How to Use Technical SEO to Optimize for Product Ratings and Reviews

You understand the value of a comprehensive, high-quality review no matter what you're looking to buy. This is often the deciding factor between purchasing and moving on to something else.

In April, Google rolled out an upgrade to its product review system that gives more weight to evaluations, including extensive information and analysis to benefit shoppers.

Despite Google's assurances that the Product Reviews upgrade isn't a major one, it's nevertheless crucial that you adapt to the new requirements.

Here are tips to help you make the most of Google's recent modification to how it handles product ratings and reviews on its site.

Product Reviews: Content Types Considered

Google's product review material states that the changes are meant to consider individual review pages and the whole site for review-heavy domains. In a nutshell, this might affect any website that does comparisons or reviews for consumers, such as −

• Web content, whether for profit or not;

• Blog posts that are organized in a "best of" way;

• Product and service promotion via informative articles;

• Any piece of writing that uses affiliate links.

Product or service detail pages are not included in the scope of the product review update. The landing pages at the end of your sales funnel provide the most detailed product information and customization choices.

Product description pages are subject to a different set of rules established by Google, prioritizing the information's originality and credibility. Following best practices for product reviews will help you win not just at search but also at delighting your consumers since these guidelines are more focused on the quality from the reader's viewpoint.

Improving Your Product Review Ratings With Technical SEO

1] Inbound and Outbound Connections

To improve your SEO, you need to prioritize building quality links. This is particularly true for reviews that direct readers to the product pages where they may buy the item. But don't limit your evaluations to only linking to landing sites.

The E-A-T value of your domain may be improved by linking to authoritative external resources. This is aided by internal connections, which also assist in spreading the word about your great work. Think about including links to any of the following in the context of your product reviews −

• Credible resources to back up your arguments and data;

• Site content (blogs, galleries, other reviews, etc.) that is pertinent;

Links to other sites with information that isn't available on yours

Whether or not it makes sense for your site, you may want to provide links to other items, brands, or vendors to demonstrate your credibility.

2] Upload XML Sitemap

After making the aforementioned changes to your site, it is important to notify Google so that they may update their index to reflect the changes.

With time, this will happen on its own, however submitting the most recent version of your XML sitemap can hasten the process. To achieve this, just upload your sitemap using Google Search Console. Typically, a sitemap may be accessed via the Domains and URLs section of your website's Settings. After that, go to Google Search Console and after clicking Crawl, click Sitemaps.

You may instruct Google which specific URLs it should and should not index based on the information provided in your sitemap. Selecting which pages of your site to index may have a significant impact on how well those pages perform in search results.

3] Improve Your Site's URL Format

Search engines and consumers alike will appreciate the time and effort saved by a streamlined URL format.

If the "buckets" in which your URLs are stored (e.g., "/seothings/technical/info") or the URLs themselves (e.g., "/technicalseoinfo20-facts") don't make sense, it's doubtful that search engines and users will either.

Use a straightforward structure. Make it simple for visitors to discover these sections of your site by categorizing them under a primary "Services" tab with a dropdown menu for specific services.

Remove Injurious Links

Toxic backlinks to your site may appear for no apparent reason. Online frauds and spam are a reality, unfortunately. To prevent these links from harming your search engine rankings, you may disavow them.

You may use Google Search Console to generate a disavow file to prevent search engines from penalizing your site for these spammy links and domains. To prevent them from further influencing your search engine results, Google will mark them as "nofollow" after you're done. Maintaining your site's authority requires constantly using this technical SEO method.

Conclusion

There is no need to fear if your product reviews aren't yet optimized for the upgrade of Google's latest product reviews.

Like all others, the purpose of this update to Google's product review algorithm is to improve the quality of search results for consumers. Because there are so many options on the market, Google understandably prefers sites that go the extra mile to offer their users thorough, unbiased product evaluations.

It may be time-consuming and labour-intensive to update your reviews to reflect this change, depending on the present status of your reviews. Still, the effort will be worth it if it provides something more valuable to customers and search engines.