start a WordPress review blog

If you want to know how to start a WordPress review blog, you’re in the right place! In this article, we’ll walk you through the entire process of starting from scratch to ending up with a WordPress website that’s ready for you to begin publishing reviews on.

We will first review what factors constitute a good review blog. After that we’ll introduce you to a five step process that you can follow to start your own.

Are you ready? 🙋‍♀️

Let’s get started! 🏃

What makes for a good review blog?

When it comes to creating a good review blog, publishing high-quality content is key. Your reviews need to be well written, informative, and compelling. If you want your readers to take action after reading one of your reviews – whether that’s checking out another review on your website or making a purchase – you’ll need to work on hard on perfecting your writing skills.

However, before even starting on your first review, you’ll need to lay the foundations for your new website. Therefore, the elements that you need are:

  • A good web host that can provide you with reliable performance.
  • An aesthetic, functional WordPress theme optimized for showcasing reviews.
  • Key plugins to unlock necessary functions to make your review blog run well.
  • A small set of essential pages to go alongside your reviews.

Get all this right, and managing your reviews blog will be (relatively) straightforward. Get it wrong, however, and you’ll be seriously diminishing your chances of creating a successful review blog.

📚 In this guide, we’ll cover choosing the best platform for your site, getting the design right, which additional tools to install, and finally, how to publish content and grow your audience.

How to start a WordPress review blog

Creating a new website, no matter what its purpose can be a daunting prospect. However, with the right advice, it needn’t be that way. By following this five-step guide to starting a WordPress review blog, you’ll be well on your way to launching your new website.

Step #1: Choose a suitable domain, host, and install WordPress

When it comes to starting a WordPress review blog, the first step is to choose a company to host your website. There are countless options to choose from, however, after reviewing SiteGround, this web host is our recommended option.

Not only does SiteGround offer a high-quality web hosting service, but with plans starting at around $2.99 per month, they’re also highly affordable. Furthermore, SiteGround will take care of installing WordPress for you, while also providing domain name registration and impressive customer support.

With a domain name and a brand new hosted WordPress installation, you’re now well on your way to creating a review blog with WordPress. Let’s move onto step number two.

Step #2: Pick the best WordPress review site theme

Neve is an excellent theme to start a WordPress Review Blog.
An example of a WordPress theme that you can use together with a reviews plugin

A fresh installation of WordPress might not be much to look at. However, by installing the right theme, you can quickly transform your basic blog into a stylish reviews website.

Now, the topic of your website will play a large part in determining which theme you should choose. However, you can’t go wrong with our free Neve WordPress theme. The design is overall elegant, simple, and compatible with most of the review plugins out there.

An example of a Neve starter site that can be used to build a WordPress review blog.

Although Neve is excellent, you can also choose from our wider library of WordPress themes and then, again, install a reviews plugin to go with it. More on this in the next step.

Either way, after choosing a web host, installing WordPress and then picking a suitable theme, you’re ready to move onto the next step in our guide to starting a review blog.

Step #3: Install the essential WordPress plugins

Although your new website is now functional and starting to look pretty good, there are a few more essential steps you’ll need to take to enhance it even more. This step involves installing and activating some key plugins on your review blog, including:

  • A review box plugin. Otter Blocks works great for that. Here’s an example review box that this plugin lets you create (basically, the idea is to have boxes like that below your individual reviews; those boxes can be picked up by Google – their contents can be displayed alongside your otherwise standard Google listings):
A review box example from the Otter Blocks plugin.

There are many other useful plugins you can add to your review site that will unlock other functions. However, installing the above will give you a strong and necessary foundation to build off of.

Step #4: Create the essential pages

Before you start publishing reviews on your new website, there are a few pages you should create first. By taking the time to publish those essential WordPress pages that every website should have, you can help make your blog appear more credible, trustworthy, and relatable to your target audience. After all, if you want your readers to take your reviews seriously and follow your advice, you’ll need to ensure your website has all the information they’ll be expecting to find.

By publishing an about page, site map, getting started page, disclaimer page, and contact page on your reviews blog, you’ll be helping your readers to get to know you better and find all the other information they’ll need to enjoy your site.

Step #5: Start publishing great content!

In just four steps, you’ve chosen a web host and registered a domain name, created a fresh installation of WordPress, and installed a suitable theme plus some essential plugins. You’ve also published the important pages any good website needs. Now it’s time to get to the fun part – publishing the content that will ensure your website is discovered, grows your audience, and generates revenue.

Hopefully, you chose a WordPress theme or plugin that makes it easy to publish professional looking reviews on your website. If so, the features of these tools will take care of the technical aspects of formatting and presenting your reviews, leaving you to focus on creating the content you feel passionate about.

Here’s an example of how a review box can be configured with the aforementioned Otter Blocks plugin:

A screenshot showing the product review settings box in the Otter Blocks plugin.

Other points to consider when creating a WordPress review blog

As well as designing a stylish WordPress review blog that’s packed with high-value content, you’ll also have to take a proactive approach towards promoting and marketing your site and its content. What you do off your site can be just as important and what you do on it.

To help you get started with this aspect of running a successful WordPress review blog, here are some tools and tips to consider:

This should help you create the content that will drive traffic, promote your website effectively, and understand your audience better.

Conclusion 🧐

You now have all the information you need to start a WordPress review blog. All that’s left to do is take action and begin publishing reviews on your site, then get out there and promote it!

Making any kind of website a success is a long process so don’t give up if you don’t see results overnight. As Napoleon Hill once said, most people give up three feet from gold, so never stop digging!

👉 To recap, in this guide on how to start a WordPress review blog we covered:

  1. Choose a professional web host (such as SiteGround), register a domain, and then install WordPress.
  2. Select a suitable WordPress theme (such as Neve or Neve FSE).
  3. Install the essential WordPress plugins (such as Otter Blocks).
  4. Create the important pages your site will need.
  5. Start publishing great content!

Do you have any questions about how to create a WordPress reviews website? Fire away in the comments section below!

Free guide

4 Essential Steps to Speed Up
Your WordPress Website

Follow the simple steps in our 4-part mini series
and reduce your loading times by 50-80%. 🚀

Free Access

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals. Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Join now (it’s free)!