into upgrading your user’s experience – auditing, and upgrading your site and improving your position versus your competitors – all with the advantage of ranking better with Google search.

Contact us today on 09 309 5050 or email phil@engagedigital.co.nz if you would like more information about our Page Experience and SEO services!

If it was just for informing your new website visitors of what past customers think of your quality products, how easy the website was to use, or how wonderfully you resolved problems, then displaying reviews and ratings on your website would be worth it.

Shopping online; assuming the flowers will be delivered, hoping that the shirt fits, praying the headphones will meet your expectations, takes a leap of trust from your customers – the more they see you, engage with you or read positive reviews about you, the more they will trust your brand and your ability to deliver.

CXL research showed that review stars in search engine results significantly improve click-through rates, by as much as 35%.

Reviews provide that level of trust and confidence – in fact, 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews. They may not take your word that you have outstanding service or that your product does what no one else’s does, but they will be believe happy (or disgruntled) customers.   

So, while Customer Reviews are great for business in general they’re also very influential with Google. If your site shows on a Google results page with a 4 or 5-star rating, all other things being equal, it’s going to get more clicks than sites with no stars at all. Visitors will be heading your way with a positive impression of what you offer before they even click.

Some businesses see an increase in click through rate as much as 20-35% after implementing star ratings in their search results.

Many SEO experts also believe that good star ratings and reviews will also help improve your search position, if only because people are more likely to click a result showing a star rating and therefore a higher click through rate and traffic volume will rank you higher with Google anyway. 

Product Reviews vs Seller Reviews

Product review stars are different than seller ratings. Product review stars pertain to the products themselves while the seller review stars reflect a business’ standing. 

A product review typically reads something like “I loved the solid craftsmanship of this product” while a seller review is more likely “Awesome company to deal with – great customer service.”

The stars that display in Google Organic search results are almost always product reviews.  

How to Get Star Ratings in Google Organic Search Results

To get star ratings on your Google Search results listing you need to use “schema.org markup” or structured data. This is the code that google will read and interpret when indexing your website. It clearly labels your content and tells Google that your business name or phone number or review copy is exactly that and not just random words on a page. Adding review markup code to a product page will allow that product to show stars in search results.

Note that there are two types of review schema markups available:

  • Single review with a single rating. When you use schema markups for individual reviews, things are straightforward. You have several items available to add into your code – the product reviewed, the review body, the author, the date published, the review rating, and the publisher.
  • Aggregate ratings. If you have multiple reviews available and an average rating calculated, you can use the aggregate ratings markup which adds rating and review count options.
  • Check your work for errors with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
  • To ensure that Google indexes your changes, resubmit your XML sitemap in Google Search Console.
  • Check your results within a few weeks through an organic keyword search.

Writing Review Schema Markups

You’ll need to add markup code to a product page that will look something like this:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
<img itemprop="image" src="product-image.jpg" alt="Product Name"/>
<span itemprop="name">Product Name</span>
<div itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating">
<span itemprop="ratingValue">4.5</span>
out of <span itemprop="bestrating">5</span>
based on <span itemprop="ratingCount">32</span>user ratings.
</div>

Check out the full list of schema types here. Google gives their own rundown of how to use Review rich snippets here, plus look up other Content Types in their sidebar menu. 

Structured-Data-Markup-Helper

There are several ways to write the review schema markup and get it on to your website:

After you have that code on a product page, you should:

  1. Check your work for errors with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
  2. To ensure that Google indexes your changes, resubmit your XML sitemap in Google Search Console.
  3. Check your results within a few weeks through an organic keyword search.

Strangely, given it’s reputation for authenticity, Google is not requesting proof of accuracy of these review statements at present. It’s likely that Google will change this stance eventually so we don’t recommend falsifying review information. And don’t use review rich snippets on your home page – google deems this as an “unnatural” place to find a product review.

How to Get Seller Ratings Stars on Adwords

Seller ratings are an automated extension type that showcases advertisers with high ratings. While we can get Product Rating stars in organic search results for “free”, bar the time and resources required for review collection and schema markup, until 2017 we had to subscribe to an aggregation service for Seller Rating stars to appear with Adwords. However, Google now bases seller ratings on several sources, including:

  • Google Customer Reviews, a free program that collects post-purchase comments on behalf of advertisers.
  • Aggregated performance metrics from Google-led shopping research.
  • Shopping reviews and ratings from google-approved independent review websites including:

Before signing up to a service, make sure to check if the plan includes both Seller Ratings for Adwords, Google Shopping (PLAs) ratings and Product Reviews – and only pay for what you need.

Seller ratings will only show when a business has at least 150 unique reviews and a average rating of 3.5 stars or higher.

Google Customer Reviews for Free

Once installed in to your Checkout process, Google Customer Reviews will offer a survey opt-in that allows your customers to provide feedback about their shopping experience on your site. You stipulate a time allowance for shipping and Google automatically sends a survey email after the expected delivery.

You can also add a Google Customer Reviews badge to your site helps which identifies your site with the Google brand and increases customer trust.

Check whether your ecommerce platform like MagentoShopify and BigCommerce has a preconfigured app to take care of the cart integration.

Once enough ratings and feedback have been collected:

  • Seller Ratings are displayed under your Google Shopping (Merchant Center) Dashboard
  • Seller Ratings will qualify to appear on your Google Shopping Ads and Adwords ads
  • An aggregate rating can be displayed on your website within the Google Customer Reviews badge

Google Customer Reviews vs Paid Aggregators

The plus for Google’s own Customer Review process is that its free and relatively easier to pin to your ecommerce checkout but you have little control over the message copy and design of their independent approach.

The advantages of the subscription-based review aggregators are that they provide convenient and well-designed onsite review callouts and badges, with automated email review request systems, plus the reputation and trust of their relevant businesses. Services can also cover Product reviews for organic search results. A paid Google-approved provider gives you more opportunity for automation and customisation and integration into your website with review and ratings callout display. Plus, the paid systems can work across multiple channels including Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Facebook, Bing and Twitter. They can be set to collect Seller Reviews, Product reviews and Local Reviews.

product reviews shopper approved

Product Reviews for Service-based Websites

Note, if you have a service based business you can get product reviews for free since you’re not going to syndicate anything into Google Shopping. For example, finance companies can create service pages like “personal loans,” “car finance,” and “home mortgages”. Each of these service pages would act as their “product” reviews.

Check if you have a Seller Rating

  1. Go to the following URL:  https://www.google.com/shoppin…
  2. Replace “address.co.nz” with your domain (do not put http or www in front).

Key Takeaways…

  • Seller Reviews and star ratings for your business, displayed by Google in paid and organic search results and Maps, provide valuable information to customers and help them make purchasing decisions. They can help your business stand out more prominently than your competitors. Businesses must accumulate at least 150 reviews in the past 12 months from approved sources for Seller Reviews to show.
  • Product Reviews show star ratings in Google Shopping ads and Product Listing Ads (from approved reviews) and organic search results (from website schema). You must have a minimum of 50 reviews across all your products. A product must have at least 3 reviews for star ratings to show on Shopping Ads, though products with fewer than 3 reviews are eligible to show star ratings on the Shopping property.
  • If you sell products on your website make sure you take advantage of Product Schema & Review Schema. And for that matter other schemas like Organisation, Person, Local Business and Restaurant.
  • Actively request reviews and ratings from customers – automate this process within your website, request reviews within the website and via email, filter out consumer complaints where practical and spread reviews over Google+, Google Customer Reviews and approved review aggregators.
  • Check your Product Review schema work for errors with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
  • Create a link for customers to write reviews from Google Places
  • Pursuing Google+ reviews could still be the easiest way to at least ensure that you have star ratings for branded searches.
  • Star Ratings on Google Adwords requires a little more authenticated work but can be produced for free by requesting customers to write reviews via Google Places and by using Google’s automated Customer Reviews within a shopping checkout.
  • Google Approved review aggregators offer other features including automated campaigning of customers, website banners and review displays plus their independent trust status but their subscription services can be expensive.
google customer reviews
Posted in SEO

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