As a business owner, you likely know the basics of maintaining a healthy Google My Business Review portfolio: a 4.5+ star rating, review volume, and review frequency.
Yet businesses limit themselves by solely housing their Google reviews on their Google Business listing. To get the full benefit from online reviews, embed Google reviews on your marketing website. Rather than cherry-picked testimonials with dubious authenticity, your website can show verified reviews that potential customers can trust as social proof.
What are embedded reviews?
Embedding allows you to automatically take content from one site and display it on another. Rather than copy+pasting a Google review to your website backend, embeds allow you to display reviews on your website as they appear on Google My Business. With embeds, website reviews and review count are always current and require no manual updates.
Why Should I Embed Reviews on My Website?
There are many reasons why you should embed Google business reviews on your website. Here are some key benefits:
Builds Brand Trust
Reviews provide social proof that your business is trustworthy, credible, and has served happy customers. Online reviews are almost as valuable as personal recommendations: 89% of consumers aged 35 to 54 say they trust reviews as much as personal recommendations from a friend. Website visitors can view clear social proof of your brand’s credibility.
Increases Conversion Rate
Plain and simple: adding reviews to your website leads to higher conversion rates.
Today’s customers have become increasingly discerning, looking to reviews before making purchases. 72% percent of buyers reported taking purchasing action only after reading a positive review online. Posting verified reviews directly on your website encourages a faster buyer’s journey, offering the social proof they’re looking for before purchasing from you.
Adding Google reviews to your website also keeps customers on your site. When potential customers divert to Google or Yelp to view testimonials, it lengthens the purchase process. Customers may also view your competitors in the map pack listing next to yours and purchase from them instead.
Generates More Reviews
Displaying reviews on your website helps increase the likelihood that customers will leave a review of their own, bolstering a sense of community. Customers are more likely to write a review if they see that other people have already done so.
Improves SEO
Embedded Google reviews keep your website content fresh and automatically updated. Age of content remains an important SEO ranking factor: the 2011 Freshness update impacted 35% of searches and continues to prioritize content that has been updated recently. Embedded review widgets refresh automatically as new Google Reviews are added by customers, which consistently refreshes your page content without manual work.
With frequently updated content on your website, your SERP rankings and web analytics will improve, leading to a higher click-through rate.
Where Should I Embed Reviews?
The most effective place to embed your reviews is on your homepage, right above the fold. Visitors will see your customer reviews as soon as they land on your website without having to scroll down.
Homepage is too long or text-heavy? Place the widget on a page that a customer is likely to visit during the purchasing process: a Product page, Services page, or even a dedicated “Reviews” page in your navigation bar. Make sure that website visitors will be likely to encounter your business reviews when interacting with your website.
How to Embed Reviews
There are a few different ways to embed Google reviews, depending on your technical ability and website builder.
Google API
The most customizable (and most technical) option is to use Google’s free Google My Business API to embed reviews. Introduced in late 2015, the API allows businesses to develop applications that interact directly with their Google business profile. Google provides free access to review data so that you can list reviews, select specific reviews, display reviews from multiple locations, and more on your website.
While the API does provide additional control for the more technically-minded webmaster, it’s far from a plug-and-play solution. Large organizations with multiple locations may benefit from the data management flexibility, but the majority of businesses should stick to a simpler plugin or widget option.
That being said, let’s quickly go over the API implementation process.
To start, you’ll need to complete an access request form to gain API access. After your request has been approved, enable the Google My Business API from the Google API Console and set up your OAuth 2.0 credentials.
Google provides a step-by-step guide for how to use the APIs by sending HTTP requests and parsing the responses.
While Google’s API access is free for business owners, it isn’t always the best solution. The API provides flexibility at the expense of significant technical burden and management.
Luckily, you don’t have to learn the ins and outs of REST APIs to set up a Google review embed. Moving on to a far simpler solution: third-party plugins.
Plug-ins
Depending on your CMS website builder, adding Google reviews to your website may be as simple as installing a reviews plugin from an online marketplace. Plugins are software add-ons that extend the existing functionality of your website.
Below are the top plug-ins for three of the most popular website builders: WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix.
WordPress
Widget for Google Reviews by RichPlugins
This plugin comes in both a free and paid version, allowing you to install a reviews slider and rating badge on your WordPress website. The plugin works with shortcode and the most common page builders: Elementor, Gutenberg, Divi, Beaver Builder, and others. This plugin has over 900 reviews and a 5-star rating. However, it lacks other functionality like review management or requests.
Widgets for Google Reviews by Trustindex.io
Another popular choice is Trustindex.io’s review plugin, which boasts 550 reviews and a 5-star rating. Rather than a single slider style, this Google reviews plugin has over 25+ pre-designed widget styles to use to display up to 10 online reviews at a time on your WordPress website. It also works with the most popular page builders, and the paid version allows you to display reviews from other top review websites (Facebook, Yelp, etc). Like the RichPlugin’s widget, this solution is limited to solely displaying reviews.
Squarespace
Available in 4 different layouts with customizable features, Elfsight’s app allows you to display Google reviews on your Squarespace website.
Pricing is tiered: from 0-25$/month. The free version is limited to 200 views/month with Elfsight branding.
Similar to Elfsight, the biggest difference here is that you’ll have to subscribe to their Basic plan ($9/month) to access reviews on Google’s social platform. Their Basic plan supports two separate review feeds and up to 10,000 website views per month.
Tagembed offers plans from free to $39/month, with varying features and pageviews in each tier.
Wix
MyReviews by Bizmate Solutions Ltd
Located in the Wix App Market, the MyReviews app allows you to display Google Reviews on your Wix website. The free version, however, is limited to displaying one review at a time. The paid version ($5/month) can display multiple reviews in varied layouts but doesn’t have much more functionality than that.
Fera Reviews by Fera
With better a better star rating than MyReviews, Fera Reviews is a decent option for Google review management. The plugin is easy to set up, and can automatically import Google reviews to a customizable widget on your website. It can also be used to request reviews from customers, but the free version is limited to only 10 review requests per month. It also fails to have functionality to reply to and further manage customer submissions.
However, not all Wix websites automatically have access to this plugin. The site must be on Wix’s premium plan with a connected domain to use even the free version of this Google reviews plugin.
Another Solution: Trustmetrics
While there are Google review widget solutions for just about every website builder you may encounter, many are lacking in features and functionality. You may be able to display a few reviews, but sacrifice reporting insights, review automation, and more.
The Google Business Profile API does offer a much higher degree of customization, but most business owners don’t have the time or technical experience to implement it.
Trustmetrics’ all-in-one solution helps business owners display Google reviews and manage their reviews from a single place.
The solution is $12.50/month, and includes the following:
- Add customizable widgets to any website builder. Select which positive reviews to display.
- Read and reply to reviews directly through Trustmetrics
- Send email campaigns & set up email automation to collect reviews from previous customers.
- Tag & categorize reviews for reporting and insights
- Receive automated daily or weekly digests sent to email.
Rather than toggling between website widgets, email inboxes, and reputation management software, Trustmetrics users can manage their Google reviews from a single place.
Seamlessly display your Google reviews on your website through several badges, sliders, pop-ups, and other widgets. The widget installation process is quick and provides several customization options.
Here are a few examples:
Conclusion
Online reviews give a transparent representation of your brand and customer experience, functioning as one of the most useful tools for converting new customers. Reviews benefits can extend far beyond your Google Business Profile: embed positive reviews on your website to increase credibility and conversions.
Whether you use Google’s API, a standard plugin, or choose a more comprehensive option like Trustmetrics, any local business can embed their customer reviews on their marketing website and reap the benefits.
