Yelp For Business: The Help Your Business Needs to Succeed

When it comes to finding the perfect dining spot, a reliable plumber, or a trendy boutique, Yelp is often the go-to destination for both you and your customers—which prompts the creation of this blog post (and why you’ll read it until the very end).

Established in 2004, Yelp has evolved into a comprehensive platform for online reviews, spanning various industries and catering to tourists and locals alike. Its significance has been further amplified by the surge in voice search, seamlessly integrated with Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, and Microsoft's Cortana.

Given Yelp's versatility, it's necessary for multi-location brands to understand how to establish a robust Yelp online presence. So let’s delve into Yelp for business and explore how harnessing Uberall can optimize your marketing efforts.

Understanding Yelp’s Significance For Your Digital Marketing

Since its foundation in 2004, Yelp has grown to become one of the most influential platforms for crowd-sourced reviews and recommendations. In fact, Yelp attracts 96 million unique visitors each month, comprising a demographic of highly motivated buyers. And among a multitude of review platforms, it really is the beacon of trust and reliability with a wealth of information curated by real users.

A Powerhouse of Crowd-Sourced Reviews

Yelp empowers consumers to discover and share their experiences with local businesses, ranging from restaurants and cafes to plumbers and hair salons. Specifically, users can rate and review establishments they visited before, providing valuable insights for others seeking guidance in their purchasing decisions.

As a matter of fact, positive reviews on Yelp can catapult a business to success, while negative ones can tarnish its reputation irreparably. But against the common belief, Yelp’s influence extends beyond mere reviews. Search engines like Google factor in your Yelp rating, the number of reviews, and your responsiveness to reviews in their search algorithms. Moreover, they rely upon direct feeds from Yelp to determine whether to show your location in local searches.

A Platform for Businesses to Scale Their Online Presence

Besides displaying user-generated content (UGC), Yelp serves as a platform for businesses to engage with their customers, manage their online reputation, and attract new clientele. With its intuitive interface and extensive database, it shapes how people connect with businesses in their communities—and vice versa.

In essence, a strong presence on Yelp translates to better visibility and increased foot traffic for businesses, making it essential for multi-location brands to optimize their Yelp listings. And while many businesses believe Yelp is primarily for the restaurant industry, this simply isn’t true.

Although restaurants do get the most reviews, other industries like retail, home services, and many others are not far behind. And given how influential Yelp is becoming with other discovery networks, it would be wise for non-restaurant brands to prioritize this review channel for a competitive advantage.

From Reviews to Revenue: How Yelp Can Transform Your Business

In a recent survey conducted by Yelp, an overwhelming 97% of consumers reported making purchases from businesses they discovered on the platform. What's more, over half of these transactions occur within the same day of discovery, with nearly all completed within a week.

To harness the full potential of Yelp, businesses must navigate its landscape strategically. This involves:

• Create a compelling and complete Yelp Business Page with accurate information about your business, including address, contact details, business hours, and website link.

• Showcase your products or services through high-quality photos and engaging descriptions to attract potential customers.

• Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews by providing excellent service and requesting feedback politely.

• Respond promptly to both positive and negative reviews to show your commitment to customer satisfaction and address any concerns.

• Utilize Yelp's messaging feature to communicate directly with customers and address inquiries or reservation requests promptly.

• Take advantage of Yelp's advertising and promotional tools to increase your business's visibility and attract new customers.

• Monitor your business's performance through Yelp's analytics tools to track page views, customer engagement, and review trends.

• Engage with the Yelp community by participating in relevant discussions, events, and promotions to enhance your business's presence on the platform.

You see, achieving success on Yelp requires more than just passive participation. It demands a proactive approach to managing one's online presence and reputation.

And now a shout out to all multi-location businesses: you should create a separate business page on Yelp for each of your stores to maximize your local SEO efforts. Now, we understand that managing numerous business listings and their associated reviews manually is a daunting task—but that's where we come in to help you with your listings management (and review management).

Yelp for Multi-Location Businesses Made Easier with Uberall

As long standing partners of Yelp, we grant our customers the ability to take charge of their Yelp presence firsthand. With our platform, managing and optimizing your listings becomes a breeze, allowing you to respond to reviews at scale with minimal effort.

We promise, it's never been easier to enhance your online visibility and engage with your audience—all at your fingertips.

#1 Monitoring and Optimizing Your Yelp Listings

With Uberall, you can manage your location data in real-time to ensure it’s always up to date on your Yelp pages (and other business listings, too, for that matter).

Additionally, our reporting feature allows you to filter data at both group and location levels, providing insights into the most important metrics like views, click-to-call actions, map views, leads, and conversions.

Lastly, we help you optimize your visibility on voice search platforms like Alexa, Siri, and Cortana by leveraging Yelp reviews, ensuring that your location is recommended to potential customers.

#2 Monitoring and Responding to Yelp Reviews At Scale

Efficiently managing reviews is crucial for maintaining a positive brand image. With our platform, you can streamline the review response process by implementing corporate approvals, ensuring all responses align with your brand's standards. Moreover, you can leverage approval workflows to maintain consistency and professionalism across all interactions with customers.

And while you’re waiting for the next review, make use of our comprehensive analytics tool to gain deep insights into reviews across all your locations. You’ll have ratings, reviews, responses, and keyword mentions in one centralized location to identify trends as well as areas for improvement to capitalize on success.

But Yelp doesn't partner with just anybody: it selects its partners for good reasons, ensuring that businesses receive quality service and adhere to ethical standards. For example, certain technology companies forgo a direct partnership and instead try to scrape Yelp's site to get Yelp data into their listings tool—which understandably is against Yelp's Terms of Service.

Over and above the ethical issues, the ultimate loser will be the corporate brand that could lose access to its business listings on Yelp. So it is critical that multi-location businesses work with technology providers that have a direct Yelp partnership to avoid being harmed.

Unrivaled Capabilities for Multi-Location Businesses

Since 2016, Uberall has maintained a close partnership with Yelp, enabling multi-location brands to seamlessly manage their Yelp presence directly from our platform. Through this enduring collaboration, we've empowered countless customers to elevate their business performance. Just check our success stories or directly reach out to us.

Setting the stage for continued innovation and community engagement, both Yelp and Uberall are leveraging AI as a significant leap forward in transforming consumer-professional connections.

Yelp’s AI Assistant

In its 2024 Spring Release, Yelp introduced features aimed at revolutionizing how consumers find and connect with service professionals.

• The Yelp Assistant intelligently guides users through the process of finding the right service professional for their needs. By contextually understanding project requirements and engaging in professional-like dialogues, it streamlines the hiring process and connects consumers with qualified businesses efficiently.

• Yelp Fusion AI API enables third-party partners to integrate Yelp's trusted content into their platforms. By leveraging Yelp's reliable local data and content, partners can enhance discovery through natural language queries, providing users with relevant business recommendations tailored to their preferences.

• Yelp Guest Manager Enhancements streamline front-of-house operations for restaurants, improving efficiency and the guest dining experience. New analytics tools provide valuable insights for restaurant owners, while Waitlist and Kiosk updates improve accuracy and communication.

And now, we can't help but talk about our AI assistant, too.

Uberall’s AI Assistant

AI holds immense potential to transform business operations without necessitating substantial resources. With this understanding, we wholeheartedly embrace AI integration into our platform wherever it proves beneficial and efficient.

• Our Reviews Assistant empowers local businesses to promptly address reviews. You can generate a response for approval with a single click, automatically replying without text, or compose a customized reply tailored to the customer's unique feedback.

• Our Messages Assistant draws from extensive knowledge bases to provide rich, accurate, and engaging responses across a spectrum of messaging platforms—including Google, Facebook, Instagram, and web chat.

And now we’ll say it again: put Yelp on your radar and ensure precise the management of listings across all locations; and perhaps, find the ideal listings management partner to enhance your presence even further.