How Yelp Can Help You

First launching in 2004 after being created by San Francisco’s incubator, MRL Ventures, Yelp has helped many consumers find the right services in their local area. Yelp provides local search results of services and products from restaurants to dentists, to mechanics. The directory launched in Australia in 2011, mainly focusing on the cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

With its free listing, Yelp is a great way to help build your companies online presence as well as being noticed within your local community. The online listing is based on reviews from customers. Through top ratings and positive reviews, naturally your ranking on the website will becoming higher and your business will be more widely seen by visitors. These higher rankings and higher number of hits on your company’s profile will also boost your rankings in other search engine results. As we all know, the search engines feed off popular content, if your profile has a large amount of reviews that are being added weekly it will help increase your rankings through searches and help develop your online visibility.

To optimize the most of Yelp and each element of the website, make sure that your profile is complete with the correct details and a lot of information to help visitors find what they’re seeking for. Include links, photographs and the history of your business to help define your profile and also the personality of your business. Be attentive to both positive and negative reviews and always acknowledge and respond the posts with a comment. This interaction will help you set yourself apart from the competition within your niche but also show a positive image of engagement with your market.

As a business and account owner, you are able to access and track the metrics of your company’s profile. Through this page you will be able to see how much traffic your profile receives aswell as how many times it is a result in a search. This is a great resource to help review your businesses performance and allows you to see if any changes need to be done in order to create better results.

Yelp is also accessible through apps for Android, Blackberry and iOS, making it easily available to mobile users and increasing your opportunities to be found within the directory.