Ratings for affiliate website

Hi there,

Was looking around for the term "ratings" here on BHW and didn't find what I was looking for therefore I'm posting this. If there's threads around this subject already please forward me and close this one

As far as I'm hearing and experiencing myself, affiliate sites is getting harder and harder to rank (especially new ones), and the word goes that it has become more and more important to "stand out" and "add value" to visitors (also if you look at Google's official standpoint: support(dot)google(dot)com/webmasters/answer/76465?hl=en, which one should not do to often, I know).

One way to do this is via ratings (real or that look real) and here is the reason for my thread. Does any one know if there is any convenient way of getting ratings for your affiliate (in this case) products? Black or white hat, it doesn't matter. I'm all new to the area so any ideas would be helpful.

Also, if you have tips on additional things one could do to "add the extra value", please share!

Cheers,
Z

What are you trying to get exactly? like ratings for the products? Such as like 9.5/10? If that's it then just make them up on your site, unless that's against your affiliate networks TOS. Or do you mean something else?

dystopia said:

What are you trying to get exactly? like ratings for the products? Such as like 9.5/10? If that's it then just make them up on your site, unless that's against your affiliate networks TOS. Or do you mean something else?

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Thanks for your answer. That's exactly what I'm looking for but I don't know in which format

I'm quite a newbie on the field, but I guess that google takes into account the authenticity of the ratings. Therefore I'm guessing there's better and worse ways of doing it. And my guess is that making them myself (in plain text/images) is not the best way of presenting it.

Reading about this atm: developers(dot)google(dot)com/structured-data/rich-snippets/reviews

I guess the long way is putting this up and just order a bunch of reviews (content) that one enters from time to time manually. Would be nice with a service offering this though.

If you are actually reviewing the products, you can just focus on your own personal ratings.

MisterF said:

If you are actually reviewing the products, you can just focus on your own personal ratings.

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We are. We run listing websites such as this one:



.. where the actual ratings in place don't say anything (we rate based on what pays us more). What we want to do is to take it to the next level, personalize this (probably with fake profiles). Just wondering if anyone has experience in this and if theres ways that google like it (via specific services, rich snippets?) and how to make this look as authentic as possible

Now I get it, yeah just google "Enabling Rich Snippets for Reviews and Ratings" This will let google crawlers understand the review ratings and stuff like that. Hope this helps

Dystopia thanks.

Is there any black hat way of doing this? I doubt I'll get real users to get there and fill in and google probably has their view on what a "real" rating is

Well your ratings are real ratings, as you are reviewing the product haha So don't worry about it, if you keep working on your site, it will become an authority in google's eyes.