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Reviews - Get Seen in Search

boost google seller ratings with reviews

Google Seller Ratings have the potential to boost your click-through rate up to 10%, so it's a great idea to start collecting customer reviews to qualify for them. Here are some ways you can build up tons of positive reviews and boost your star rating.

Today customer feedback is [more prevalent and important than ever before](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/five-ways-retail-has-changed-and-how-businesses-can-adapt.html). Nowhere is this more apparent than when your target customer searches for product and brand information online, and lands immediately on [Google Seller Ratings (GSRs)](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375474?hl=en).





## Why you should care about Google ratings
In a 2015 study from SEO tool provider BrightLocal, [92% of customers read online reviews](https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/local-consumer-review-survey/). This statistic is reflected by the growing [importance of Google Seller Ratings](https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/articles/202216898-Google-and-Trustpilot-FAQ).

The popularity of companies in every sector, from eCommerce to retail, education to travel, healthcare to finance, is encapsulated in the GSR stars that appear under their Google Ads displays.

If all goes well, Google Seller Ratings have the potential to:

- Increase click-through rates (CTRs) by an [average of 10 percent](http://adwords.blogspot.dk/2011/04/5-simple-ways-to-improve-your-adwords.html)
- Add credibility to your ads with the colourful star rating

## In brief, here’s how Google Seller Ratings work
You give your customers a Google-approved platform for sharing reviews of your company.

Once you get 100 reviews from 100 different customers within a 12-month period (per country), you're eligible for GSRs – as long as your reviews have a rating of 3.5 stars or higher.

It takes a few weeks for Google to catch up after your customers help you reach that initial 100-review threshold.

Once it does, you’ll start to see that customer feedback in your seller reviews on your Google text ads.

## How to get reviews

Whether there was a positive or negative experience, customers want to let others know what about it. Sharing opinions is a part of human nature.

But don't let that scare you. You're actually sitting on a golden opportunity to get reviews that can improve your business, increase your sales, and build brand loyalty.


It is not difficult to get reviews from customers. Here’s how:

### Step one: Treat your customers well
Give them an excellent product; give them your ear when they’re unhappy and fix their problems. Keep in touch with customers.

### Step two: Simplify the reviews process
Make the reviews process as easy for them as yelling over the fence to a friend next door. That means:

- [__Automate the business reviews process:__](https://business.trustpilot.com/solutions?utm_medium=how-to-land-great-reviews-and-boost-your-google-seller-ratings&utm_source=Automate+the+business+reviews+process:&utm_campaign=blog_en&sfdc=701b0000000JsWM) Link your eCommerce platform to your review solution to automatically send review requests to your customers every time they make a purchase. You can then focus on putting that feedback to work - improving customer satisfaction levels and retention rates.
- [__Kickstart your efforts__](https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/articles/201765266-Invite-Your-Customers): Invite customers to write reviews with a big push from the start.
- __Optimize your review invitation emails__: More than 70 percent of the emails that land in your prospects’ inboxes are likely spam. Don’t write a review invitation that will get lumped into that category.

Write a clear subject line, keep the message personal, include a prominent call to action and craft concise, focused copy.

__*Read how Ohio-based lender [Check ‘n Go got more than 500 customer reviews](http://blog.trustpilot.com/blog/2015/6/22/checkngo), leading to a 12.1 percent lift in landing page conversions.*__

## Life beyond 100: why high-volume customer reviews matter

Google sets 100 reviews per country as the minimum for applying GSR to your brand’s Google Ads campaigns.

Once you hit 100 reviews, celebrate – and then move forward. There are so many benefits to moving beyond that number.

### Authority online comes from volume
Let’s consider your customers. They rely on Google ratings to help them make smart purchasing decisions.

You need a GSR of 3.5 stars just to get on the board, and the highest you can go is 5 stars. That means there are subtle shades between the worst-ranked brands and the best.

Do your customers necessarily choose to do business with you because you have 4.5 stars rather than 4? Do they also consider how many reviews are reflected in your GSR versus your competitors’?

If you have 320 reviews and your competitor has 32, which overall GSR is more impressive to your customer? Clickthroughs are likely to be increased by the [wisdom of a larger crowd](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150331175904.htm), even if that larger crowd includes a few negative reviews.

### Prospects want to know you care today
If you collected 32 positve reviews in January, but now it’s August, you can bet that your prospects will notice. First, they’ll decide to dig deeper into your star ratings to see what your customers had to say about your brand.

Second, they’ll look at the dates of those reviews – and they’ll wonder:

  *“Why hasn’t anyone reviewed this brand in almost a year? Are all the good things this company was doing eight months ago still relevant? Am I going to have a different experience than these reviewers had? I wonder whether any of these other companies over here have more recent reviews…”*

With business reviews [gaining more power than ever before](http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/236891), keeping feedback fresh is key.


### The voice of your customer helps you compete
The Web has long made it easier for smaller companies to do bigger business than they could have in the days when brick-and-mortar overhead was unavoidable.

GSRs fueled by a consistently high volume of reviews gives niche businesses even more of a competitive advantage, no matter the size of your business or market share.

__Read about how [Rev.com use reviews to boost their GSR](http://blog.trustpilot.com/blog/2015/6/22/revcom) and CTR__

## What to do after you land your stellar business reviews
Beyond the on Google rating benefits, sustained customer review strategies increase website conversion rate and encourage customer brand loyalty.

Trustpilot statistics show that [77 percent of customers check online reviews](https://econsultancy.com/blog/64406-77-of-uk-shoppers-consult-reviews-before-buying-online-report/) before making an online purchase. We've seen brands boost their revenue by up to 40 percent through our customer review programs.

And beyond enhanced online reputations, a large volume of customer reviews provide a larger volume of data that can be analyzed to find ways to improve overall business operations, such as product development, sales and so on.

And all that leads to customer churn reduction, an increase in on site conversions, and the possibility to maximize your website ranking.

__Read how self-storage marketplace [Sparefoot uses their reviews](http://blog.trustpilot.com/blog/2015/6/22/sparefoot) in their business strategy, including marketing, customer service and product development.__

## The final word...
You can’t underestimate the marketing value of getting found on the world’s largest search engine.

A boost in GSR has an immediate impact on a business, and that impact is magnified when brands sustain their feedback programs long after they hit the 100-review starting line set by Google.

**Updated to represent [Google's](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375474?hl=en) latest changes*

Find out more about Trustpilot and Google Seller Ratings, request a free demo below.

How to land great reviews and boost your Google Seller Rating

Image featuring Trustpilot and Ssense employees

__Trustpilot:__ How long have you been an SEO specialist and across what industries?

__Arnaud Mangasaryan:__ I decided to start doing SEO because of the simple question: “why should we create the most beautiful, fast, and easy-to-use website if nobody can find it?”

Back in 2005, SEO was still a mysterious job, not really known in the web industry. I started to work in an agency and then I decided to move myself in-house. I prefer long-term SEO strategy and participate in the product evolution instead of working by contract. During my career, I worked for classifieds, real estate, and online newspaper companies based in France, UK, Germany, and Canada.

In 2011, I created the only SEO Association named DoYouSEO, based in Montreal. It’s goal is to promote the expertise and encourage group learning via SEO camps that are focused around specific topics decided by attendees. Two speakers share case studies around the chosen topic to let DoYouSEO members learn by example.

I have also been an SEO teacher at different universities in Paris and Montreal for 4 years. Sharing knowledge and experience is the best way to promote an expertise and working in SEO for an international eCommerce site like SSENSE is really exciting!

__TP:__ What is your general approach in SEO - whether on technical SEO, overall SEO strategy, content and SEO, and other subsets of SEO?

__AM:__ SEO is an expertise driven by Marketing & Performance. The main goal of SEO is to offer a great experience to potential customers that land on your site via organic search.

With that goal in mind, you can choose how you would like to approach the job. There is no unique answer for this but here’s my approach.

Globally, there are 3 main pillars around SEO:

__Technical & structure:__ The primary part of SEO. Having a website structure that is easy for search engines to crawl and users to navigate is essential. Then, you need to prioritize what to index according to business goals and user intention.

There are many subjects that need to be targeted from a SEO perspective when talking about the ‘technical & structure’ aspect: responsiveness/adaptiveness, server rules, page speed, meta rules & integration, front end code, javascript use, http status code usage, structured data, security, transaction process, error pages, redirect rules, etc…

An SEO expert needs to perfectly understand HTML, Javascript, and even algorithmic functions. Doing SEO without having knowledge in IT means that you are a marketing expert, not a SEO expert. I know some people will disagree with this but when you need to analyze Google behaviour, changes, tests, rethink & improve your site structure, technical proficiency is necessary.

__User intention:__ Knowing how to structure your site, your pages, and your content for search engines is great but don’t forget that visitors generate traffic and revenue on your site, not search engines. That’s why it’s fundamental to know the profile of your customers. Generally, I like to have a long meeting with PR or Branding in order to learn more about who we target, who they are, and how they live their day-to-day life.

Skipping this step means you don’t want to adapt your strategy for your customers and you just want to do basic keyword research. Whatever you provide/sell on your site is associated to one or multiple topics. You need to understand how your customers are searching for these topics, around these topics, and understand what they expect to see. This is where the fun starts.

When you perform your keyword research, you need to anticipate what kind of emotion your customer is filled with as soon as they perform a search. This may affect the kind of result they are expecting to see.

User intention analysis is long, tough, but useful. Ideally, you perform keyword research, adapt it for your customers, your website, and for each country you are targeting if you have an international presence.

__Off-site acquisition:__ The number (and quality) of backlinks is one of Google’s primary criteria to evaluate the popularity of a domain. Developing your popularity is crucial for SEO because this will impact mid/long-term incoming traffic from organic search, branded, or non-branded. Having these external signals matter to search engines. The context of each link is important and in 2017, you don’t want to linkfarm, unless you don’t care about the visibility of your site on Google (don’t forget, a sneaky penguin is watching you).

This third pillar of SEO requires creativity and solid communication skills if you want to diversify your approach and find new potential customers within several industry fields related to the culture of your company. And don’t forget: diversity - regarding business goals - is the key, much more than the number of backlinks.

__TP:__ What has been the most recent Google algorithm change or update that has made a significant SEO impact for you?

__AM:__ The 3 Google changes that may affect our organic visibility on mid-term traffic, are:

- The severity of Google penalties for Schema.org validation (you can have small manual penalties for unexpected details).
- Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) which affects the order of organic results. Consider this as an alternate simplified/superfast template of your pages (with an amp URL). This template must respect several rules from Google in order to be displayed on Mobile SERP.
- Space occupied by Knowledge graphs and Google Ads results on Google SERPs (search engine results page).

download (4)

__TP:__ How is SEO different for an eCommerce company like SSENSE? Does anything change given that SSENSE is a high fashion company?

__AM:__ Working for an international eCommerce company is really exciting. Fashion online eCommerce is a dynamic world, for both users and search engine bots.

First, the conversion is represented by something concrete (purchases) and you want to be the best for countries you target. For example, competitors are not exactly the same between France and US. In addition, the behaviour of our customer is fun to analyze. The funnel used to buy something is sometimes…really creative! Forget linearity.

Having a big catalog of products and knowing more of what’s sold pushes me to imagine new ways to capture potential customers - how can I better use all data available on the website to develop its structure and better answer to customers without affecting the value of the company?

At the same time, I need to develop the popularity of SSENSE as a brand, locally, nationally and internationally.

It’s a lot of work!

__TP:__ I noticed SSENSE’s homepage is akin to a publication, rather than a virtual storefront like most eCommerce sites. How has that, if at all, impacted the SEO of the site?

__AM:__ SSENSE has a specific culture and this makes a huge difference compared to our sales-oriented competitors. For SEO, this is clearly a challenge because you need to find alternative ways to achieve your goals.

At the same time, nothing is static, so I regularly work on different ways to find good balance between performance & creativity in order to reach my goals without affecting culture. I know that the first page does not show the potential of the virtual storefront we have, but like I said, nothing remains unchanged… ;)

__TP:__ What are some of the most common SEO best practices that most companies/sites fail to implement? Why do you think they don’t do it?

__AM:__ The most common failure I see on SEO is the misunderstanding of the expertise. A lot of companies are still thinking that they need to rank in 1st position for 2-3 keywords in order to generate revenue. Trying to rank for keywords is NOT a business goal. You can spend a lot to achieve this, but it’s going to be a waste of time and money.

The other mistake I see on eCommerce websites concerns the rules applied to the structure of the website facets, filters, and categories. All of this is required for user experience but they also represent an open door for useless crawling, duplicate content, and SEO performance dilution.

SEO is not an exact science. Doing only and exactly what Google asks is a good start but it’s not enough. SEO requires creativity, business affinity, and technical interest. According to my experience, good SEO is, like we say in French, “a sheep with 5 legs.”

The world of SEO is small and a lot of misinformation could be found easily on the web, even on popular SEO news websites. That’s why you need to be careful. Don’t consider a declaration as a 100% true fact. Google likes mystery and nobody knows how the search engine works completely. Like I often say, SEO is 50% technical, 50% business/marketing, and 100% tests.

__TP:__ What has been one of the more challenging accomplishments for SSENSE from an SEO perspective?

__AM:__ For now, I have focused on 2 main things:

1. Change how SEO is perceived internally and show how SEO is critical for the company: like I said earlier, a lot of people don’t know what SEO necessarily is. One of the ways I eliminate myths and share concrete facts/actions is by organizing SEO workshops adapted to each department I am working with: IT, Sales, Marketing, etc. This way, people will know who you are, what you exactly do (really important), and how your work will impact them/help them.
2. Establish and validate an international long-term SEO strategy for the company: time is money and SEO is not an exception. Whatever you want to change will be accepted if you can estimate with some precision how much additional revenue it will generate.

This part is not easy because SEO is not SEA and you need to find several criteria to establish your business case. For example, after some time, we found a way to evaluate incoming additional revenue for organic search for each new backlink earned from a new domain.

__TP:__ What are some of the most impactful actions one can take to improve their SEO? What about for eCommerce companies?

__AM:__ Here are a few things you can do.

- Structure your website in a way that makes it easy to expand.
- Manage duplicate content, unavoidable in eCommerce, especially on product filters & categories.
- Decide whether you need to segment your eCommerce website by language or by country.
- Innovate in order to better fulfill user needs from search engine results by defining your business goals.
- Take care of your online reputation: for example, I care about SSENSE reviews written by our customers. Buying luxury clothing online is not an easy decision and it is necessary to find trust signals for our potential customers.

__TP:__ Are there any myths or misleading SEO philosophies you still see people following?

__AM:__ Here are some myths that I often read/hear:

- Duplicate content on the same website generates Google penalties: wrong, it will just dilute the SEO performance of your page.
- Linkbuilding is SEO: wrong, especially if you work only on this like a spammer.
- SEO expertise is a marketing job: wrong, it’s driven by Marketing. You need technical skills. It’s crazy to see some senior SEO experts who don’t know what status codes like 503, 302 or 410 means.
- Think by keyword to rank for: wrong again. You can see a lot of results on Google that will rank for a keyword that does not appear on the title. You should target a topic that is associated to a semantic field but forget the concept of exact keyword. We are not in 1999 anymore.
- Focus on the page rank: Page Rank is just one criterion among 400 or 500 different criteria.
- Delete a page on the site to remove it from the SERP: wrong again. Google has a huge brain and the search engine memorizes everything.

I just want to thank you Trustpilot for this long interview and the time they spent with me on this.

__TP:__ We’d like to thank you for your time! This was an extremely educational interview.

To learn more about Arnaud, you can visit him at [www.ramenos.net](http://www.ramenos.net/), [follow him on LinkedIn](http://ca.linkedin.com/in/arnaudmangasaryan), or [read his blog](http://blog.ramenos.net/) (in French).

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Interview with an SEO specialist: Arnaud Mangasaryan, Head of SEO for SSENSE

Google Seller Ratings Explained

*Quick update: Google has taken down its page defining 'review extensions' as it is no longer to be an ad extension. It has also updated its ['extensions' page](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/7331111?visit_id=1-636528515137673916-2799603437&rd=1) with additional information. The 'review extensions' link in the article below now links there.*

SearchEngineJournal [published an article](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-adwords-ads-stop-showing-review-extensions-january-2018/228869/) covering Google’s announcement and made the following analysis:

“This could potentially be a blow to third-party review sites, as the reviews displayed in the extensions came from non-Google websites.”

We respectfully disagree. However, they aren’t the only ones who are concerned that the elimination of review extensions may significantly impact ad performance. So this article will clearly lay out what Google is doing, what Google isn’t doing, and how that may (or may not affect you).

### Review extensions and Seller Ratings extensions: Not one in the same

Before we move any further, it’s important to make a distinction between Review extensions and Seller Ratings extensions, commonly referred to as Google Seller Ratings, or GSRs.

__[Review extensions](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3236114)__
Review extensions are text-based reviews that can show up on ads. Users can add a review or paraphrase a review to leverage reputable social proof in ads. The text would have to be attributed and the user would need to follow certain guidelines and requirements to ensure the review is acceptable.

Here’s an example from Google (we've highlighted the review extension for clarity)

Review+Extension+Image

  As you can see, users had the option to directly quote a review or paraphrase one, as long as they made sure the review was sourced properly.

__[Seller Ratings extensions](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375474)__
Google seller ratings are also an ad extension but are different in a number of ways. For one, they are an automatic extension. Where users could add review extensions to their ads, Google Seller Ratings can appear automatically if a business has 100 unique reviews and a 3.5/5 rating or above.

Here is what Google Seller Ratings look like (again, we've highlighted what constitutes the seller extension)

GSR+image

As you can see, Google Seller Ratings provides an aggregate of reviews in the form of a rating. The extension shows up automatically - users only have to ensure they’re collecting reviews.

### So what is Google doing with extensions again?

Google is doing away with review extensions. At the time of this writing, Google has not made any announcements that would affect Google Seller Ratings.

### Will my ads continue to display star ratings?

Yes, but it’s important to note that with any ad extension, there may be other factors that might cause an ad not to display an ad extension. However, by meeting the minimum review requirements mentioned earlier in this article, you are much more likely to have your ads display Google Seller Ratings.

You can read more in our article - [“Why won't my Google Seller Ratings show up? And 4 other GSR questions - Answered”](https://blog.trustpilot.com/blog/your-five-biggest-questions-about-google-seller-ratings-answered?rq=seller%20ratings)

### Do I have to do anything?

If you don’t have review extensions, no.

If you do have review extensions, you should download its performance data to see if there are any insights you can pick up as, by February 2018, they will be removed.

If you’d like to continue showing more information with your ads, Google recommends using [sitelinks](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375416), [callouts](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/7301149), and [structured snippets](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6280012) extensions.

You might also want to look into whether Google Seller Ratings are right for you (they likely are).

### Should I get Google Seller Ratings in place of a review extension?

You read our minds. We would recommend it.

You can see from the examples above that Google Seller Ratings are much more eye-catching and inform a viewer with an aggregate rating, rather than a single review that may or may not be reputable enough.

Google Seller Ratings also have the benefit of working automatically and, in many cases, leading to significant improvements in your CTR. Google estimates that this extension can increase CTR by 10% on average.

Google Seller Ratings also show up in Google Shopping results. You can find more information on Google Seller Ratings and Google Shopping [here](https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/190657?hl=en).

### How do I get Google Seller Ratings again?

You just need 100 unique reviews and a rating of 3.5/5 stars or better. Google works with various third-party review companies to feed the ad extension. Trustpilot is proud to be one of those companies.

Fortunately, if you’re a Trustpilot customer, you likely already have Google Seller Ratings or are on your way to the coveted 100 number. Reach out to your customer success manager to see if there’s anything you can do to increase your number of reviews.

### Anything else I should know?

Not really. We recommend not worrying about the phase-out of review extensions. Google Seller Ratings are much more powerful, flexible, and automatic.

If you have more questions about Google Seller Ratings, review extensions, or getting more reviews with Trustpilot, download our Complete Guide to Reviews below.

Download the complete guide to customer reviews

SEO verbessern

How to land great reviews and boost your Google Seller Rating

Interview with an SEO specialist: Arnaud Mangasaryan, Head of SEO for SSENSE

Google Seller Ratings have replaced review extensions. Here's how to get them