SEO Tips for Ranking on Yelp?
-
There's a lot of information floating around about best practices for ranking on Google Local, but not much information about ranking on Yelp. I wanted to see if anyone has suggestions about ranking for Yelp or if you can point me towards some information that would be great.
-
You've probably checked out Yelp's FAQ, Terms of Service and Content Guidelines.
If you have, you've discovered the following associated problems with your question:
- Yelp believes the best reviews aren't solicited
- Yelp doesn't even want you asking for reviews
- Yelp admits its automated filter is imperfect
They just want you to fill out your profile, provide great customer service, respond to reviews and put Yelp decals, logos and buttons to create awareness for Yelp (and your listing on Yelp). If their advice works, that's the safest approach.
They know their filter is imperfect and therefore unfair but they don't want you to get impatient with them and work to have direct influence. Naturally, Yelp wants to be the arbiter of the Yelp experience.
You might want to consider carefully asking for some reviews (but definitely never pay for them). Steve Gould is right that Yelp favors active Yelpers. You might try asking people how they found out about you, and if say they came from Yelp, you know they are an active user - so intelligently ask them for a review.
-
Does anyone else have any ideas?
-
Yeah, I've already done those things. Yelp is huge for my business. The trafic to my website is nearly 50/50 split between Google and Yelp. It seems like there would be more reasearch and documentation on Yelp since it's such a relevant search platform.
I've basically been following the same best practices for setting up my Google Local account as the Yelp account.
-
To add to this, I think a huge mistake businesses make is the just cut and paste content from their website to fill out their Yelp page. This is duplicate content! Write something original and ask them to take action (call or click to your website).
-
I'm assuming you're referring to ranking when someone searches on Yelp as opposed to getting your Yelp profile to rank in the SERPs.
There's not a whole lot of literature/research out their on this topic, but just from experiencing working with clients to claim/complete their Yelp listings, I feel I can speak to it to a certain extent...
One of the more obvious things is having a listing that has content on it. It's not in Yelp's best interest for people to do a search for restaurants only to find a list of restaurants with their names, addresses & phone numbers. So first thing would be claiming your profile and completing the full profile. I don't want to suggest that if you don't have a 'completely full' profile, that's going to hurt your chances, but it can't hurt. Obviously with Yelp, reviews are huge. So you want to encourage real people/real customers to write reviews for you online. However, you've gotta be mindful of the fact that Yelp does a very good job of filtering reviews. So if you tell a customer to write a review on Yelp, and they go sign up for an account, write a review right away, and then never come back to Yelp - that review's gonna disappear.
If Yelp sees a steady flow of reviews, particularly coming from active members of their community, that's most definitely going to help.
The reviews for Yelp are much more crucial than they are for Google. Yelp will sooner show the user businesses with reviews that aren't geographically relevant, than they will show geographically relevant businesses with no reviews & no info on their profiles.
One specific tool that can be useful in terms of driving users to your Yelp profile to write reviews is the Bright Local Review Biz badge.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does Social Media hold value with SEO? If so then how?
Hey So I've been doing some research and it looks like theres a "human authority" and a "Page authority". I dont know if it is still relevant or if it has all changed because of Panda. Does social media still hold any SEO value? Do social media platforms like Pinterest and Youtube and twitter drive any valuable Anchor texts to your domain boostin your domain's authority or the page that it is linking to's authority?
Social Media | | rpaiva1 -
How can i make our social network site rank higher?
Our site is currently not in the first 3 pages of Google. it is a social networking site that requires users to login/ register. Much of the content is therefore user generated and is as diverse as the users themselves. The problem is that SEOmoz crawler is not even picking up the keywords i inserted into the site. Does this mean that Google is not even picking them up as well? Our site is www.yookos.com
Social Media | | seoworx123
We are using JIVE, which is best suited for intranets. What can i do to improve the site's rankings?0 -
Youtube and SEO
Hello, For a game site I would like to use Youtube for SEO purposes. And I need a little advice on this. How would you use these video's without spamming? There are a lot of tactics to use Youtube. Create channel and put your desired url in the profile (link back to your site), Put your desired url in in the description of the video (link back to your site), Put the created youtube video also on your own site to drive traffic to youtube, and back. And get views. Put a created channel on your own site to drive traffic to youtube, and back. And get views. Other tactics I don't know.... Can someone advice me what tactics I can use without spamming, I'm afraid that if I use combinations of the above mentioned tactics I get an unnatural linkprofile.... Thank you in advance. Regards, Thomas
Social Media | | ThomasH0 -
Should my small business website link to Yelp?
I'm kind of on the fence about this one. Should I include a social media icon for Yelp on my website? We have great reviews, but so do most of my competitors. I'd like to share my reviews, but I also do not want to send traffic away from my website to another website (Yelp) that lists my competitors. What do you think?
Social Media | | pharcydeabc0 -
Realtors SEO and Active Rain
Does anyone know if active rain social network for realtors pass any link juice through the attached blogs features? They have both a free and paid service. Does anyone have any insight on this?
Social Media | | bronxpad0 -
Google+ SEO value
Hello, We created a google+ page for our website and we would like to know what's best for SEO purposes. We've put +1 buttons on our website and when you use them it give a +1 to our website's url. Some other websites on the other hand make the button give a +1 to their website's page on Google + like this for instance: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113493854651753327245/posts So basically the number of +1s on the Google+ page increases. Which one is best to have my website rank higher for its keywords? Thanks for your help 🙂
Social Media | | LisaAa0 -
Facebook likes, search rankings, acquisition speed. Concern?
SEOs know that a rapid uptick in link acquisition speed can trigger a red flag within google. Is the same true of a FB Like campaign? I'm not up to speed on whether Google is believed to use Facebook Likes in its ranking algo. Should we treat a FB Like acquisition campaign like we do linkbuilding -- namely, throttle it so that there isn't a huge spike in growth rate for a short period? Surely FB might have internal algos that devalue 'astroturf' likes, but the core concern of this client is whether SEARCH RANKINGS might suffer if the FB Likes grow too quickly. My gut says no, don't be concerned. What do you think?
Social Media | | mcglynn0 -
Yet another Google Plus One question: Does it affect ranking for people that you are NOT connected to?
Title pretty much explains it all. If lots of people plus one (the new verb of 2011?) a site, is that site deemed 'popular' and therefore will appear higher up the SERPS generally? Or does it only affect those with whom you are linked via Twitter/Facebook/Google+? Or is it too early to tell yet?
Social Media | | seanmccauley1