Schema: Reviews + Authorship

[Nick.SEOSpark]

@Marie - No problem at all. This really does work and it can be very powerful for your local clients. It's essentially a way of getting the review stars back.

@David - Yes, indeed. It's a bit sneaky, isn't it? But it is working. I got the idea as a competitor of mind had used it for consultancy services.

 

[MatthewMagicMan]

Nick,

Awesome share! Really appreciate it!

Are you seeing the stars show with your author image still? A double whammy- very cool if that's the case?

 

[Nick.SEOSpark]

Nick,

Awesome share! Really appreciate it!

Are you seeing the stars show with your author image still? A double whammy- very cool if that's the case?

Hey - No problem Matthew. Hope it's useful for you. It's certainly useful getting those juicy review stars back

With regards to "authorship+review stars" - I myself haven't done this yet. My reason is that I haven't decided it a good fit for any of my clients. I have one client who actually didn't like authorship when we implemented it. They thought it showed their company as "one person" and didn't want it (even if it improved CTR). So, we have implemented review stars for them.

For other clients, we have them on "authorship" or "review stars" (but currently, not both). However, I personally think that it will work having both. I don't see any reason why not. If anyone feels like testing in the meantime....that would be interesting to know.

Let me know how it works for you.

 

[Kristen]

I have one client who actually didn't like authorship when we implemented it. They thought it showed their company as "one person" and didn't want it (even if it improved CTR). So, we have implemented review stars for them.

I had the exact same thing happen with a client of mine. Since he was a plumber, I wasn't sure how to get attention to his listings since he is focused on organic rankings rather than local, but I'll give your testimonial trick a try! Thanks for the tips!

We have a client ranking in local with 5 gold stars and a lovely picture of the owner's wife. They have definitely seen an increase in CTR, especially since no other competitors have authorship or stars in place.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey Nick,

I tried your code on August 13th on this website - Engle Insurance, San Luis Obsipo, CA - 805-781-6336. All the subpages show up with review stars on Google SERPS except the home page. Your coding was different than what I have used for the rest of the pages so I thought I'd give it a shot. Nothing yet. I just wanted to post on here in case I did it wrong or in case you've found this doesn't work anymore. So far, I'm finding what others have said which is that Google doesn't show the stars beside the home page.

 

[Kristen]

Hi Nick,

Do you think a reviews plugin used in addition to your review code would cause problems or appear to be spammy to Google? We have WP customer reviews installed on the testimonials page but I'm thinking this is overkill.

Thoughts?

Thanks again for the review code!
Kristen

 

[ARKlady ARKtechCo]

We are in a small market and the rich snippets show up. We have a testimonial page and use a widget in the sidebar or footer to display the review stars and link to the page we port over the good reviews. It works well and stand out.

Client told me that our work has them up 30% over last year, they are experiencing growing pains trying to keep up.

<g>

Great news to us. LOL

 

[Kristen]

Nice work Arklady! And thanks for the confirmation. We have seen the review stars show up since my last post!

 

[David Deering]

Yes, very nice, ARKlady. Glad to hear that the markups are first of all displaying correctly and that they're also having an impact for your client. Awesome.

 

[ARKlady ARKtechCo]

Yes, we are very happy.

Regarding the widget question, with things changing so much, we tend to err on the side of overkill at times, this is why we use a text widget and include the author markup and review numbers versus displaying the actual testimonials.

However, we've seen the social proof work for others when it is displayed throughout the site and suspect that certain industries benefit more than others.