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What's the relationship between organic search and reviews?

Nov 4, 2012
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Jessica
GREAT article/interview

We talk about it all the time - great article to read while you're eating your lunch on this fine Monday.

Just a tease....

Mark: For all of our concern about driving organic search traffic to our own sites, we really should be considering the fact that much of that traffic is going to these review sites.

Bill: Absolutely, yes.

But, wait there's more....
 
I've been looking into this quite a bit lately after I was approached by [...] to signup for their new and different review acquisition platform. We are avid and ongoing supporters of DealerRater and have built an entire gamification platform around it to incentivize the staff. (Badges, gift card rewards, competitions and draws all integrated into the software). We can't convince them all, but those staff that get reviews tend to see a difference in their own performance and definitely in the number of people that know who they are before walking into the dealership.

A good 5 star review goes to my facebook page, twitter feed, Feedback page on the website and on DealerRater of course - that's good coverage if you're the staff member "tagged" in the review.

My preliminary thoughts on the matter:
1. There may be some SEO value to implementing reviews on your own website using the proper markup - playing with this, but no confirmation

2. There seems to be some SEO value in having Google Reviews, google plus page completed, youtube profile, StreetView extras (inside the dealership walkaround), etc. We've seen some good traction from dealers who went "all in" with Google. Make sure all the addresses and contact info are correct and Google knows the accounts are linked and things tend to come together nicely over time.

3. Review legitimacy is huge. One of my concerns with [...] was their promise to go from 0 to 400 reviews over the weekend - they email all your customers and ask them to review you. I compared almost every [...] customer I could find at the time and they all had positive reviews with very few negative. Do reviews have any value if they're all positive vs your competitors all positive hundreds of reviews? Is having 400 5 star reviews better than having no reviews or does it come across as being illegitimate?

Mark: For all of our concern about driving organic search traffic to our own sites, we really should be considering the fact that much of that traffic is going to these review sites.

Bill: Absolutely, yes.

I think that's part of the reason DealerRater puts inventory on their page. There was some concerns that they would take consumers away from what the dealers consider most important.
 
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Reactions: John W.
Hi; I'm the DealerRater account manager for Canada. Thanks for the kind and accurate words. I know this is not a place to "pitch" but I do want to clarify something. Our Canadian site (about 330 partners) is different in a few ways from the US DealerRater site. Among other things, in Canada we do NOT have the AutoTrader partnership indicated in that link above; US only. Any questions for the Canadian program? Conversations welcome!
 
Thanks Craig; I know that (we don't write those kinds of promises). The most important piece of information I wanted to convey was information on that partnership. As we well know, our Canadian market can get overwhelmed, especially online, with US marketing. Glad to hear you find us valuable!