Do business reviews, testimonials and ratings help or hurt SEO?
Business reviews of your website may be as important as old fashion "word of mouth"! Indeed, in todays social society, encouraging your customers to leave business reviews, testimonials, or ratings of your business or web site where possible on-line is the same as enjoying old fashion direct one to one word of mouth testimonials! In fact, negative on-line business reviews, testimonial and ratings can have as dramatic an impact as having a bad report submitted with the better business bureau! On the other side of the topic positive business reviews may encourage others to do business with your firm. Success or failure, either way, be prepared to respond accordingly and resolve any issues that may arise from business reviews, testmonials and ratings. Even negative business reviews, testimonials, or ratings aren't necessarily a bad thing even if it is left anonymously by a competitor which indeed can happen! It's all in how a business handles and responded to the business reviews, testimonials, or ratings.
Three basic principles to follow:
1. Don't fake business reviews. If you do review your own company, offer a bias disclaimer!
2. Ask your satisfied customers to give you business reviews or testimonials.
3. Expect negative business reviews at some point and be prepared to act toward resolution.
If you are a legitimate company with good golden rule type policies, you will eventually experience a negative business review. I've found that the larger a company is the more likely a negative report will occur due to the shear masses of business they conduct. However, having brought attention to the negative side effects, the bottom line is: A company that is designed to serve it's customers and make a reasonable attempt to do that, will have many more positive than negative reviews, in the end!
A few on-line resources where you may encourage customer business reviews include:
www.config.com on alexa.com">www.config.com on alexa.com" src="/sites/default/files/alexa-review-lite-125x60.png" style="float: left; border-width: 0px; border-style: solid; margin: 3px; width: 125px; height: 60px;" title="Review www.config.com on alexa.com" />
Alexa is the site that measures the worlds web site traffic! There has long been dispute in regard to how accurate it is due to webmaster being the primary users of their toolbar. The Alexa toolbar is often reported by spy-ware since it's purpose is to measures the sites a user visits. However it does this anonymously! the toolbar or status bar is available at http://www.alexa.com/toolbar for those that wish to see how popular a site is when they visit it. I personally believe that this type information can help a person make a better judgment as to if they feel the company is important enough to trust processing credit card information with!
Currently researching various sites where config.com has reviews posted (Updated Jan 16 2012)
WOT ratings are powered by a global community of millions of trustworthy users who have rated millions of websites based on their experiences. As a result, I like to recommend people consider reviewing our web site on "The Web of Trust" at URL:
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/config.com
Google Local offers business reviews:
Yelp has become a popular site in recent years for business reviews:
www.config.com on Yelp">Yelp.com business reviews, testimonials and ratings
www.config.com Internet services">Insiderpages.com
www.config.com Internet services">Maps.google.com
www.config.com Internet services">Citysearch.com
www.config.com Internet services">Local.Yahoo.com
www.config.com Internet services">Local.com
www.config.com Internet services">MerchantCircle.com business reviews, testimonials and ratings
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