How To Write A Product Review Your Readers Will Trust

Reviews are one of the more common types of content you find online and I suppose most of us look for reviews before buying a product.

So writing reviews can help your readers reach a decision about purchasing a product. For the blogger or reviewer, it’s the chance to earn an affiliate commission.

How should you construct your review? What should you include to provide value to your readers? In this post, I’ll give you some ideas to help you write reviews that rank in the search engines and convert.

Why Write Product Reviews?

People who are thinking of buying a product will search for reviews. Research into how consumers use reviews show just how important reviews are for potential clients.

Here are just 3 of the stats.

• 88% say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
• Customers spend more if a company has excellent reviews
• 68% of buyers consult reviews as they build their shortlist

So, we can see that people want to read reviews. They want to know what others think about a product. Writing product reviews is a great way of helping your readers.

From the affiliate marketer’s side, writing reviews can be a great way of earning money online. If you create an awesome review that ranks in the top positions of the search engine results you can create a nice passive income. You may have to update your review from time to time but that’s all!

What’s The Purpose Of A Review?

The goal of a review is to give people an honest opinion of a product. Don’t fall into the trap of writing a review just to make affiliate sales.

If you give positive reviews for everything you review, your website will soon be considered as untrustworthy and you will lose your audience. An audience takes time to build but can be lost very rapidly!

Be truthful and remember why your readers search for reviews. They want an honest opinion!

A good product review is ideally based on personal experience with a product. Where it is not possible to buy a product then you need to carry out your research. Based on your experience or research you should be able to give a fair assessment of a product’s imperfections or benefits.

Finding A Product

The main consideration when choosing a product to review is to make sure it’s relevant to your website. If you have a site about cordless drills, then any cordless drill and their accessories are relevant.

You shouldn’t review things such as gardening tools or mobile phones, you must keep it pertinent to your niche and give your readers the information they are looking for.

Once you have selected a product the next step is to do your keyword research. With your chosen keyword tool type in the name of the product to see how many searches per month the product receives.

Ideally, it will have more than 50 searches and have a competition of under 100. If there is a lot of competition for your product you can add the word review, product name review or what is product name.

You should also make sure there is an affiliate program for the product you are promoting. If you enter the product name +affiliate program into Google you will see what affiliate programs exist.

The keyword research and search for affiliate programs are steps you would normally carry out but are not always necessary. As your principal goal is helping your readers you may still review a product even if there is no affiliate program and you have no chance of being ranked on the first pages of the search engines.

Know The Product

Obviously, the best way to get to know a product is to purchase the product and try it yourself. Of course, this isn’t always possible due to financial restraints or simply because you already have another similar product already.

How can you review a product if you don’t own it?

If you are reviewing cordless drills, for example, and you already have 1 or 2 that you think may be the best on the market then you won’t want to buy additional drills. In this case, you can compare the other drills to the ones you already own.

You might want to compare the weight, the time to re-charge the battery, the different settings, and functions anything that you consider important.

To obtain the information about the drills you don’t own you can use the product manuals (they are often published online) these should give you all the technical details. For more knowledge read other reviews to see what other reviewers think of the product, just Google the product + reviews.

Don’t copy the reviews, you might like a feature that another reviewer didn’t like don’t be afraid to be different and use your own words. You may also find the other reviews are missing something important, make your review more complete.

Customer reviews on sites like Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot or other online retailers provide a wealth of information.

You will find what customers like or dislike about a product, what questions they might have asked or any problems they may have had.

With some goods, you may be able to get a free copy from the manufacturer if you say you are writing a review. Always worth a try! You could also take a look at the product in a local store if it’s on sale.

Although it’s better to own the product to write an honest review, you can see it is possible to write a good review using the details you find online.

What Your Readers Want To Know

There will be several reasons why potential buyers will seek reviews. Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and think of the questions you would have about the product. Some examples:

• Who is it for?
• What features does it have?
• The problems other users might have had
• The benefits of using the product
• The pros and cons
• Is there a guarantee?
• Where to buy?
• The price
• Possible alternatives

The Product Review Template

After researching or using the product you will be ready to write your review.

Here’s the template I use, this may change a little depending on the type of product I am reviewing.

• Title
• Introduction
• Brief summary of the product
• What is the product
• Who it’s for
• Benefits of using the product
• Product description and features
• Pros and Cons
• Price and guarantees
• What other buyers are saying about the product
• Final opinion/conclusion
• Call to action

Let’s break down these items a little more.

Title

Creating your content is one thing but getting it read is another. This is where your title is important. Your title is the first thing people will see in the search engines or on social media and it must make people want to click it.

Therefore your title is probably the most important part of your content but is often neglected. I too am guilty of this! Take the time to choose a title that will attract people and describes your content in an honest but also enticing way.

A good title will increase your click through rate and traffic to your website. Ideally, your title should make people curious so they feel as though they must read your article. This article by Jeff Goins gives some good tips.

When writing product reviews you should include the product name, as this is the keyword, perhaps an adjective or a number.

For example, using the cordless drills:

The Unbelievable Features Of The Makita… Drill, The 7 Essential Reasons To Buy The Makita… Drill

These might not be the best titles but are better than My Makita… Drill Review.

Introduction

The introduction is the first thing your readers will see, so it should give them the motivation to continue reading the rest of your review.

One or two short paragraphs will set the tone for the rest of the review and may give a few hints of how you feel about the product. You might want to start with the introduction although I often find it easier to write after you have written the rest of the review.

Brief summary of the product

Depending on the type of product you can include different items. For example:

Product name
Overall ranking out of 10, 100 or number of stars
Ease of use
Price
Owner or manufacturer
Website

What is the product?

This isn’t necessary for all reviews, if you’re reviewing a hairdryer or drill then it’s obvious what the product is. However, when reviewing some online programs or products where the name doesn’t make clear what they are about, this section can be useful.

Who is the product for?

This should make it clear who would benefit from the product. Using a cordless drill as an example again, is it for intensive use or is it suitable for the occasional DIY man, is it capable of drill small holes in wood or large holes in concrete.

Your reader should know after reading this section if the product is right for him. If not they can simply leave without wasting any more of their time. Or if you’re reviewing a drill that’s suitable for intensive use, you could recommend a cheaper more lightweight drill for your readers that are searching for something smaller.

This tells your readers that you really want to help them find the best product for their needs. Also, this helps build trust.

The Benefits Of Using The Product

The reader who has come this far is interested in the product you are reviewing and wants to know how the product can solve his problem. Give them an overview of the product, what it includes, the capabilities and the results the users can expect.

Product description and features

Here you can go into detail describing the product, mentioning the features that will interest your readers. Using the cordless drill example – the weight, the speed settings, how long the battery takes to charge and how long the charge lasts, etc.

Pros and Cons

A list of pros and cons can give your visitors the chance to evaluate the product at a glance, to decide if it is right for them or not.

The most helpful reviews will include the good and bad points about a product. Your readers are looking for an unbiased opinion and will be more likely to read your review if they feel it is balanced, not wildly positive or negative.

Price and guarantees

Add the price of the product here with the conditions of any guarantee. If I find reports of people having problems getting the guarantee honored I include these details here.

What other buyers are saying about the product

When I can find comments about a product I like to include some in the review. This shows the problems or solutions the product has given existing users.

Final Opinion/Conclusion and Call To Action

Give a short summary of your review highlighting the good and bad points and who would benefit from the product and why. After reading your review your readers will be ready to follow your advice.

If it’s a positive review include a call to action something like “Buy the product here”, “See More Details Here” or “Click To Buy Product On Amazon”. Of course, this call to action would include your affiliate link.

Make it easy for your visitors to buy the product!

If it’s a negative review, you could point them to another review you’ve done for a better product or include an affiliate link to a recommended product as an alternative.

At the end of this section ask your readers to leave a comment to share their experience or any questions. A little interaction is a good way to build trust!

Add Media

Now your review is complete, you should add some images or graphics. If you have used the product yourself take some photos and/or make a video. If you are basing your review on research, the manufacturer or merchant will have some photos and you may be able to find a helpful video on YouTube.

Format Your Review

Everything is now entered on your post, now you want to make your review appealing visually. Here are a few tips:

• Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Make it easy to read.
• Use subheadings to make your content easy to scan.
• Make your text easy to understand, don’t use sophisticated words
• Use lists with bullet points.
• Include plenty of white space between paragraphs and headings.

Search Engine Optimization

You’re almost ready to publish but don’t forget the on-page SEO. If you want your reviews to be found in the search engines it’s necessary to carry out the SEO for each review.

The main points are to use your keywords which will usually be the name of the product in the title and in the first and last paragraph. If you have included some images you can include the keyword in the “alt text” of one of your image’s. Also, do a little internal linking to relevant posts.

There are a few other little tricks that can help, it’s best to check out this post about on-page SEO for all the details.

Now everything is done, you can publish your review

A Quick Summary

1. Choose a product
2. Research and get to know to product
3. Write the review using your template. Keep it honest and personal!
4. Add media
5. Format the review
6. Carry out the SEO

I hope you have found my How To Write A Product Review post useful.

Do you use product reviews on your site? Have you any other ideas or have I forgotten anything? Have you had success from writing product reviews? Please leave any feedback below.