LV= has quite a simple goal: “to be Britain’s best-loved insurer.” We interviewed the brand’s senior digital engagement manager Nigel Saxon last year about how one of the UK’s leading car insurance companies is developing a closer relationship with its customers by listening to them, collating feedback and driving improvements.
The best bit: LV= is working closely with Reevoo to make that happen.
Twelve months on, despite a very competitive marketplace and the presence of unverified review websites, LV= customer reviews are dominating the search pages. That’s not just an indication that LV= is providing what its customers want – it suggests that Google is actively boosting reviews and content that is verifiable, trustworthy and good quality.
So how did LV= (and Reevoo) do it?
1. Verified reviews came top
Twelve months back, a search for ‘LV car insurance’ would bring up a host of unverified review sites with wildly different scores.
This is not ideal – we’ve spoken extensively about how unverified reviews risk causing damage to your brand. They’re also not a good representation of what people really think – to get the real ‘average’ score you have to ask EVERYONE. That can’t happen with unverified reviews.
By giving Google a high volume of fresh, quality, well-optimised content, the genuine reviews have pushed the unverified reviews further down the search pages.
Clever embedding of content, having reviews on lots of relevant pages, being smart about URLs and using a trusted review partner (*cough*) has ensured that the official, trustworthy LV= reviews are at the top of the page.
Of course, you can’t rest on your laurels when it comes to search, but in the best case scenario, your search page will look something like this:
2. Featured reviews came top
We’re pretty excited about this one and so is LV=!
Google’s new natural search feature breaks out review scores in full (with an image) and puts them front and centre. Google takes its data feed from Reevoo for this one.
Yet more proof that Google recognises Reevoo reviews as authoritative and trustworthy content. Even better, there’s no charge from Google yet to occupy this prime real estate.
Featured snippets can come in all shapes and sizes (you mainly see them with trivia answers, live sports scores and stuff like that). Reviews are eligible to be a featured snippet, which means Google recognises reviews as appropriate answers to users’ search queries.
Basically, if you’re providing this kind of content, Google wants your link to get clicked. And if Google wants it to get clicked, it gets clicked.
It’s a good time to be doing reviews right.
LV= told us:
‘This panel is a great benefit of embedded reviews – Reevoo and LV= blazing a trail!’
That’s what we like to hear.
3. Rich snippets came top
We couldn’t have a post about search results without mentioning rich snippets.
We’ve spoken about the benefit of these before (see here) but if you need a catch-up session:
Rich snippets are part of Google’s ‘mark-up’ options that make search results more appetising. Think of them as extra guacamole on your burrito. If you tag your content right, Google can extract things like reviews and feature it in the search results.
This improves its SEO and (as you can see) makes it more visually striking.
It’s rewarding to see the results of 12 months of hard work.
Over the last year we worked with LV= to categorise its content and make sure all the reviews we’ve collected together have the best chance to make it on the front page of Google. It was a lot of trying, failing, trying again, tweaking and optimising.
We’re excited to see what we can do together next.
