How to Get Your Business or Website Discovered Locally?

Many of our clients complain that they have trouble getting their businesses discovered locally. We recommend listing your company on Yelp as it is one of the easiest and most impactful ways to boost your local visibility and get discovered by millions of online shoppers ready to purchase from your website.

 

Over 90 million online shoppers visit Yelp each month to find restaurants, home services and more. 97% of these online shoppers purchase from a business they found on Yelp within one to two weeks. Why? Because Yelp makes it easy to connect with new customers and helps you grow your new or established business. 

 

 

Before diving into how to list your business on Yelp, let’s break down the different packages/services they offer:

 

1. Business Page

• Create a free listing for your business or update your business info so people can find you
• Interact with your customers by responding to reviews and never miss out on queries your customers might ask through messages
• Add photos to showcase your business offerings

 

2. Yelp Ads

• Get in front of more customers through paid ads when they’re searching for local businesses like yours
• Reach 3x more customers and only pay when people click on your ad

3. Yelp Connect

• Similar to Google My Business, it lets you post regular updates so you can help potential customers learn more about your business
• Your posts are promoted by email to Yelp users every week

Now, let’s get to the exciting stuff and get your business listed on Yelp so it’s discoverable.

Step 1: Adding your business listing on Yelp

Simply, head over to Yelp and click on “Manage my free listing” in the top right corner of the homepage.

Type your business name and click on “Add to Yelp for free”. 

Make sure that you fill in all the required information about your business, including location information, as these will be seen and used by online shoppers to connect with your business when they come across your Yelp page.

Once you have successfully added all the information about your business, you will be asked to create a free business account. To do this, we suggest signing up with Google or Facebook instead of creating a new account as it’s quicker and easier.

You’ll then be asked to confirm your email address. 

Voila, you now have a successful Yelp business profile. It is important to remember that Yelp will require some time to verify your business details, so it may take some time before your business account is up and running.

Note: If your business profile happens to already exist, you can also claim an existing business listing instead of creating a new one. For the step-by-step on how to do that check out this article: The Simple Steps to Claiming your Yelp Page.

Step 2: Add high-quality images 

Adding high-quality images to your Yelp profile is equally as important as proving your business information. Therefore, make sure to provide at least five high-quality images. To leave a good impression in online shoppers’ minds, these images should be the best parts of your business. No matter the nature of your business, these images will represent your service offerings and it’s an opportunity for you to intrigue online shoppers.

Step 3: Don’t hesitate to ask for reviews

Increasing your customer’s reviews on Yelp, to just one star will culminate in a 5% to 9% increase in profit according to a study by Harvard University. The question is, how can you get customers to leave you positive reviews? You can reach out to the existing customers that have recently purchased from you through email campaigns asking them to leave a review and provide a URL to your Yelp page. It’s critical that these reviews are coming from genuine customers despite their negative/positive ratings. The more they interact with your business through review and commenting the better for SEO. 

Step 4: Respond to reviews even if they are negative

As a business owner, you‘d hope that all the reviews would be positive but in the nature of business, no company gets 100% positive reviews. Make sure to always respond to all types of reviews, including the negative ones, so that your customers feel heard. Always respond politely and sincerely and, where there is a complaint, assure your customer that you will handle the matter – don’t miss out on the opportunity to win them back! If possible, offer a small compensation in other services products for their bad experience as a gesture of goodwill.

The great thing about Yelp’s search engine algorithm is that it ranks businesses that are active and continuously connecting with their customers, including responding to reviews. 

Final Thoughts

Yelp is a great free tool if you want to reach out to online shoppers locally, connect to customers, increase your organic traffic and most importantly increase brand awareness. If you have not set up a Yelp business account yet, now is the time to do it with the simple steps we’ve laid out for you above. 

We hope you enjoy all the benefits of using Yelp, please reach out through our contact us page if you have any questions!