Charles Armstrong

Anyone that has spent time talking with me about e-commerce websites can tell how passionate I am about customer reviews on retail sites. Online customer reviews are one of the few examples of socially generated content that is consistently a win for everyone. Not only do these reviews serve as powerful first account testimonials, these comments often fill information gaps left out by the merchant or manufacturers content.

How do customer reviews effect search engine rankings? Simple… Product reviews increase organic search engine rankings by increasing the number of relevant keywords on a product page. Content is still the king – customer reviews significantly increase the amount of relevant content presented on a page. Best of all… you didn’t have to lift a finger; customers have done the work for you.
While customer reviews are not technically optimized they often, contain valuable broad and targeted keywords that are relevant to the product.
Below is the first example I came too on Amazon.com after a search for “snow blowers.”

While this review certainly is not “stuffed” or even optimized for “targeted” keywords, it certainly has a decent natural mix. A few more product reviews containing similar, broad keyword phrases and some well-optimized product copy and suddenly the page starts to have some real weight.

Most product reviews contain the customers impression of the product… including content describing the item purchased, value, where/how the item was used, what the item was used on/with, and additional items purchased. (Plenty of natural keyword opportunities)

Search engines are also able to sniff out reviews… In 2004 Google filed a patent for a tool that would aggregate product reviews for search… it appears Live Search Reviews beat them to the punch on this.

As Web 2.0 continues to gain momentum, few retailers can continue to ignore the power and potential of hosting customer reviews within their product pages. Customer reviews should not be underestimated as part of a passive SEO initiative.

Below are some additional fun facts & case studies:

Marketing Sherpa article on the effects of product reviews

ClickZ article online product reviews

eMarketer online product review article AA|RF study

“I like very much the… how you say… reviewez of produce on the interwebs… I hope you like too.  Dziekuje!” <Borat>

Brulant’s eMergent Marketing team takes on the 2007 Chicago Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo

A great time was thoroughly had by all! My intentions of live blogging many of the presentations quickly faded, as I wanted to listen more than write. Not all is lost…I took plenty of notes and will continue to post key take-aways as I have time to review the presentations. In the meantime… Angela did a great job covering many of the link building & social media focused presentations on her link princess blog, its well worth a read. Paul Elliott was on-hand and spoke on the “In House: In, Out or In Between?” panel. Chris Boggs was also in attendance to moderate many of the panel presentations, blogging for Search Engine Roundtable and represent the SEMPO board. Both of these eMergent Marketing / Brulant Inc. team members did a great job, sharing much of their insight with the SES attendees.

Photo… We all realized Chicago pizza requires no optimization! (Paul has an eerie 6th sense for photo ops)

Taking a break from packing my bags… Tomorrow I am off to Chicago for the Search Engine Strategies conference.
I will be attending and likely blogging many of the following presentations:

Dec 3rd

• SEMPO Meet the Engines

Dec 4th

• Keynote (Seth Godin)
• Organic Listing Forum
• Big Site, Big Search
• Max Conversion, Retail
• Online Maps, Local Search
• Networking Reception

Dec 5th

• Keynote (David Isenberg)
• Case Study, Maximizing Conversions
• CSS, AJAX, 2.0 & Search
• Images & Search Engines

Dec 6th

• TBD

Please leave a keg on the back porch Santa -

The following courtesy of “the register“

Guinness’s St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin has been hit by an audacious raid in which an evidently thirsty man dubbed “the Beer Hunter” made off with 40,000 pints of the famous stout.

According to the Times, the perp simply drove into the brewery yard in his own HGV, hitched it to a “well-provisioned” trailer and drove out again. The total pintage nicked was 360 kegs of Guinness and Budweiser and 90 kegs of Carlsberg, worth a total of £46,000.

A spokeswoman for Diageo Ireland, owner of Guinness, said: “We’ve never had such a breach of security prior to this and we’re taking it extremely seriously. All CCTV footage on site is being viewed and the Gardai are also looking at CCTV footage along the quays. The haul has a significant value. We have more trailers coming in and out as we are coming up to Christmas.”

The spokeswoman rather brilliantly added: “What could they possibly want with all that beer?”

Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) Releases First Annual Survey of Top Marketing Trends for 2008

The Marketing Executives Networking Group, an almost 1700 member organization of leading marketers who are at a VP-level or above in their organizations, today issued the results of its first annual survey of Top Marketing Trends for 2008. The survey of MENG members, conducted by Anderson Analytics, focused on top marketing concepts, buzz words, global areas of opportunity, targeted customer demographics, as well as the books that marketers look to for inspiration and growth opportunity.

Yeah! Job security

Welcome to my blog…

Here we will cover many topics relating to Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. If I do my job well, we will all learn much about SEO and… maybe you will get to learn a little about me in the process!

Many of my posts will center on the following topics:

- Organic Search Engine Optimization Best Practices

- Hot Topics in the Search Industry

- My Experiences as a Search Professional

- Retail Internet Marketing Trends

- Search News

- Search Tools

- *anything else I think is worthy of sharing