What is Trustpilot? How to benefit from Trustpilot for your SEO success?

What is Trustpilot?

With so many different sources of online information about websites and businesses, it is becoming harder and harder to know who to trust and rely on. It is for this reason that websites like Trustpilot have been developed as they are proving to be one of the best ways to monitor, report on and analyse how a brand or business actually works and whether or not they are as good as they say they are. Being able to read the different reviews and understand how a brand or business works before hiring them or going into business with them can be extremely beneficial. Websites like Trustpilot go a long way in ensuring that brands are transparent and open about their products and services as they are publicly held accountable for their actions, both good and bad. 

Trustpilot works by gathering reviews of other peoples experiences and placing these comments on an easy to read and navigate webpage. Having a webpage where you can read the reviews of customers who have purchased a product or service from a company ensures that you are receiving unbiased information. The Trustpilot reviews offer an amazing source of information and it also allows for businesses to freely view and reply to any review it may receive, ensuring that they know what they are doing right and can also get an idea of how they can improve. Websites like Trustpilot are therefore an invaluable source of information for both a potential customer and business. 

How Does Trustpilot Work?

Trustpilot works by gathering information in the form of reviews and then posting this information onto its open and free to use website. To ensure that each of the customers is legit and that the information being posted is relevant, those posting on the review platform have to have had an experience whereby a product or service was purchased from the business within the last 12 months. A user is able to post a review of this product or service for free on Trustpilot, so long as they have a Trustpilot account, which can be made for free. The reviews that are made about a brand or business are posted on the profile of this company and are able to be viewed by anyone who visits this profile page. Businesses are also able to reply to and interact with those who make reviews. 

A Trustpilot business review can be started in two different ways, either by the consumer themselves or by the business asking you to review on their Trustpilot webpage. If a business is the one that invites the consumer to post a review, they should be sure that there are no biased words used and no incentives offered as this goes against the ethical guidelines of the website and Trustpilot could remove these reviews. If a customer is wanting to make a review without being invited to by the brand or business, they can create an account and post what is known as an unsolicited, or organic, review. 

Is Trustpilot Free for Companies?

Yes, Trustpilot offers a free account for both businesses and consumers to use, however, there are instances whereby paid for accounts can help a business grow its Trustpilot page. The Trustpilot pricing on the paid version of the product works out to just under 200 pounds a month, or it can also be paid annually. The main advantage behind purchasing the paid Trustpilot account versus the free account is that Trustpilot automates a lot of the features that would otherwise need to be manually controlled, this would of course cost money anyway as you would have to pay someone to monitor your account and reviews. When you have the paid-for subscription, you are also able to use the Trustpilot website integration feature, whereby a brand is able to add Trustpilot reviews to their website directly. This connection of customer reviews on a page ensures that a brand is willing to be transparent and be held accountable for their actions, directly from their website. Trustpilot reviews on website pages is a great way to ensure that your customers are able to get a very good idea of what your products or service is and will feel confident in purchasing after seeing the great reviews posted on your website. 

Why is Trustpilot Valuable for Businesses?

See Your Brand From Your Customers View

Being able to understand how a customer feels about your brand, products or services ensures that you are able to grow and learn directly for those who support your business. Having a customers view is extremely important and can go a long way in forming relationships with your clientele. Due to the fact that a brand is able to interact and comment on the reviews, find out more if a customer is having an issue and potentially even rectify it, ensures that you may even gain a few customers back that you would not have even known had an issue had it not been for Trustpilot. This type of consumer sharing also goes a long way in ensuring that brands are held accountable and that they are transparent with how they function and handle feedback. 

It is a Free Source Of Information for Customers

With Trustpilot being a free source of information, any customer or user can quickly check on whether or not a company has good reviews, with no cost to them at all. It also costs nothing for them to leave a review, and if a business has a paid-for automated account, the user accounts are generated for them, saving the customer time and speeding up the process. Trustpilot also works to ensure that each review or comment that is left is free from bias and has been generated and left by a real customer, who is leaving his own opinions that have not been manipulated or censored by the brand themselves. This all ensures that customers are provided with an unbiased opinion about a product or service, which increases their trust in both your brand and the product itself. 

Convince the Customers with Social Proof

In today’s world, it’s not enough to simply state that you have a good product, customers now have so many choices from the thousands of other available products and services that they want hard and tangible proof that a product or service is truly the best of the best. By previous customers leaving behind reviews, potential customers have dependable proof that your product is reliable and worth the cost. Convincing customers of your brands’ effectiveness and products with social proof is one of the best ways to ensure that your customer base considers you to be a reliable and trustworthy brand. One of the best ways to ensure this is to use websites like Trustpilot which allow for customers to interact with a brands page directly. 

How to See Your Reviews On Trustpilot?

If you are a client you are able to see each one of your reviews by logging into your Trustpilot account and then clicking on the tab labelled as ‘My Reviews’ on the drop-down menu, this will take you to a page that displays each of your own reviews. Customers can search for individual brands and differentiate between what type of review they are after, be it organic reviews or invitational ones. Businesses are able to see and review their own reviews on their Trustpilot page, they are however not able to edit, change or delete any of these posts. Trustpilot reviews are user-generated and only a customer who has left the review is able to delete or change it, this cannot be done by the brand or business who the review is about, ensuring transparency and trust between the brand and the customers on Trustpilot.

Can You Trust Trustpilot Reviews? 

Yes, Trustpilot reviews are reliable as the platform is dedicated to actively monitoring and even blocking reviews that they believe have been created through biased and untrustworthy opinions. Trustpilot is a website and platform that has been created to ensure that a business is transparent through the placement of reviews, both good and bad, on one page. Thanks to the fact that no brand or business has the power to edit, move or delete a Trustpilot post, each of the reviews can be trusted, especially since to create accounts you have to put in information like your full anime and email address, with no replications allowed. It, therefore, makes it extremely hard to post fake reviews on this platform, ensuring that they are a website with information and reviews that you can trust.

Do Trustpilot Reviews Affect Your SEO Performance?

Yes Trustpilot does affect your SEO performance and since these reviews are written by real people and brands don’t have control over them, Google considers these reviews to be of great importance. Each of the Trustpilot reviews affects a website’s overall authority and if scores are good, this can go a long way in ensuring that your SEO performance and rankings are high. Trustpilot is considered to be one of the strongest and most effective customer review websites that impact your SEO and SERPs. It is therefore considered to be beneficial to have a Trustpilot page and be active on it. 

One of the best ways to use Trustpilot to your advantage when it comes to improving your SEO and search engine results page rankings, be sure to display Trustpilot reviews on website pages and integrate Trustpilot into website structure as this will show search engines that you are transparent in the way your function, which makes your website a more reliable source of information according to search engine crawlers. 

How to Benefit From Trustpilot to Support Your SEO Effort?

Link To Your Trustpilot Page on Your Website

When purchasing the paid-for subscription to Trustpilot, you are able to show your Trustpilot score on website pages, linking your Trustpilot profile and your website together. The embed Trustpilot reviews on websites not only offers your customers the chance to see all of the latest reviews that your business has received but it also gives them an idea of how transparent your brand is and that you are prepared to be held accountable for the actions you take. This goes a long way in gaining your consumers’ trust, so be sure to add Trustpilot reviews to website pages. 

Encourage People to Give You Star Ratings and Reviews

Getting a star rating on a website like Trustpilot can go a long way in assuring your customers that you sell and provide valuable information, goods or services. If you have had a great interaction with your client and are truly loving the product, asking them to write a review or post a rating is definitely a good idea. Though you should not use manipulative tactics or incentivise their post, it is not against the rules laid out by Trustpilot to ask for a review of a customers experience. 

Show Your Star Rating On Your Website

Not only can the reviews you receive on Trustpilot be displayed on your website, but your star rating can also be shown and displayed for all potential customers to see. If you are a brand or business with a Trustpilot 5-stars ranking, having this on your page can go a long way in assuring your clients that you are a reputable and trustworthy business. Not only is this good for gaining customers, but a displayed 5-star rating can also go a long way to improving your SEO and SERP ranking.