Are Customer Reviews Useful Page Content

[craig55]

My question concerns the value of customer submitted online product reviews. My team is managing an SEO initiative for a retail website and we're debating whether to take product reviews out of iframes so they may be indexed by the search engines. Our goal is to use the customer comments to strengthen our on-page optimization efforts and to index for tong-tail and obscure terms we either aren't aware of or can't dedicate the page to. One of my concerns is that the comments section will be so far down the page that even if it gets indexed, the keywords won't be weighted heavily in the ranking of the page.

Does anyone in the community have any knowledge, either first-hand or of a study, of the effects of customer reviews on a page's ranking for keywords mentioned in the reviews.

Thanks.

[AussieWebmaster]

by taking them out of the iframe they contribute to the keywords on the page... so long as peole posting mention what you are trying to get optimized it would help... but definitely gives the engines more keywords to possibly long tail rank the site for

[jimbeetle]

index for tong-tail and obscure terms we either aren't aware of or can't dedicate the page to

That's one of the best things about UGC. The manufacturer calls it the "Model 500L Widget Pump," users might refer to it as the "Brandname 500, left-handed version." You really can't get better than that, especially if you're currently using straight manufacturer descriptions. I wouldn't worry about where on the page the text is, as long as it's on your page -- and not your competitors -- that gives you a leg up.

[gmoney]

is your content already being display somewhere else outside of the iFrame? If so, is this additional display on a subdomain or a different domain altogether?

[Gooner151078]

An issue I often debate is whether or not it is morally correct to apply hyperlinks to user reviews in order to increase internal links into selected pages. Is this considered doctoring? I know if I wrote a bad review of a hotel on a holiday website and the organisation used the text I had written to benefit their organic ranking, or even worse, merchandise I would not be happy. But is this becuase I am in the business? I wonder how many consumers know that Expedia own TripAdvisor?

[mrpurple]

Customer reviews will really help the really long tail aspect of SEO, whether it be a positive or negative review it will give you the opportunity to rank for the really long tail keywords that may only be searched a couple of times, or even a one off, but when you have multiple crawlable reviews that's multiple one off visitors.

Every visitor counts - this helps create more natural traffic!

[mellisa16]

Yes, they actually reviewing it..