Yelp is a super popular directory for finding small and medium-sized local businesses. People use it to find anything from restaurants to plumbers to digital marketing agencies. In fact, there are 1,200 business categories in total and it is the 44th most visited site in the US!
As such, a Yelp page for your business is a great way to increase brand awareness and grow your business online. Not only do customers trust the reviews, but Google and other search engines use index Yelp results for their rankings.
But with some 5million+ businesses on there, how do you get noticed in the crowd?
This is where best practices, i.e. Yelp SEO, come in. Here’s our top tips for getting the most of your Yelp business page.
Complete your profile
Step one is to build out your profile fully, including a photo, ensuring company info is consistent across your digital real estate. Make sure to:
Fill out all your service cities
Include all your services in the services section
Make sure business categories are relevant
Keywords and locations optimization
Yelp works like any other search engine, so find keywords that people might use when searching your business category and then sprinkle them into your listing, specifically the description.
A good way is to look at high ranking competitors and use them for inspiration, (but don’t plagiarize!).
Get reviews
Reviews are the numbers one ranking factor for Yelp so it’s vital to start building them up. To get reviews, one of the most effective ways is to ask your happy customers. If they’re willing, make sure they specify what was done and where, as this will add to your keyword rankings.
It’s also important when a customer makes a review, positive or negative, to be responsive as this helps build trust in your services.
Get backlinks
Like with other search engines, backlinks to your page will improve your ranking. Get backlinks by linking to Yelp from your website and email signature.
Get Check-ins
As with social media sites like Facebook, Yelp supports customer check-ins. These are strong indicators for the Yelp ranking algorithm and are great for increasing brand awareness. You can encourage customers to check-in by running promotions e.g. they check-in and receive a discount.
Following the steps above will put you in good stead for winning at Yelp SEO ranking. Remember to complete your page, insert keywords, update and stay active. If you’d like any more help or advice then feel free to reach out!