How To Write A Good Review [8 Crucial Features]

Seems pretty simple, right? You have a product and you want people to buy that product; so… you start a blog and write reviews. In this post, I want to educate you on some of the best practices on how to write a good review.

I am writing this from the perspective of an online affiliate marketer. If you are not an affiliate marketer, then I still urge you to read on. I am also not writing this to sell you anything. I want to help you write a good review (and maybe you’ll write a good review about me, once you make some money applying this stuff).

Related: 7 Reasons why affiliate marketing may be right for you…

Where You Probably Started

It’s important to start at the beginning. Why do you want to learn how to write a good review? Chances are, you heard people were making full-time incomes selling stuff on the internet. All of us have gotten sucked in one way or another. Some of us are even crazy enough to stick at it for years or even decades.

How you came across this entrepreneurial bug isn’t as important as your WHY. Why do you want to be here? Blogging and writing reviews is boring stuff. No one wants to do it. There is nothing glamorous about writing 2,500 word posts about the next big thing. If you recall from the old children’s story, the turtle beat the hare to the finish line, not because it was fast or exciting, but because it was steady and resilient.

We are the turtles. If you aren’t the turtle, you will just quit and call all internet marketing courses scams. Don’t be that guy.

Why Do You Want To Learn How To Write A Good Review?

I know, I am doing a great job on selling you on the idea of affiliate marketing, am I right? I am not here to nurture you into a blogging badass. Badasses aren’t created from coddling and endless positivity – they are formed and sharpened out of necessity. Why do you want to write a good review? Simply hoping to earn some money isn’t enough to drive you onward. You need to make it a mission to help others discover information. You will never affect their buying decisions until you get that first part right.

I met a dude at a conference once. He had lost hundreds of pounds on the biggest loser. I made a point to talk to him after he gave a speech because he really moved me. He gave me some great advice I use to this day. He said, “knowing your why isn’t enough. You need to connect that why to your life’s purpose. Only then will you stay driven and consistent with whatever you are doing to achieve your goals.”

I mean, damn. Those words left an indelible mark on me. I’m not sure if I would have stuck with blogging all this time if I hadn’t talked to Bob Brenner that day. Even when people aren’t coming here and buying the products I review, I know that people out there are learning. That is why I write these posts.

What Do I Know About Writing Good Reviews?

Before we move forward with the list of how to write a good review, you might be wondering who I am and why you should accept tips for writing from me. Fair enough. 

My name is Jeremy Wayne. I have been writing reviews on various blogs since 2009. The very first review I ever wrote was for a Clickbank product called, “Strip That Fat.” I wrote the review and submitted it to article directories. I was certain the affiliate commissions would come screaming in, but nothing ever happened with that one.

That review was short, boring, and I’m pretty sure no one even saw it.

Over the past 10 years, I have written countless reviews across multiple blogs, many of them are still live on this blog (freedomfromfailure.com). I have earned thousands of dollars in commissions. I did not see decent success until 2018/2019, when I earned several thousand from a handful of launches.

Related: No matter how dumb you think you are, you can learn affiliate marketing!

The 8 Tips On How To Write A Good Review 

My recent success has been no accident. Below, I detail some of the biggest lessons I have learned, some from other people, while others on my own. I have never shared these secrets without anyone… until now. Read through the whole thing and share this if you absolutely loved it!

#1: Focus On Quality

I put this first because it is the most important. Google will not rank articles as willingly as before if they’re not written well. Your post has to provide value; the user experience has to be extraordinary. No longer will a keyword-stuffed, 300-word article suffice. Google is too smart for that.

Here are a few specs to consider when attempting to write your review:

• Your word count minimum should be at least 1,500 words. Statistically, posts with over 2,500 words rank better overall. Your big posts need to not only be long, but share a wealth of information that your readers want.
• Keyword density is not as important as it used to be. In fact, you should not try to force your keyword in places it looks awkward in. I usually include it in the first and last paragraphs, in a H2 tag (headline), in the title, URL, and a few times in the body text. Google will penalize you if you enter it too many times.
• Use spell check and write in complete sentences. Have someone else read over your post if you can. Double check your grammar. This stuff is important, not only for ranking your review, but for people who are reading it. I will never buy anything from a review that demonstrates lack of English skills. You are representing the product you are selling. Do so with pride.
• Make your content easy to share and even easier to interact with. Google needs to see your readers enjoying your content. This means social signals are more important than you probably realize (this is covered more below). Post your review on all of the major social networks. The engagement you get on those posts will actually aid in your ranking ability.
• Adding a video to your review above the fold will also, not only help you rank better, but give the visitors who don’t want to read another way to enjoy your content. For this, I actually create a Powerpoint presentation and narrate the slides myself, while using a screen-recording software.

I’m sure there are additional ways to make your review even higher quality, but if you follow these guidelines, you will be well on your way! Just first – start writing – then practice writing reviews and you will get better at the entire process.

#2: Use Internal Linking and Write Two Additional Posts (or related articles)

This is more difficult if you are starting a brand new blog from scratch, but having posts that flow throughout your website will not only distribute link juice more efficiently, it will also decrease your bounce rate and enhance user-experience.

WTF Did You Just Say?

Link juice is SEO Industry jargon that refers to the quality of hyperlinks that point to your site. Majestic measures link juice in their metric known as “Citation flow.” A page with more link juice will rank better than a page with less link juice, when all other factors remain constant.

Bounce Rate is another term Google uses to analyze user-experience on your site. If someone visits your site and then hits the back button with little to no interaction, Google see it as a negative vote against your site, because the user did not find what they were looking for. You want your visitors to stay on your site for a while and click on your links.

Internal linking is a great way to address all of these issues and aid your visitors on their quest to finding what they are looking for – while hopefully making you money in the process!

Another way to utilize internal linking, while giving you a better shot at ranking for your targeted keywords, is to create at least two additional posts that link to your main review. I usually like to anchor these posts to keyword terms that are easier to rank for like, “product name cost” or “product name bonus.” These posts do not have to be as long as your main review; they are mostly there for SEO support and a way for your readers to dig deeper, if they so desire. 

#3: Tie In A Story In The First Paragraph Or Two

While people will come to your review for information, they also want to be entertained. It’s difficult to choke down 2,500 words when it is bland and/or robotic. People want organic. They love raw emotion. People love stories. Add it all up, and you get something unique that others will want to read.

Your goal in today’s social media-intensive universe, is to get people to share your content. Engagement is also important. If you can get people sharing, liking, and commenting on your posts on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other platforms, you will see a dramatic increase in your rankings. This also means more people will see your content and hopefully share it as well.

By tying in a story, you are accomplishing two goals at once: 1) capturing your audience’s attention so they read more, and 2) making the content more relatable for them. The best way to get their attention is to use the first paragraph to pull them in. This will also decrease your bounce rate, which is a HUGE rankings killer.

#4: Show The Product, If At All Possible (Or Proof You Have Access)

This is a secret, underground strategy I use when writing my reviews. If you review digital products, chances are high this will benefit you greatly. There is a secret most affiliate marketers will never share and that is the power of “review copies.” You may have been told only Super Affiliates can get access to this secret weapon, but that is just a misnomer.

If you do any kind of research on your competition when formulating your review, you will often times see the guys on page one advertising they have access to the product. But how can they have access before it’s even released? Simple: they were given access early.

Vendors understand the power of reviews. Reviews are kind of like Info-driven retargeting for the analytical folks. These are the people that will get the emails and dig deeper to see what the product is all about. Seeing proof of the product is usually enough to seal the deal, as these guys are generally skeptical until they see it’s for real.

How can I get a review copy?

It’s a heck of a lot easier than you might imagine. Approximately 75% to 80% of the time, a product vendor will grant you review access to their product if you identify yourself and ask for review access politely. It helps even more when you have built a rapport with the affiliate managers.

The bug gurus (Mark Ling, Eben Pagan, Greg Jacobs, just to name a few) will often times use the same affiliate manager for all their products. Some affiliate managers will transcend multiple products in given niches. These affiliate managers are the gatekeepers – the guys that handle the affiliate side of product launches. Make it your mission to get to know these people. They can help you in so many ways, sometimes even getting you special, unique bonuses, or one-on-one interviews with the guru him/herself!

Just remember to be polite and courteous. Sometimes they won’t offer anyone review access. That happens often with the big launches or the courses tailored around the live coaching/one-on-one experience. In these cases, they often times will give you plenty of content to aid in your review. I will still ask though. You just never know what you’re gonna get.

#5:  Always Provide A Bonus That Highlights Possible Deficiencies

Anyone who tells you bonuses aren’t important for making affiliate sales has probably either never made any, or uses nothing but paid traffic. It also means they probably do not have a list or write reviews.

When you write a review, you are effectively relying on the folks on the huge marketer lists to search for more information. You are pretty much ethically stealing sales from them. This form of affiliate marketing is also known has “launch-jacking.” You can bet your booty that those marketers will have additional bonuses to offer their readers, so having something else to offer yourself will be key.

Once you get your review high up on the search engines, you will have to have some serious bonuses to convert your readers into sales. You can do a number of things for your bonus.

Here are a few examples I have done in the past:

• Create a PDF with some insider secrets I learned from an expensive course, in my own words, of course!
• An interview with the product creator with additional insights and info that aren’t included in the course itself.
• Create a course and share it as an exclusive bonus.
• Offer services that complement the course content (a Done-For-You solution).
• Offer a 30-minute consulting session via Skype.

Of course, it mostly depends on the cost of the product and what the deficiencies are, but adding exclusive value is definitely never a bad thing!

#6: Structure Your Review With The Five Factors Of Engagement And Keep It Conversational

As you have seen above, quality is extremely important. You are trying to accomplish multiple things at the same time, which can present a real challenge if you are new to writing reviews. Here are the factors you should be taking into consideration before you even write a single word:

1. What is the product; what are my keywords
2. Onpage optimization (SEO term for the things you do on your review to rank it better)
3. Engage your audience at the beginning of the review and tease them with something to read until the end
4. Present your material, while keeping your audience interested
5. Stick the nail in the coffin with your bonus and end with a recap that draws attention to the most important points to get that sale

Let’s discuss each factor in greater detail.

What is the product; what are the keywords?

In terms of framing, you need to understand what you’re selling before you can even write a good review. The product name is a great place to start. What are you selling? What search terms might potential customers enter in Google to find your review? These search terms are called Keywords.

Back in the day, you would do some research and create 20-50 different keywords for your posts. Today, Google is much smarter at figuring out what your post is about. Plus, people search for stuff differently today than they did back then. Search engines have evolved throughout the years to take queries that are more question/conversational-based.

For my reviews, I like to use the product name as my focus keyword, along with 2-3 LSI keywords and another 2 keywords that are much broader. My LSI keywords may include “product name review,” “product name bonus” and “product name cost.” Another keyword I might include would be what topic the product is about (i.e. affiliate marketing) and perhaps the name of the product creator.

Onpage Optimization

A lot of people obsess over link building as the end-all be-all of SEO, but the majority of the battle happens on the post itself. If you don’t optimize the onpage elements, then your post’s ranking potential will be limited, to say the least.

The easiest way to make sure you have all of your onpage elements optimized is to install the Yoast SEO plugin onto your WP blog. Don’t worry, the free version works just fine. You’ll be able optimize for your focus keyword and be certain you have everything right.

The image above is the SEO analysis for this very post (I will address the problem items after I finish). Green is “good,” yellow “needs attention,” and red is “bad.” Clear up the problems and you will be good to go!

Engage your audience and keep them interested

We’ve already touched base on this item in #3, but I wanted to mention it again. You want to keep your audience engaged in your ENTIRE post. Telling a story is a great way to pique their interest, but keeping it is a whole other story. 

The best way to get your readers to read your entire post, is to either promise something at the end, or save your best content for the end of your post. There is a reason why “top ten” posts start with number 10 and work their way up to number 1. Everyone wants to read until the end to see what they ranked as number 1. I would use that approach, but the items on this list are not ranked – they are all important!

While you are writing, sprinkle in the objective of your content and actually tell your reader why they should continue reading. Don’t just be subtle about it. Point out what they will learn later in the post and get them hyped about reading on.

Present your bonus and recap everything at the end

As discussed in #5, having a bonus is probably the most important part of your review in terms of making the sale itself. If your reader sees you as an expert on the product and you offer a bonus that is better than the bonus the guru offered them, they will likely buy from you.

As mentioned in the engagement section, telling a story and raising engagement are important, but the bonus can be part of your promise that keeps them glued to your review. After the bonus is laid out, a swift recap that summarizes all of the benefits of the product and literally spells out how the bonus will complete their experience will greatly enhance the impact of your review.

For an example of a review I’ve written and updated recently, check out my Super Affiliate System review here.

#7: Create Multiple Versions Of Your Review In Different Media-Types

 

Every year when you get that dreaded fruitcake for Christmas, you may not want to eat it. Instead, you find ways of giving that fruitcake to other people. Maybe you bake it into cookies, or find more creative ways to repackage it so it seems like you made it yourself.

Creating multiple versions of your review is not like that entirely, but you are repurposing your content so people can find it in different ways. This has a multiplying effect on your efforts, both from and SEO standpoint, and from a sheer visibility standpoint.

What does this mean?

Imagine taking that review and turning it into videos, PDF documents, sound files, Powerpoint presentations, and spreading them across the internet. Do you think more people would find your content? Better yet, embed links to your main review in your repurposed content and you’ll get more link juice to your review, thus boosting its ranking in the SERPs.

So, what are some good places to do this?

For the sake of keeping this brief, here is a list of places to post your content.

Videos

• Youtube
• Vimeo
• Dailymotion

PDF/Powerpoint

• Scribd
• Slideshare
• Academia.edu
• Google Books

Other

• Soundcloud

Valuable Hint: A great way to find additional resources to share your content is to Google the keyword you are trying to target and see what sites pop up. There are hundreds of ways you can share your content, excluding Social Media platforms. Traffic Travis is also a great, FREE software you can use to reverse engineer sites you can use to share your content.

#8: Use Images To Keep Your Readers Engaged

If you didn’t know yet, the alt tag is an extremely important part of SEO. Having an image on your site with the alt tag of your main keyword is vital to ranking well. That is not the only reason I strongly advocate the use of images on your review, however.

Remember when your parents read books to you at bedtime every night? You enjoyed the pictures as much as the actual story, right? This method of engagement still works on adults (hint, hint). It’s amazing that after all this time, we still enjoy seeing pictures alongside our reading material. 

Here are just a few tips for using images on your review: 

• Did you know the format of your image actually makes a difference? Use GIF for moving images, JPEG for photographs or graphics, and PNG for line drawings or text. 
• There are plenty of stock images you can find for free. If you are building a site on GoDaddy or Host Gator, you can get access to a plethora of free images you can use in your text.
• Google has indicated the time it takes for your page to load is a huge ranking factor. Installing a WordPress Plugin (like “Smush”) will reduce the size of your images so your page takes less time to render.
• Every review should have a featured image that catches attention. This image will show up on other pages of your blog. I prefer to use a theme for my image that is similar to the thumbnail I create for the Youtube video(s) that go along with the post. I think of this as kind of like a mini-branding sort of thing. My modus operandi is basically take advantage of any way you can to be remembered.
• For some additional tips on image SEO, check out ahref’s post here.

Bonus Tip on How to Write a Good Review

Generally, once I have written the main part of the review and established the perks of the product, I then lead into my bonus and discuss how it will address any weaknesses of the product. 

Hint: This is where I would present my bonuses, if this were an actual review. After the bonuses, I will tell the reader how to claim them (highlighted and in italics), then lead them into the conclusion.

How To Write A Good Review Recap

Writing a good review can be a daunting task, especially if you don’t know how to write a good review already. It’s okay! Just remember to write like a human and keep it conversational. Think about what your target audience might be looking for and hand them the best facts on a silver platter.

You will also want to learn SEO, if writing reviews is how you plan to do affiliate marketing. Onpage optimization and internal linking is just as vital as finding external places to point to your site. Once you have written a quality article, don’t forget to define a killer bonus and proofread that thing multiple times. Just one mistake could send a potential customers away from your page. Yeah, it’s pretty petty, but better to be safe than sorry.

I have done my best to exclude resources on this article that cost money. If you would like a more comprehensive list of resources, both paid and free, please fill out your name and email in the form on the right side of the screen. I’ll send you my Super Affiliate Black Label Rolodex straight to your inbox! Thanks for reading the 8 hot tips on how to write a good review! Hopefully you’ll take these tips for writing a good review and start writing reviews of your own!