WordPress Star Ratings
Reviews are the most important quality indicators on the web. You know the stars from online stores like Amazon and eBay. Just as important are such reviews but also for service providers and product providers. However, since there is no clever evaluation plugin outside of WooCommerce, we have integrated our own rating system into our SEO plugin.
The overall result of the ratings Google plays mostly in position 1-3 in the search results between the metadata. The star ratings lead to significantly better click rates from Google and better conversion rates.
Advantages
- Independence from external rating systems and thus full cost and content control (ratings are editable)
- Reviews are also anonymous and without registration possible (thus tends to be better than in other systems, since you have to make less effort)
- Simple integration in WordPress via comment system, individual styling and multilingual designations possible
- Evaluation results can be embedded anywhere via widget, shortcode and PHP code, and can even be inserted in the content via Gutenberg Editor (from WordPress 5)
Setup
- Set which content types you want to enable the reviews in the comments: Pages, posts and individual post types are possible. At WooCommerce, a rating system is already integrated, because you do not need our solution.
- For Google to recognize reviews, you must categorize them. If it’s not a local business or product, choose CreativeWork – this usually works as an alternative. In the case of a company or product categorization, in addition to the settings here, please add LocalBusiness and Product info via the microdata editing of the content to be rated.
- Styling lets you define colors, symbols and labels. The styling is self-explanatory and should of course match the design of your page. Incidentally, we deliberately provided only Unicode characters as rating symbols, so your performance will not be affected.
- We recommend you to set the ratings as a mandatory field for each commentator to give a rating. Otherwise, something like that will be forgotten. In addition to the rating stars, you can add a field for company names. This is especially useful if your offers are aimed at companies. You can also add an individual privacy notice, as WordPress does not currently offer (as of November 2018) no solution.
- With the shortcode, the PHP code or the widget, you can build in the overall score of reviews anywhere in your theme or content. It automatically links to the comment form. If you would like to change the link, you can add the attribute “Alt-Link” in the shortcode and adjust the HTML anchor there. We’ve put together all the visual codes for our SEO plugin on GitHub.
Validation
To test the ratings, use the Structured Data Testing Tool. It may appear after the publication of the respective contents no error. Hints that Google spends are not a problem. If there are any errors, please first check your theme, if there any SEO options are active.
Here you will learn everything about Google’s rating formats (structured data).
Comments
In the comment section you can edit the individual reviews. All fields except the privacy box can be edited if a reviewer made a mistake. We do not recommend you to edit your review without the consent of the reviewer – unless it is spelling mistakes.
We encourage you to actively ask your customers for reviews. It’s best to send them an email a few days after your service has been provided or after customers have received your products, and ask them for feedback. You can install a direct link in it, which leads your customers to the comment form. It usually ends in WordPress with a #respond, so for example for this page:
https://delucks.com/en/wordpress-seo-plugin/ratings/#respondIn addition to the WordPress ratings, we strongly recommend that you build a reputation on Google My Business and other industry-relevant platforms to help you get the most objective picture possible of your online offerings.
Before you click further, leave us a comment below with a rating of you!