How To Make Website Comments And Reviews Useful For SEO

How to set up micro-markup for reviews on a site page and what comments search engines will regard as an advantage.

Reviews and comments on site pages are useful for both visitors and SEO agency. The article sorted out the requirements of search engines – what should be the reviews so that they help promote the site.

In the article:

1. What comments on the page are taken into account by PS
2. How to set up Schema.org markup for reviews and comments
3. How to create micro-markup for comments on an article
4. How to create microdata for product reviews
5. How to embed Schema.Org on a website

What comments on the page are taken into account by PS

Some pages of the site should include comments or reviews. Typically, these elements are added to blog posts and product cards. Comments and reviews help users and work as a plus for promotion in search engines.

Useful for site visitors:

• share their opinion about the product and experience of use, help to choose;
• communicate with like-minded people, discuss topics.

Useful for SEO:

• users visit the page more often to respond to the comment thread, search engines recognize this and appreciate live activity;
• reviews may contain keywords, including low-frequency keywords and competitors’ keywords, which also affect page optimization;
• by adding new comments, new content is added to the page, and the search engines appreciate the page refresh.

Mikhail Shakin spoke in more detail about the block with comments and other tips for SEO at a lecture, the outline of which we made into an article .

So, reviews are useful, but how do search engines recognize them, will the constant activity of the same users be a plus, how do they relate to the comments of the site’s administration and how to use the keys?

What website reviews are useful for SEO

Collected a list of requirements:

• Comments and reviews should be about 30-40 words long, and are more likely to be meaningful and helpful.
• There should be a discussion on the page, that is, SEO will be affected by comments if there are at least 5-10 comments.
• The site administration’s responses to comments are normal, it is even welcome if the author of the article enters into a dialogue or the company works out the questions.
• The presence of negative reviews increases trust – it is more likely that comments are live, they are not deleted. And the answers from the administration indicate that they are being listened to.
• If on different pages comments are often written by the same authors, there is nothing wrong with that – it just means that the site has some kind of constant audience. The main thing is that the text should be free of spam.
• The comment must correspond to the content of the content, be relevant.
• Review text is counted in the same way as text on a page, so you can use keys that way. Usually, competitors’ keys are used, which are out of place in the text of the article, and low-frequency. The requirements are the same – you cannot overspam.
• To start a discussion, webmasters sometimes use their commenters who leave the first feedback. This is a working technique, the main thing is that the reviews are natural.
• You can set up micro-markup for reviews to give an additional signal to search engines.

Let’s dwell on the last point and deal with micro-markup.

How to set up Schema.org markup for reviews and comments

Schema.org is used to mark up the page structure. The markup will not be a ranking factor in Google or Yandex, but it is still useful because it shows search bots what is on the page and is responsible for a nice snippet with additional information. The more useful information in a snippet, the more space it takes up, the higher the likelihood that it will be clicked on.Read on:

How to embed Schema.Org micro-markup on a site, and what it gives

Let’s deal with comment threads and reviews.

How to create micro-markup for comments on an article

How to mark up a comment article using Schema.org:

1. Use the markup for Schema.org/Article .
2. Inside it, place the markup for the Schema.org/Comment comment branches .

We discussed how to set up the markup for an article in the article ” 

How to set up the Schema.Org markup for articles and other texts .”

Comments usually follow the text. The comment markup block is article-specific and must be inside the Schema.org/Article article markup.

Let’s assume that the comments are formatted as a thread with a root post and replies to it, plus a vote with likes and dislikes for each comment.

Markup for discussion comment threads:

<div>
 Комментарии (<span itemprop="commentCount">2</span>)
 <ul>
   <li itemprop="comment" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Comment">
     <div>
       <div>
         <span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person">James</span>
         <div itemprop="dateCreated" "="">
           25 марта 2020, в 11:20
         </div>
           <meta itemprop=" upvoteCount" content="7">
           <meta itemprop="downvoteCount" content="5">
         </div>
       </div>
       <div itemprop="text">Текст комментария</div>
       <ul>
         <li itemprop="comment" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Comment" data-parent="1">
           <meta itemprop="parentItem" content="1">
           <div>
             <div>
               <span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person">Sam</span>
               <div itemprop="dateCreated">
                 25 марта 2020, в 14:15
               </div>
               <meta itemprop="upvoteCount" content="7">
               <meta itemprop="downvoteCount" content="5">
             </div>
           </div>
           <div itemprop="text"></div>
         </li>
       </ul>
   </li>
 </ul>
</div>

In the markup:

• itemprop = “commentCount” – the number of comments for the article, a child of the Schema.org/Article object ;
• itemprop = “comment” – indicates a comment, also a child of the Schema.org/Article object ;
• itemtype = “https://schema.org/Comment” – comment markup:
• itemprop = “parentItem” – a reference to the parent comment to which this one responds, the first comments in the thread are not indicated;
• itemprop = “author” – author;
• itemtype = “https://schema.org/Person” – markup for the author;
• itemprop = “dateCreated” – the date the comment was published, you can specify it in the tag , but the robot also recognizes the usual indication, as in the example;
• itemprop = “upvoteCount” – the number of likes for the comment;
• itemprop = “downvoteCount” – number of dislikes;
• itemprop = “text” – text of the comment.

How to create microdata for product reviews

How to mark up a product card with reviews using Schema.org:

1. Use markup for products
2. Inside it, place the markup for Schema.org/Review reviews .

The snippet for the product page, thanks to the markup, can have a price, a mark of availability, user rating and the number of reviews: 

We discussed how to mark up a product card and whether it is possible to mark up categories in the article ” 

Micro-markup for an online store website: how to set up Schema.org markup for products and categories .”

The review can be simple text, or it can be divided into subcategories, for example, “Advantages”, “Disadvantages” and “Review”.

An example of such a review markup:

<div itemprop="review" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Review">
 <div itemprop="author">Павел</div>
 <div content="2017-12-28" itemprop="datePublished">28 декабря 2017</div>
 <div itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating">
   <meta content="1" itemprop="worstRating">
   <meta content="5" itemprop="ratingValue">
   <meta content="5" itemprop="bestRating">
 </div>
 <div itemprop="reviewBody">
.
 </div>
</div>

Or a simple review with text without dividing into pros and cons:

<div itemprop="review" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Review">
 <span itemprop="name"></span>
 <span itemprop="author"></span>,
 <span itemprop="datePublished" content="2011-04-01">.</span>
 <span itemprop="description">Текст отзыва</span>
</div>

You can check the micro-markup through the Google validator .

How to embed Schema.Org on a website

The completed markup needs to be added to the site, this can be done using plugins or manually: the data is inserted before the closing tag. But it’s better to do it automatically.

For WordPress, for example, there are such plugins:

• most popular Schema plugin ;
• All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets ;
• WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup ;
• WP SEO Structured Data Schema ;
• Markup (JSON-LD) structured in schema.org .

For Drupal we found the Schema.org module , for Joomla! J4Schema.org extension that works with JCE editor.