The Best Free WordPress Reviews Plugins

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A great way to get more traffic to your site and to build a strong customer base is the review industry. People are always looking for information about this business and that. Business reviews are just the beginning though. You can start a website that reviews nearly anything that has competition. You can reviews apps, software, computers, games, moves or whatever comes to mind. All you need is the right plugin and a list of objects to compare.

Once the traffic starts rolling, you are in the zone. It may take a little time to get the first several reviews, but once that happens, there is no stopping you and no stopping your website. The whole process can be quite addicting. You could end the year with thirty or forty sites, even more. Once you start putting together a site or two, nothing will ever stop you. Let us take a look at some software and plugins that will get you going.

1. WP Review

WP Review
This one will require a little bit of effort to get started, but it is worth it. While there is effort involved it is one of the easiest to use plugins we have found. The effort goes into making sure that initial content is great and will attract the traffic to make the reviews. We do suggest a short base of reviews to start with. You can pay to have people make the first reviews or you can even have friends and family do the first ones.

This is not to say that you should start with false content. There is a difference between giving people an incentive to provide their real opinions and paying a bunch of people to write fake reviews. The difference can be seen in the way the content feels and plays out. A great way to start is to invite your social network to take a look and provide their opinions. Once a few people get talking, there is no stopping them.

2. Google Places Reviews

Google Places Reviews
This deserves more than just a mention. When someone uses an API or actual content from a search engine, it is just good news. That is because, as long as they are not abusing the search engine, the content is both up to date and SEO relevant. This plugin is built upon the backbone of the Google Places API and will keep your information up to date and deeply SEO involved.

One of the things that we like about this plugin is the deep integration with the Maps API. Just be sure when using a plugin of this nature that your server or WordPress server has the speed and power to handle that many requests to and from the Google Maps server and can maintain each and every page for multiple visitors. A poorly functioning site is sure to be the quickest way to lose future visitors.

The inclusion of the Maps API within the Places API makes this an awesome plugin. It is easy to use for both the administrator and the users. It is configured in such a way that you should not see much in the way of SPAM, without using other plugins to prevent it or making it so hard for a user to post something that they leave.

3. Yotpo Social Reviews

This is built upon the backbone of WooCommerce, which is one of the leading commerce plugins for WordPress. We highly encourage using plugins that are made for each other when developing your WordPress sites. The same is true for themes. Many times using a plugin that is generically built can have a few issues.

If you have put together a site that is based on WooCommerce, then this is the reviews plugins that can make it happen for you overnight. It has all the best of the best social API points working right in the mix and it can bring a lot of extra traffic. Watch that you do not use too many sharing and social plugins at the same time. Any given page should have a social sharing area that is prominent and near the top, but not four different plugins all fighting for that social button area.

There is also a lot of social sharing built upon the email function that both you and your visitors can use to share the products and reviews with others. You will love this plugin if you have a commerce site and use WooCommerce.

4. Nearby Now

This is a review plugin that has some interesting features. To start with, it is built upon locality and that means that your traffic will increase from some areas and maybe not from others. To use a plugin like this it is important to ensure that you market to and work within some areas strongly. That does not mean to put zero effort into the site in regards to a larger scoped visitor base. It does mean however that you can start smaller and work outward from there.

One of the things that we like best about the plugin are the audio testimonials. You can search for and install several plugins that have this feature, but it is not one of those things that seems to be overused in the WordPress community and it is not seen that often.

The map data is from Google, but it looks a little different from their normal map data. We do not see a lot of mobile integration and some devise might not work that well with the audio portion. We are not sure yet and it will take a little time to tell how that works out. You should ensure that you have some space on the server, as we assume that is where the audio files are held. Do not forget that an audio file can be as much as 4 MB and that if 1000 visitors use that each day then that is 4 GB of data. This would be after the site became very popular, but be prepared to support the needs of your visitors.