It’s a jungle navigating the differences between third-party review sites and how they benefit (or don’t benefit) your SEO. We know that customer reviews are majorly influential in a buyer’s journey, and we also know that review syndication on your site is critical to help nudge these buyers over the finish line. If review syndication is completely new to you, it can be tough figuring out where to start. 

SEO impact and review syndication strategies

Worst for SEO

Cherry-pick your best customer quotes. This is a popular option for vendors looking to add a simple static review element to their page. While it may look aesthetically pleasing, it does not offer the depth of content or SEO benefits of a syndication widget, which can hold a variety of quotes, and therefore more keywords relevant to the page. 

Better for SEO

Utilize a dynamic third-party syndication tool. There are a variety of tools that aggregate reviews and other content, like social media feeds, onto your site. However, what you syndicate is far more important than how you syndicate. Custom questions allow you to get very specific review content and since TrustRadius’ reviews are so in-depth, search engines love our keyword-dense content. Also, TrustRadius’ TrustQuote review library allows vendors to easily and dynamically refresh review content on their website based on keywords. This steady stream of fresh, high-quality, and keyword-rich review content on your landing pages is something search engines crave. 

Best for SEO

Utilize a second-party syndication widget from a site like TrustRadius. This option dynamically pulls in review quotes directly from TrustRadius to your site. A TrustRadius review syndication widget can hold over 200 review quotes from your customers. This means a plethora of highly relevant, targeted keywords written in the voice of your customers about your brand. Furthermore, TrustRadius widgets, aptly called TrustQuotes for Web, are completely customizable, allowing you to pull in review content that is relevant to the content of the page. You can also customize the widget to match your brand’s look and feel and appear as an organic element on the page. This level of customization isn’t available through third-party aggregators. Lastly, TrustRadius review content is longer-form, roughly 450 words per review, which means you’re getting more relevant content for your buyers to consume.

SEO benefits of review syndication with TrustRadius

As mentioned above, you can easily tailor the content in your TrustQuotes for Web widget to the content on your page. This supports you in the following critical areas of SEO health:

• Total keywords: The TrustQuotes for Web syndication widget can hold over 200 quotes from your customers. The widget content is crawlable and as such, all content is indexable by Google. Due to the functionality of the widget being a slider, this means your page’s keyword count is going to increase without increasing the overall scroll depth of the page.

• On-page engagement: TrustRadius has multiple case studies from our customers where we’ve conducted heatmapping experiments on the widget. We’ve found that including the widget can increase on-page engagement by over 50%. Why? Buyers want to hear what their peers in the industry are saying about your product. We’ve found that buyers hang out on the syndication widget, clicking the arrow on the slider to read the next review, and the review after that. This increases time spent on the site and also increases overall page engagement.

• On-page conversion rate: Similar to the engagement benefit above, we have found that on-page conversion rates also improve after the widget is placed. This is because user reviews are a top-three influencer for making a purchasing decision. When user reviews are front and center on the page, this shows the buyer that your brand isn’t afraid to share your customer’s sentiments and that your customers are happy. It also means that buyers don’t have to leave the page to read reviews to influence their conversion—they’re right in front of them. TrustRadius sees, on average, a conversion rate lift of 30% after the widget is placed. You can read more about review syndication for increased conversion rate here.

• Click-through-rate in SERPs: One of the major differentiators of the TrustQuotes for Web widget by TrustRadius vs. other third-party review sites is that with TrustQuotes for Web, vendors have the option to toggle on Google Review Snippet Rich Results. These stars appear under your company’s listing in SERPs pulling in your product’s total number of reviews and ratings on TrustRadius. Google Stars are a trust indicator to buyers doing research and help increase overall click-through-rate in search engines.

• Page relevancy: Due to the widget’s customization functionality, you’re able to tailor your widget to your page’s content. This allows you to have multiple widget types based on what you’re trying to convey to buyers. See some widget tailoring options below.

Tailored customer review content with TrustQuotes for Web

1. Persona-specific: 

Let’s say you have a page on your site tailored toward C-suite leadership. You could create a TrustRadius widget that only pulls in review quotes from C-suite titles, marketing titles, or IT titles—the list goes on.

2. Competitor-specific: 

Let’s say you’re launching an attack campaign against a specific competitor in the market. You’ve created battle cards for sales, you’ve started bidding on their branded keywords in Google AdWords, and you’re promoting your differentiation extensively in the market. With the TrustRadius widget, you can include VoC content on your organic site and/or paid landing pages that explicitly mentions why your customers chose you over your competitor. This type of content is great for competitor-specific landing pages that target “us vs competitor” keywords, yielding high search volume queries. This type of content also helps with overall site engagement, conversion rates, and as a result increases your Google AdWords Quality Score. Validate your “us vs competitor” claims with social proof right there on the page.

3. Value-specific: 

Let’s say you’re much less expensive than your competitors, your product is far easier to use, or your implementation is much more customer-friendly. You could create a syndication widget that pulls in quotes from your customers talking about the specific value propositions (or others!) that make sense for your business.

4. Feature-specific: 

Let’s say your product is solving a gap in the market that only integration with other expensive third-party tools could satisfy to-date. You can tout this specific feature or use-case on your site’s solution pages by pulling in relevant quotes from your customers. 

5. Company-size: Let’s say you are trying to move up-market and need a widget focused solely on reviews from organizations with 200+ employees. You can tailor your widget to only pull in quotes based on this criteria.

If you’re still not sure where to start, a TrustRadius customer success manager is happy to strategize with you on how to best leverage your customer’s voice and where it makes sense to place the TrustRadius Quote Widget on your site.