Semalt: How We Turn Client Testimonials Into SEO Wins
Client testimonials are an essential part of your marketing strategy. If you haven't considered having one, this article will show just how important they can be to the success of any business. What you may not have noticed is that your client testimonials are a treasure map to invaluable intelligence. By making them part of our B2B SEO strategy, we basically set you up for unadulterated access to the thoughts of your audience. Trust is the foundation of every successful website. In the business world, gaining the trust of a partner or consumer is something that doesn't come cheaply. For something as valuable as trust, you must be prepared to work hard. Your testimonials are proof to your prospective clients that you are trustworthy.
Why are testimonials important to your business?
Have you heard about "the concept of social proof?" it was a concept originally put forward by Robert Cialdini, a psychologist, in his book "Influence: The Six Principles Of Persuasion." In this book, he highlights how individuals rely on each other for ideas or answers on what they should think and do.
As experienced marketers who have been in this industry for years, Semalt realized the importance of testimonials as a powerful influencer in the buying process. In the 2020 Crowd Views report, we learn that 46% of B2B decision-makers rely on websites that offer public reviewing services before making up their minds on a purchasing decision.
By making testimonials so easily accessible on their website and content, B2B marketers now have new ways to use reviews to boost their credibility and information to their audience, as well as unlock the SEO value of good testimonials.
Testimonials are essential to B2B businesses as they will not only influence your marketing strategy but will also be a trusted source of information for customers when making major purchasing decisions. They also give valuable information on what the next content is as well as the latest updates in the market which we can include in your SEO playbook.
Why are testimonials important for B2B SEO?
Client testimonials benefit from some form of a triangle. At each end of the triangle, we have one of these User experience, Domain authority, and Search engine result page. These form the three primary benefits of clients' testimonials on a site.
- User experience: testimonial content can be displayed on a product page, landing page, blog post, solutions page, etc.; as long as it adds context value and social proof, it is a welcomed addition.
- Domain authority: having reviews from third-party sites holds great promise in improving your domain authority when related to a specific industry and keywords.
- SERP ranking: testimonials on your site give Google a direct link to what users think about your site. It informs search engine bots on your site's performance, and it improves the visibility of your brand when it gets ranked by third-party sites.
Google has a long-term goal of rewarding websites that are transparent and credible. This is clearly evident in how it includes reviews in SERP. Over the course of Google's evolution, it has acquired several patents which underline the importance of client reviews and considers it a credible source of information.
Client testimonials can also help in optimizing long-tail searches. This is a welcomed advantage as it allows queries to tap into more niche search revenues and not rely solely on the most famous terms. As a result, we find testimonials to be very effective at harnessing more colloquial and varied language patterns, which means that your content gets to rank for any search variation that caters to the needs of your target audience.
Turing testimonials and reviews into SEO goldmines
It helps you get out there
There are many sites that review B2B businesses which provide an opportunity for those B2B businesses to create and share testimonials. If you plan on exploiting the advantages of having good reviews, you must be able to aggressively market said reviews.
The more reviews your site has, the more visibility you create for your brand. There are dozens of B2B review sites out there, so we will help you find one and get you a good review.
It is critical that you have your site listed at least once on any of these sites. We will also help you build a loyal customer base by asking your customers to make it review you using an easy setup so they don't feel bothered.
Mine your reviews
Do you remember how we keep saying your reviews are a gold mine? Well, you have to mine it. Clients' reviews give us interesting insights on many things, including the language used by your target audience. This will help us create better content and target more appropriate keywords. We take out time to review our testimonials. In it, we pick out questions and statements that appear repeatedly. That alone has given us an idea of what we should discuss next in our blog.
By reading through our testimonials, we can also notice the challenges our visitors face as well as the opportunities our clients experience on our website and with our services.
We collect all this data in a format that easy to analyze and quantify.
What's amazing is that we can do exactly the same thing for your website. In fact, we include this as part of our keyword strategy when researching for every new client.
We create specific page that optimizes your testimonials for search engine bots
Now that you can see which keywords matter the most to your audience, we can group your testimonials according to the major pain points we've discovered by studying your testimonials.
These pages are keyword-rich, and they can become the critical content pieces that link directly to other vital pages of your site like the solution and product pages.
Can you use your reviews wisely?
There is no right or wrong way to select which reviews you want to feature on any given page. There are, however, guidelines we like to follow when selecting which reviews to post.
We ask ourselves:
- Does the testimonial align with the message our client wants to pass on to the visitor?
- Who wrote the testimonial? Do they have the authority, or are they well known in the industry? Do they influence the decision of others?
- Is the testimonial engaging? Is it well written, and does it use accessible relatable words and phrases?
Using your testimonials to build backlinks
We can help you use those positive reviews and testimonials at the beginning of your dialogue with prospective clients. We can also reach out on your behalf to the "best of" industry list and show them your testimonial with a request that you should be added to their reference pages.
Respond to your testimonials
It is often common for web owners or managers to ignore providing a response for testimonials or reviews. At Semalt, we always remember to give feedback. You may not have realized, but Google values the dialogue between a business and its consumer. This indicates trust and brand inclusion. According to Google, responding to testimonials is an indicator that your audience and their opinion of your business matters to you.
Conclusion
Testimonials are a great gift we get from visitors. Search engines like Google place a high value on authority and want to be perfect, so they will try their very best to recommend only the most trusted and credible businesses. In the end, consumers and their testimonials go a long way in telling Google that you are the perfect pick.
By entrusting Semalt with these enormous tasks, you take a step in the direction of SEO success. Remember, it is our goal to ensure that clients discuss your businesses, products, and services in a positive way through shared reviews and testimonials. You, on the other hand, benefit greatly as your sales improve and you have your customers advertising your brand for free.