Should we create a Yelp account?

This post comes from a discussion with a client on the feasibility of having a Yelp account for Local SEO purposes. My reply was as follow with slight additions to make a bit more sense for a blog post.

What is Yelp?

Yelp is a local business directory enhanced by social media tools such as reviews, shares and interaction. It helps local business owners to promote their business, but more importantly, stay in touch with their customer base (current and potential).

Do we need a Yelp listing?

Yelp is great if you’re planning to engage with users, reviewers and customers. SEO-wise, Yelp listing of your business is likely to appear high in search results. Sometimes it can outperform your other properties such as Facebook or Twitter, and even your site.

My recommendation is that a Yelp account should only be created if you’re prepared to stay active there. Why do I mean by that? Reviewing businesses, talking to other reviewers in your niche, even making it your personal tool to share where you go and what you do.

Having a profile on its own doesn’t do much. If you’re not planning to engage, then your listing won’t rank as high and there’s no point in creating one. Yelp was created to help users share, not businesses promote their product. So, do everyone a favour, and don’t create additional dead profile. By now you probably already have a few social profiles to take care of. So, my advice is to focus on those and make sure they work for you first.

Again, I love Yelp and I would suggest it to any user. But marketers are becoming abusers of things online. And that’s a problem. Creating dead profiles just because it adds another mention of your company online is pointless. No one will go there, but worst of all for your business, is that you can get a good number of bad reviews. And that will make it even more complicated and costly to deal with.

The process…

If you are sure, then here’s what you’ll need to do:

1. First you’d need to create a personal account. Create it under your real name. Being real online has become the new black!
2. Then you’ll get an option to claim your business (if it was already mentioned, reviewed or appeared there atomatically) create your business profile, which, by the way, goes through a verification process. Make sure you read the Business Support section at Yelp.

I hope this makes sense. Please let me know if it doesn’t. I’d appreciate a few shares and comments from you below. I hope you are having a great time!