The modern era of technology has put everything online. From restaurants to plumbing services, type anything on your search bar and you will get it. Perhaps the most important aspect of why people consider going online is that they are able to find reviews of people who visited these places or / and used any services.
When it comes to finding some of the best-recommended restaurants, businesses, plumbers, washers, electricians, or anything else, people go over to Yelp because, over the years, Yelp has become one of the top crowd-sourced review sites.
What Does Yelp Do?
Imagine you are a restaurant owner. Your potential customers are searching on the internet, “Best Restaurant in ABC Area”. You do want to be recognized and recommended when people search for this. This is exactly what Yelp does by providing actual user reviews to potential customers. With the search over the internet, people may come across other reviews that have regarded your restaurant as the “Best One”.
In simpler terms, Yelp is a website that allows people to review different types of services that they have used around them and rate them accordingly. These ratings are public and are one of the most convincing factors towards the decision. Yelp can be considered as a social networking site.
Social networking sites are important because multiple people are interacting with each other with every rating causing major influence to the mindset. As a result, due to ratings at Yelp, your business could either go way up or way down if the ratings are not positive. A business can have its complete listing with information regarding cell phone, address, and others as well.
As of 2019, Yelp is one of the biggest online networks in the world with a revenue of $1.09 billion. With paid advertising services of the company to the registered businesses, revenue is generated. Over 6000 employees are working with Yelp currently. The company is on a path to grow consistently where it has recently set up an Investor Relations Page to grow in other countries and become the lead reviewer site.
Yelp Business Setup
The best part about Yelp is that you can create your business on Yelp even when it hasn’t launched yet. To qualify for this, you must begin your business operations within 30 days of creating your Yelp business page. However, experts at Yelp have suggested that the best type to set up your business at Yelp is when you actually open up your business because there can be different types of delays before opening up.
Simple Set-up
Setting up a business on Yelp is not a big deal and one can do so in as low as 10 minutes. Simply head over to www.biz.yelp.com and type the name of your business. If there is an existing page you can select it but if there isn’t, you can click the “Add Now” button. This will take you to another page where there will be a form that will require the details of your business such as the name, address, contact information, email, website address, categories of food, and a few other things.
Once you have filled out this form, just press “Add Business”. You will be confirmed when your application is received and further follow on emails will be provided on the current status of your application. Once it is fulfilled, you are ready to proceed.
Learn more about how to improve your productivity here – Top 13 Things Successful People Do.
What to do if Your Business is Already on Yelp?
If your business is already set up on Yelp but you don’t have the control or access over it, you can simply claim the business yourself. Follow out the simple procedure as mentioned above. Right after typing your business name, you will find yours in a list. Click it and then go for Claim Business. There are a range of ways that can be used to claim your page on Yelp. To keep it short, Yelp simply uses the email and phone verification method if the business has not yet been claimed by anyone else.
In case the business has been claimed by someone else, you will have to submit an application to the Yelp Support Team and provide the relevant details including the time of attempt you made to regain control on the page. If someone has already submitted an application for claiming your business on Yelp, it will again restrict you from claiming the business. In either case, a report is essential.
Keep a note
It would be useful for you to know that Yelp business listings can be made with the help of a computer or a mobile device. This becomes quite convenient for anyone to do so. Moreover, be advised that it may take up to 2 to 3 days for your business to be approved by the Yelp administrator. If your business does not approve for 5 working days, you can contact their help to figure out what is going wrong.
It is very important to note that many users create business pages on Yelp for those businesses that are currently not on Yelp or not even actually established. Prior to setting up your business page, it is important that you take a look at the existing ones and see if you find yours. If you do, you can create a Yelp business page accordingly and contact to Yelp Help Centre for taking full control of your business on Yelp.
Note that the business owners have to create their account on Yelp as well. Just like one would make their account on any other social networking site, business owners will have to make theirs so that they can manage their page as well as the other types of details such as working hours, menu changes, any responses to reviews, and other actions, etc.
It is also important to consider other important aspects before registering your business name. Find out more over here – Considerations to make before registering a business name.
What are the Benefits of Setting Up a Business on Yelp?
Over the years, Yelp has grown as a platform with a large number of active users. With more than 35 million average users per month who are known as Yelpers, a particular business gains in terms of brand image and recognition. These users have an instant response to their specific queries for particular businesses. As a result, Yelp is a part of the conversation when people are searching for something.
Yelp acts as a business directory too. A lot of people go online to search for a business before they actually make their purchase. If your business is not set up online, people may not find you and you may not get customers. Yelp plays an important role in the decision-making process which is why setting up your business on Yelp is essentially important.
Yelp is quite convenient to access and use for both businesses and customers. With a presence in more than 30 countries, consumers and businesses can use Yelp via the website, mobile application, and mobile website as well. Yelp has a large number of partners and a benefit of setting up the business on Yelp is that you can smoothly manage your online presence.
Yelp provides credibility to a business. Being a neutral platform, Yelp users provide the good and bad about a particular business. If you have an excellent customer service, it will not only be recognized online but will also increase the client base. Most companies have their goodwill maintained via Yelp and you can too.
A great feature of using Yelp is that it offers the businesses the Yelp Premium Listing option as well. This means that with paid advertising many businesses are shown on top results, possible pages on Yelp, their good reviews are highlighted and other such positive impacts are seen as well. This becomes quite helpful to new and old businesses who can then easily have their advertisement at a nominal pricing which is guaranteed to be successful in the long run.
An important benefit of Yelp compared with other social media networks is that it is a dedicated and specialized platform for reviews. One might see reviews on Facebook or Instagram but due to the specialization of Yelp specifically in the field of reviews and not other social networking aspects, it has become a more credible, verified, and trusted source for developing a particular opinion about any business.
Most restaurants in the world have a strong belief that Yelp is perhaps one of the strongest ways that they can market themselves in a credible manner. These businesses use reviews from Yelp to market and promote themselves while assuring a goodwill image for the customers. Businesses that were once nothing have grown on a major scale with the sole reason of Yelp being there to have assisted in review-based marketing.
Conclusion
Setting up a business on Yelp is fairly easy and does not require any extensive work. We can see that there are numerous advantages no matter you go for a standard listing or a premium listing. However, if you want to go high at a fast pace, Yelp premium listing would be quite helpful for you.
In any case that you are confused about setting your business page on Yelp or claiming one that has already been made, the Yelp Support Team is always active and there to assist you out. Happy Yelping!