Do you have a Yelp profile?
Do you have Yelp reviews?
Do you get constant calls and emails from Yelp Sales Reps offering help to “boost your visibility” on Yelp?
If you have wondered if it’s worth it or not, you need to judge for yourself.
What is Yelp
Yelp is a business directory service and crowd-sourced review form designed to help local businesses by publishing crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. (Wikipedia)
Allowing consumers to view reviews and make purchasing decisions based on these reviews.
Yelp by the Numbers
35 million unique visitors, on average, visit the site monthly.
Over 184 million reviews were written on yelp (by the end of Q1 2019.)
45% of consumers say they are likely to check reviews on Yelp before visiting a business.
The five most reviewed business categories on the site are:
Restaurants
Home and Local Services
Beauty and Fitness
Arts and Entertainment
Events
How consumers find reviews on Yelp:
75% use the Search feature.
21% look up the business directly.
1% link to reviews through email.
94% find reviews via Social Media (46% of these people find the links on Facebook.)
03% find business reviews via display advertising.
Pros
Claiming your business profile is free. Once claimed you can upload photos, menus, services, address, phone number, etc. You can also add links to your website and Social Media profiles.
Claiming your business profile also gives you the opportunity to respond to reviews, questions, complaints, either publicly or privately.
Cons
The bounce rate of traffic from Yelp to your website is around 25-30%. However, in general Yelp sends very little traffic to websites as most people stay in the Yelp app or website.
Reviewers who do not use the site frequently will not meet the guidelines of Yelp’s algorithm, thus their reviews will be pushed toward the bottom. So, you could have a fantastic, glowing review, but if the reviewer doesn’t often leave reviews on the site that great review may not show up on your profile.
Yelp Advertising
Yelp has increased its efforts at monetization by pushing display ads on the site. Yelp Sales Reps call and email businesses frequently.
For the minimum ad package of around $300 a month the results are not fantastic. The views and clicks for $300 on Facebook or Google generate better results. Audience targeting is also more limited on Yelp. Additionally, the cost-per-click on a Yelp Ad is around $10 per click, which is quite high.
In order to generate a significant amount of views and clicks your budget needs to be around 6 times the minimum, so around $1,800.
Using Yelp
Businesses that get reviews should absolutely claim their free business profile on the site and check it frequently, responding to reviews, answering questions, providing updated business information.
Businesses in one of the top 5 categories may want to consider advertising, since consumers of their business type are using the site most.
Businesses with a large advertising budget should absolutely try Yelp advertising to see how well it works for them.
Though, if you have a limited advertising budget it is best to figure out which platform will generate the most bang for your buck.