While Yelp was used mainly by the restaurant industry in the past, all businesses can easily use this site to enhance visibility and respectability. Yelp has over 100 million unique visitors each month through mobile and desktop, and this presents a wonderful opportunity to market your business as well as engage in social engagement too.
You first need to claim your Yelp listing and also provide the required information connected to your business. You can begin by going to the “Yelp for Business Owners” webpage and then clicking on “Claim My Business”. You will be offered 3 options to check if your business name has already been claimed by another user and if not, then you will be allowed to claim your business.
You can type in your business name even if you currently do not have an account at Yelp. If no one has claimed the business name then you need to click on “Add your Business to Yelp”. If your business name is already unlocked by another business, you should understand that the name has been claimed by another user. If not, then you can click on “Unlock” and begin feeding in your business details including your own name, email address, and finally your password.
You can specify your industry such as restaurant, professional services, education, etc., and will need to wait for a confirmation email from Yelp on your provided email address before you can proceed any further.
Now, you can extract the most out of your Yelp business listing by optimizing it. You must ensure that you have filled in all fields to provide a detailed account of your business. You should upload photos and make full use of analytics and social features provided at this website. Once you click on the “Edit Business Info” link, you will be able to modify your business details.
You should certainly include high quality photos of your business since studies have shown that Yelp listings that contain photos have people spending 2.5 more time on such listings during their visits.
Once you begin receiving reviews, you must make it a point to respond to as many as you can. While you can thank people that post positive reviews, you must make sure that you respond to each negative review in order to show viewers that you care about these reviews as well as your business. If any review is against the guidelines specified by Yelp, it will be removed or even filtered.
However, you should make all efforts to solve issues faced by people that post negative reviews. Anyway, a business with only 5 star ratings at all times will probably evoke suspicion from most viewers. You should also encourage people to post their reviews since larger number of positive reviews will certainly bring in more business.
You can do so by providing an eye-catching button on your business website that links to Yelp and allows visitors and customers to post their reviews. You can also insert links to your Yelp listing in your email signature in all your outward emails. In addition, you can also stack flyers at your physical business location, if any, or hand them out to visitors. These flyers can encourage customers and visitors to provide their reviews while explaining why they are important for your business. However, you must not promise any reward for posting positive reviews since this action will not be approved by Yelp.
Just like optimizing your website for major search engines, your Yelp listing will also need to be optimized for enhanced visibility. You should insert keywords in your business listing as well as pay heed to the above tips such as encouraging reviews, releasing press releases, engaging in guest posting, etc.
In addition, you should also use Yelp social features that help users locate their friends on Yelp as well as observe their recommendations and reviews. You need to click on “Find Friends” displayed at the top of any Yelp page and check out what people are writing on not only about various business, but can also check what they think about your competitors businesses.
The above tips will help you create your Yelp business listing and account, and help you optimize it to reach out to your target market. Use these tips to extract the most out of your Yelp business listing.