Myth Busting Yelp for Business

We’re here to debunk common misconceptions about Yelp because the truth is, Yelp is a great resource for businesses. With over 100 million users visiting Yelp every month, it’s an impressive tool to help you drive in-store traffic to your locations. Learning how to leverage Yelp effectively can have a powerful impact on your business, which is why it’s important for us to set the record straight.

MYTH: Optimizing your Yelp listing is not easy.

Yelp has a ton of features, both paid and free, that makes it easy for every business to optimize their listings. If you’re looking to increase customer conversions here are some of the ways you can optimize your Yelp listing:

• Add More Photos (free)

Did you know that Yelp listings with photos get 12x more customer leads* than listings without photos? Photos are the first impression a customer has of your business. It might be a good idea to get some professional photos in order to showcase your business in the best light.

• Specialties

In the specialties section of your Yelp listing, you can add specifics about the services or products you offer if you have purchased a Yelp profile. For example, a doctor could use this section to add information about the types of conditions they treat. Don’t use this section to simply list keywords, instead get descriptive about what your business does.

• Call To Action Button

Want to increase customer conversion? Add a Call to Action (CTA) paid feature to your listing. Link the CTA to a coupon, form, or a landing page and entice users with offers they want most.

• Check-In Offers (free)

Reward your most loyal customers and entice new ones with custom check-in offers. Give customers a percentage off, a discounted price, or even a free item.

MYTH: Yelp is for restaurant reviews only.

A lot of business owners believe that Yelp is primarily used for restaurant reviews. Although restaurants get a lot of reviews, retail stores represent the largest number of reviewed business locations. See the break down of reviewed business locations by industry below:

It’s also worth noting that Yelp is the #1 review site for health, financial, and professional services. According to a study by Nielsen, Yelp is the most trusted, most influential, and most useful review site for making a purchasing decision in these categories. 96% of people searching for financial and professional services and 93% of people searching for health services make a purchase after doing research on Yelp.

[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]96% of people searching for financial and professional services and 93% of people searching for health services make a purchase after doing research on Yelp.[/tweet_box]

MYTH: Yelp favors businesses that advertise on Yelp.

We hear this myth all the time and we haven’t found any proof that it’s true. Yes, paying Yelp for advertising can get you featured on the first page of search results in the form of an ad, but it doesn’t change where your business ranks in the organic results. Buying ads on Yelp will neither increase your organic rankings nor remove 1-star reviews and not buying ads on Yelp will not affect your reviews or rating either. Ads bring paid traffic to your Yelp page, and it’s important to remember that Yelp sells profile upgrades and search ads, not the ability to manipulate a business’ online reputation.

MYTH: Yelp reviewers are mostly negative.

For this myth let’s take a look at the numbers. According to Yelp’s metrics from June 2018, 48% of business reviews are 5-stars. 68% of reviews are 4-star or higher. These facts show that most reviewers are on Yelp to share their positive experiences. If you do receive a negative review, make sure you respond. By responding to the review, your customer will feel heard and 14% of customers are more likely to return to a business who responded to their feedback.

MYTH: Yelp is only used by a small number of consumers.

Did you know Yelp has an average of 32 million mobile app users, 72 million mobile website users, and 74 million desktop users per month? With over 100 million reviews, Yelp is the most used site for reviews with Google ranking second. Because of all this traffic, it’s essential your business is taking full advantage of everything Yelp has to offer.

Yelp’s reach goes far beyond their website. Yelp is used by all of the top search sites, providing listing information to consumers across multiple search engines and devices. Google trusts Yelp and therefore organically ranks those listings higher. Yelp is also integrated into search engines like Yahoo and Bing. Reviews from Yelp can be tied into Facebook allowing users to write and share reviews from Yelp to Facebook. Another great feature is that Yelp powers voice search through Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri via Apple Maps. As voice search rises to 50% of all searches by 2020, it’s important to note that Yelp plays a critical role in voice search responses.

MYTH: Yelp users are typically young and lack purchasing power.

Yelp has a pretty diverse range of user ages. 58% of Millennials claim Yelp is their most trusted review site. But Yelp isn’t just used by Millennials, in fact, 73% of Yelp users are between the age of 18 to 54 and 50% of users have an annual household income of over $100K or more. This suggests older, more established users with high disposable income turn to Yelp to write and read trusted reviews. According to comScore, Yelp was visited by over 103 million users in June 2018 and reached approximately 40% of the total U.S. internet population.

[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Yelp was visited by over 103 million users in June 2018 and reached approximately 40% of the total U.S. internet population.[/tweet_box]

MYTH: Yelp isn’t built for large enterprises.

Managing multiple listings on Yelp, or any review site is never simple. Lucky for you, Yelp has a program called Yelp Knowledge that helps large enterprises gain critical business intelligence through their Yelp reviews. As a Yelp Knowledge partner, Chatmeter has the unique ability to help multi-location brands monitor and optimize their Yelp listings through a single dashboard.

Hopefully, this clears up the myths out there and clarifies the facts about Yelp. Yelp is a great way to increase your digital presence and bring in more customers. Since 92% of consumers make a purchase after visiting Yelp, it’s an essential piece to your local SEO strategy.  If you’re a large business with multiple locations and you need help maintaining your Yelp locations, request a free demo to learn more about how we can help!

*Based on a 2018 internal Yelp study.