If you ever find the likes of Yelp, Yell or Trip Advisor outranking your website in the search results, you’re not alone .
It’s a common sight for today’s local businesses, you search your business name and find that instead of your website at the top, Yelp or some other directory has taken its place.
Sometimes businesses can be pushed so far down the page that 5 or more directory listings appear in front.
Surely if you search for your business, your website should show up first?
Sites like Yelp often steal the limelight because of their sheer SEO power. In other words they spend millions of dollars to make sure they’re always in the local search results.
Because of the scale and SEO muscle behind these sites, they often find their way to the top for thousands of local search queries, leaving small businesses behind in their wake.
Why Does Yelp Rank Higher?
Some of the common reasons that Yelp or other directories might outrank your own website:
- Your site is new
- Your site has few backlinks pointing to your website
- Your site lacks substantial content
- Your site isn’t targeting the right keywords
When people search for your business, they expect your site to appear right away. If it’s not you could be losing trust, traffic and control over your audience.
Fortunately it is not too difficult to claim back the top spot, at least when it comes to searching your business name.
What to do if Yelp ranks higher than your website?
Increase your online presence – A common reason for Yelp ranking higher than your website is because you have a small online footprint.
- Create social profiles – Create social profiles complete with your business information and link back to your website.
- Complete Google My Business – If you haven’t already, sign up for Google My Business, it’ll ensure your business appears across the whole of Google, it’s also a proven factor for increasing local SEO.
- Submit your business to local directories – Ironically the more directories your business appears on, the more important it will appear, increasing your local search position.
Look at your website’s keywords – Is your business website optimized with the correct keywords? Yelp often ranks higher because every page is well optimized with the types of keywords people are commonly searching for.
- Add your NAP – Make sure your business name, address and phone number are clearly visible on your website.
- Complete page titles & descriptions – Does every page have a unique title and description? Do they include the keywords you rank to rank for? Take a look at how the title and description is structured for Yelp, see how theirs compares to yours. Use a snippet optimizer to help you write them.
Does Yelp Penalize Businesses That Don’t Buy Ads?
There’s a lot of controversy when it comes to Yelp and their so called “tactics” for selling paid ads. According to the FTC they have received no fewer than 2000 complaints from disgruntled busiinesses about Yelps business practices. Some claim they have lost positive reviews and Yelp has promoted negative reviews after they refused to pay for ads.
Yelp has repeatedly denied these claims and independent research seems to suggest there is no correlation between the decision to pay for ads and how reviews are filtered.
Whether these allegations are true or not, there is little relation between paying for Yelp ands and your Google ranking. Reviews do make up a portion of how local businesses are ranked, however there is equal opportunity to get these reviews without paying for Yelp ads, and in uncompetitive markets businesses can rank well with no reviews at all.
Improve your Local Search Ranking With Elvin Web Marketing
Elvin web marketing work with small businesses to increase their local SEO and get more out of the web. Does Yelp rank higher than your own website? Are you looking for help to increase your search rankings, give us a call:(203)882-0171
Of course what you can also do is advertise via YELP rather than fight back. Its cheaper!
That’s another good point Roland, thanks!
I hope yelp goes out of business
Honestly, yelp’s advertising platform is inferior to google. I’ve had long and in depth conversations with the people at yelp, who -constantly- call me, trying to sell me ads. What it comes down to is this. There is no keyword transparency. You have no idea what people are searching to find you. You have no way to target specific keywords. You have no way of knowing if the clicks are legitimate. you have no way of knowing where the person was located who clicked on your ad. it could literally be India, and you live in Cleveland. Also, the cost per click is astronomical compared to the majority of google keywords. you can’t select your keywords. Yelp is, as i said, an absolutely inferior platform. They train their sales people well, to describe things in such a way that if people who don’t know any better, truly think it’s a good idea.
Something they keep trying to tell me is “over 4000 people searched for businesses like yours last month”. Great. where specifically were they located? “In your area” “where? my city? my state? my country? what specific terms did they type in?” “Guitars” “well guitar WHAT… store? repair? paint? tutor? lessons? only ONE of those pertains to my business… so i’d spend $15 on that click? then what? ” “Yeah, but… 5 people have viewed your yelp listing in the last month. it could be more!” “Great… in that same time, i have had 1,540 views on my google maps listing, and pais -$0!!!!- in advertising. when i do run ads, i triple that…. and i pay $1.50- $5.0 per click, and get about a 60% conversion… top that”
Do you guys get the point here? DO NOT pay for yelp… DO NOT feed the beast… it just makes it even harder for a legit business to grow. Yelp wants their cut, YP wants their cut, Manta wants their cut. if you pay for ALL of them, you’re paying more for b.s. add space than you’re making in a year, every month.
If you want to waste that kind of money, pay an SEO person to get you ranked. even if they do half of what they say they will, it’s still better than throwing it away on yelp.
that’s just my $0.02