Ways to Use Yelp to Improve Your Local Business

What is Yelp?

Yelp is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. It develops, hosts and markets Yelp.com and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about local businesses, as well as the online reservation service SeatMe and online food-delivery service Eat24. The company also trains small businesses in how to respond to reviews, hosts social events for reviewers, and provides data about businesses, including health inspection scores.

How do you get listed on Yelp?

Use the search function on the Yelp for Business Owners page to find your company.

• Search the Yelp for Business Owners page to find your business listing.
• Click the Claim this business button.
• Complete the form to claim your listing.
• Authenticate your listing using Yelp's phone verification process.

How do I put my business on Yelp?

Claim Your Listing

How do I claim my yelp page?

If your business is already listed, you can still claim it – just visit https://biz.yelp.com/claiming. Search for your business and once you've found it, click “Claim”. At this point, if you don't have an account, you'll be asked to create one. Verify by phone by clicking “Call me now”.

How do I link yelp to my Facebook page?

Putting All of Your Own Reviews on Facebook. Log in to your Yelp account, click your username in the upper right corner and click "Account Settings" in the drop-down menu below. This displays your general Yelp settings. Click the "Change Settings" link in the "External Services" section on the left side of the screen.

How do you make a review on Yelp?

To write a review you'll need to create a Yelp user account if you don't already have one. Once you're logged in, you can locate the business you're trying to review by using the search bar located at the top of any page on the website or from the search button on the app.

10 Ways to Use Yelp to Improve Your Local Business

1. Apple pulls its review data from Yelp. Anytime somebody accesses your business through Apple Maps or Siri, the review data or star pack comes directly from Yelp.

2. there's a correlation between user engagement and ranking on Yelp. If you're having trouble ranking, a lot of people think that you need to get more reviews and you'll climb in the ranks. While that's true, freshness is what matters, and Yelp looks at those metrics a lot more. So if somebody has more reviews than you and they've stagnated their review campaign, if you get more reviews during a certain time period, you'll actually increase your ranking, sometimes even passing the person who has more reviews than you. It's very common for this to happen.

3. One of the biggest complaints that I get from small businesses is that they have a hard time getting reviews to stick. That means that even though a review is left from an actual customer, Yelp will filter it out through its pretty strict spam filter. And if you're having trouble getting reviews, have users check-in whenever they enter your establishment. I have never seen a case where a user has checked in and left a review and Yelp filters out that.

4. You cannot actively solicit reviews from customers for Yelp. Now what you can do is ask users to check in. Within the Yelp application, if somebody checks in, Yelp will actually remind them at a later point in time to leave a review. In a sense, asking for a check-in is kind of asking for a review.

5. Asking every single customer to check in can be a little time consuming which is why Yelp actually has stickers. All you have to do is go to this URL and fill out a form. Yelp will send that sticker to you in the mail.

6. So if you're still having trouble getting reviews, you can actually use something called the Facebook hack. Now, within the Yelp application, they have a feature called "find friends." The find friends feature imports all of your Facebook friends (editor note: or email contacts) that have Yelp accounts. If you have any past customers that also happen to be your Facebook friends, you can ask them to stop into your business again and check you out. Now that's going to statistically improve your chances of getting a review, and when they see one of your stickers, they'll be very likely to check in and leave you a review at a later point in time.

7. Let's introduce Yelp Elites. It's important to understand that Yelp has two different kinds of members: normal Yelpers and Yelp Elites. Yelp Elites are people that use the application a lot. There's perks to being Yelp elite. Yelp Elites get a snazzy profile badge, a customized cover, and they also get access to regional parties. It's kind of Yelp's way of saying "thank you." It's important to understand that Yelp Elite reviews are a little bit different. Now their photos are more likely to be prioritized, their reviews are more likely to be featured, their flagging is more likely to be considered by Yelp, and we'll get into more of that later.

8. The secret formula to becoming Yelp Elite. The criteria for becoming Yelp Elite goes all the way down to the details. You have to use the Yelp application and all of its features. That means having a snazzy profile picture, fill out your profile to the best of your ability, answering every single question that they ask you, participate in Yelp talk, take pictures every single time you leave a review, be sure to import friends from Facebook like we mentioned earlier, check in, leave tips for other Yelpers, participate in Yelp events, bookmark businesses, and create lists. Once you complete at least 40 reviews, you can nominate yourself at yelp.com/elite. A community manager will look through your profile and approve you. You'll receive an email and once you're welcomed into the Yelp Elite family, you'll get all the perks that come along with being a Yelp Elite.

9. If a customer leaves a negative review on your profile, a lot of business owners approach me and ask if there's anything they can do about it, especially if that review is inaccurate. That review can be flagged, however, if you flag this as not factually correct on Yelp, they'll actually send you a message that says, "We do not get involved in factual disputes." There is a silver lining. In Daniel Lemons' book, Manipurated, he actually points to a study called, The Perfect Review Sandwich, which states that negative reviews can actually amplify the positive reviews around them. And if you think about it, that's true. When you see a 4.5 out of 5, 4.6, 4.7, it's actually a little more credible than just a 5-star review. I mean, nobody's perfect.

10. I'm going to throw a fun one at you. In the Yelp platform, look at reviews of your local jail. If you're ever having a bad day, they are almost always hilarious and I highly encourage you to check them out.

That's all we have today, and I hope that you enjoyed these 10 Ways to Use Yelp to Improve Your Local Business. It was really fun making it. We hope that this helps you out in your quest to get more reviews on Yelp.