1.REVIEW SIGNALS & TECHNIQUES Rhea Drysdale Co-Founder, Outspoken Media @rhea

2. REVIEW SIGNALS 3. Known signals from public records:

Reviewer location

Frequency of reviews

Reputation scores

Social network of user

Content aspects

• Sentiment-ish

4. Google Assigns Reputation Scores to:

Reviewers

AND

Reviews

Per Reviewer Rating patent:

people, products, advertisers and merchants

5. REPUTATION SCORE OF USERS FRIENDS 6. USER PERSONALIZATION 7. USERS REVIEW HISTORY 8. Versus 9. Or 10. REVIEW CONTENT

Preference given to those withsummariesand/ordescriptions

11. FRESHNESS 12. USERS OWN SOCIAL NETWORKS 13. What drives social results?

Friends on:

• Gmail (with Google profiles)

• Twitter

• Flickr

• Quora

• Yelp

• Friends websites (not shared, profile pull)

Search social beta: &tbs=frim%3A1(or sidebar)

14. Aspects Early screenshots from Mike Blumenthal and Bill Slawski show aspects have been refined over time. 15. Common Aspects 16. Common Aspect Sources

Yahoo.com

Citysearch.com

InsiderPages.com

Judysbook.com

Niche local sites

17. Sentiment Analysis FLAWED! 18. SENTIMENT

After DecorMyEyes update, Google said they took out:

Extremely poor user experience

No measurable result from the update.

Details: googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html

19. KEYWORDS? Filtered from appearing on Place Page 20. FUTURE SIGNALS

Improved sentiment analysis? Increased filtering of data sources and signals for irregularly high negative responses (DecorMyEyes)

Transaction verification with services like Mint.com and SpendGo

21. QUESTIONS 22. Do you need reviews to rank in local?

No , butReviews add relevant content and count as social indicators.Googles Related places on a review-free Place page will draw users eyes and potentially clicks drawn to:

23. Do you need to use hReview?

No, butUsing hReview and structured markup helps Google correlate your pages with places mentioned. Can also add rich snippets to the SERPs, which may improve conversions.

24. More on hReview microformat

What?

Open standard for distributed reviews.

Aims for simple properties common to multiple products, objects and services.

More on hReview: microformats.org/wiki/hreview

Implementing hReview with Wordpress: yoast.com/implement-hreview-wordpress-theme/

25. Ratings

Use microdata, microformat or RDF markup.

Google assumes 1 (worst) to 5 (best) rating scale by default.

Can use anything to classify rating,

26. Test your rich snippets!

google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

More on reviews (go to the source): google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=146645

27. SOLICITING REVIEWS 28. According to Yelp on 3/8/11 @SMX!

Talk about the site where youd like a review, e.g. Yelp.

Use that sites services and offers to incentivize reviews.

Create great content, services, products that users will want to review.

Ta da!

29. Other methods 30. REVIEW SERVICES Check with your ecommerce solution! 31. CASE STUDY 32. ORM Problem Scope

Very negative review appearing above the fold in the SERPs

Negative source had optimized the page and built internal links to it

33. SEO Strategy

Establish baseline

Audit existing reviews

Manage fake reviews & conflict of interests

Create a testimonials page and strengthen internal/external backlinks

Solicit testimonials through exit interviews

Develop and promote off-site content

Develop and publish video testimonials

Publish testimonials and bulk up directories

34. Results

Website

Website

Website

Website

Niche directory

Niche directory

Citysearch

Social profile

Social profile

Press mention

35. THANK YOU

Contact:

[email_address]

Follow:

@ outspokenmedia|@rhea