Do you want to know how to embed your Google reviews onto your WordPress website?
It’s a fairly simple process that you could easily achieve in around 30 minutes!
Firstly, you want to log into your WordPress website, go to Dashboard > Plugins > Add New and here you will want to search for ‘Widgets for Google Reviews’ by ‘TrustIndex.io’ then Install and Activate.
There are 5 steps to follow in order to set up, which are:
1. Connect Google platform
To connect to the Google Platform you must enter your business’ Place ID. To do this go to Place ID Finder and start typing your business address into the search bar. Once you find your address and have the marker open, it will say ‘Place ID: aMixOfNumbers&letters’. You want to copy the ID and paste into field on the plugin, then click the ‘Check’ button.
It should then present you with a ‘Source’ and your company – if this is correct click ‘Connect’.
2. Select Layout
Once you have clicked ‘Connect’ it will automatically take you to the next step which is selecting a layout for your reviews.
You can filter the layouts to display ‘All’, ‘Slider’, ‘Sidebar’, ‘List’, ‘Grid’, ‘Badge’, ‘Button’, ‘Floating’ and Popup’. There are so many layouts to choose from, but I personally like the layouts with the Google badge, stars and ‘based on xxx reviews’ as I think they look more authentic for the website visitor.
3. Select Style
After selecting your preferred layout, you then decide the style, e.g. if you would like it to appear light or dark.
This ultimately depends on the branding/colour scheme of your website, but more often than not, going with a white style works for most websites! My favourite styles to use are ‘Style: Drop shadow’ or ‘Style: Light border’, as I personally think they look clean and modern.
4. Set up widget
Next you set up what elements you want to appear on your widget. This step provides you with a widget preview where you can instantly see how the reviews will look whilst changing the settings.
You get to choose if you want to display 4- and 5-star reviews, or if you only want 5-star reviews to be shown. You can select how you want the date of the reviews to be formatted – I usually opt for the ‘May 25, 2022’ option.
There is also a list of checkboxes to choose from. I often select all of them except for the first two. I think it’s good to choose to ‘Use site font’ as it looks more seamless with your website, and I’d definitely select ‘Show verified review icon’ again just for more authentic look.
Then click the ‘Save & get code’ button.
5. Insert code
Finally, you will be presented with a shortcode which is a small piece of code within a set of [brackets] that provides a feature or function to your website. The shortcode is usually [ trustindex no-registration=google ] which you can copy and paste into post, page or widget.
Where to embed google reviews in WordPress
I’d recommend that the best places to embed your shortcode for reviews would be in your footer, as then they will appear on all your WordPress website pages. However, if this isn’t an option, I would recommend adding it to your homepage as its likely to be your most popular page.
Adding your Google reviews to your website is also a great idea because it’s not promised that anyone will see them on Google’s search results page unless they search directly for ‘Your Business’ which isn’t always the case!
If visitors are coming to your website via referrals, social media or by directly entering your website URL they will never see your reviews, unless those reviews are on your website, as they are completely bypassing Google and the ability to view reviews that way. Therefore, adding your reviews to your website using a plugin like this, it’s more or less guaranteed your reviews will be seen!
