Why Yelp.com Shouldn’t Be Taken for Granted
I submitted a new local business to several local search directories: Merchant Circle, Yelp, CitySearch, Yahoo Local and YellowPages. Not even 20 minutes later, I did a search for the business that I had just submitted to these sites, and there it was: the Yelp page, shown on SERP #1, position #5 for a simple search of the business name.
It’s astounding to see not only how quickly Yelp gets spidered and indexed, but how strong of an authority site it is. Even the star listing and review showed up directly on the search result page. I only saw these results on Google, but not on Yahoo and Bing, where the business continues to remain un-listed.
How you can use it: if you’re an at-home entrepreneur, or if you at least own your own business with a post office box and phone number, why not create the first review for it on Yelp? Your account will forever remain the “First To Review” for your own business, which is something you’ll really want. When starting off, you’ll want to look credible by actually being able to rank for your own business name if someone searches for it – these local business directories, especially Yelp.com, are a big help.
Accorinding to a local search service I had spoken with recently, Yelp.com is ranked the #3 most visible local business services in organic search. I’m surprised that they’re only #3!
