Boost Your Online Sales with Product Reviews

In this article we will look at just how you can boost your online sales with product reviews.

We will also touch base on other aspects of your online campaign that can push your website up in the rankings such as back linking and some other ways to improve your brand’s visibility.

Why Are Online Reviews So Important?

Reviews are extremely important for your website. But not just any reviews on any old website or local pages. Although all positive reviews will help, to max the benefits of your online campaign, you need to get your product reviewed by the best niche bloggers, which have authority and influence.

Online reviews are a reference point for potential shoppers. So many people trust them, and many people will not make an online purchase before first reading up on the reviews. As many of 90% of people read reviews before making a purchase, around the same percentage of people trusting the online reviews they read.

Increase your Sales and Your Reputation

Online reviews are a great way to increase your business sales and reputation. It doesn’t matter whether you trade locally or globally; online reviews matter. Star ratings used by many review sites are equally as important as written words. Star ratings are used to rate both the product as well as the seller.

Search Engines will automatically bring up five star products and sellers first. These star ratings are based on reviews, and having a five star rating can increase your click through rate by as much as 17%.

Almost ¾ of people will only interact with a brand if it has positive reviews. This means that it is extremely important to get not just reviews on your products and services, but positive reviews. Negative reviews are extremely off-putting and can really bring down your overall rating, and wherever possible you should try to resolve the issue by contacting the customer. Online reviews paint you in a very real light.

People will get a very clear picture of what to expect from you if they use your services. A person looking to purchase a certain product has access to information across the globe from people who have already bought the exact same product.

Your SEO Campaign

Online reviews will also help with your SEO campaign. Positive reviews improve your visibility on the search engines. The more reviews you have, the more visible you will be on Yahoo, Google, and Bing. These reviews, whilst making you and your products more visible are also creating brand loyalty. If a person takes the time to write a positive review about your brand, chances are he will become a repeat customer in the future.

Back linking

All websites that rank highly are optimized for SEO. There are many ways you can optimize your content, one being the use of back links to other online content. Almost ¾ of all search engine optimizers deem back links to be important. Back links are however not the same as they were before Google rolled out its latest algorithms. Now, links need to be to sites within the same niche as your own, or to other relevant content. Links should be to high quality site, and spamming and linking to low quality content will now damage your overall online ranking.

The best sites to link your content to are government sites, and sites with high DA (Domain Authority) These would include educational websites and community online content. Having engaging content is a must for your online marketing campaign; but to ensure that people can find it your content needs to be optimized, shareable, and includes some high quality links.

Google will see your site to be interesting and helpful if it contains backlinks to authoritative sites. You will be seen as a credible source of information and people will feel confident visiting your site and indeed making a purchase from you. When high-ranking sites link to you and your content, people will associate you as another authoritative site they can rely on.

Backlinks will drive traffic to your site, and help make new connections for you and your brand. This will work as a natural process, and without you having to pay for searches or expensive analytics campaigns.

More Ways to Improve your Brand Visibility

Asides online reviews and back linking to authoritative content, there are more ways that you can improve the visibility of your brand. With so many different businesses all competing for space, it can be tricky to make your brand stand out from the crowd. Below are 7 ways we recommend:

1. 1. Update your My Business Listing on Google. If you haven’t verified your business, now’s the time to do so; if any of the information is out of date, now’s the time to amend it.
   2. Become Mobile. Websites that were originally intended for desktop only are often too heavy for mobile access. If your site is not mobile friendly, or takes too long to load, you will lose hundreds of potential customers every day. What’s more, Google is now starting to penalize websites that are not mobile friendly.
   3. Manage your Reputation by resolving issues with customers and by turning around any negative reviews.
   4. Optimize for SEO. This is something that you may need help with, or something you are confident to do yourself. To check whether your website is optimized, introduce the keywords to describe you into a Google Search. If only your competitors names come up, then you know there is some serious work to be done.
   5. Go Visual. Everyone loves infographics and diagrams more than boring text. So, go one step further and add a 360 degree virtual tour to your online content.
   6. Keep your social marketing campaign up to date. The trick here is to post regularly and to post things of interest.
   7. Avoid using your social media pages for private information. Keep them purely about, your business, and the services you provide.