Why Your Local Business Should Work with Yelp Elite

Why Your Local Business Should Work with Yelp Elite

Dec 30, 2020 | Blogging

If you own a local business, be it a restaurant, bar, retail store, or even a local service provider, you might have heard of Yelp Elite. This coveted group of “expert reviewers” gets more exposure on their reviews from others.

The Yelp Elite Squad reviews can have a positive or negative impact on your business’ reputation, even though negative reviews can help your business seem more trustworthy.

What Is the Yelp Elite Squad?

Yelp offers “Yelp Elite Benefits” to anyone considered a role model on the site. They achieve this crown by meeting some of the following qualifications:

  • Well-written reviews
  • A large quantity of both positive and critical reviews
  • A complete profile with plenty of high-quality photos
  • Detailed personal information
  • A background of responding to criticism positively

To become a member of the Yelp Elite Squad, it’s clear that you can’t simply hop around from restaurant to restaurant offering negative reviews in exchange for free meals. These people are usually food bloggers, photographers, and digital nomads who spend most of their time traveling and sampling the wares at each location.

Why Your Business Should Work with the Yelp Elite Squad

There are a couple of important reasons why you might want to work with these individual reviews:

Their Status Matters

Obtaining the Yelp Elite status isn’t as easy as you think.

These people need to write as many as 40-50 high-quality reviews per year, maintain a large social network of other reviewers, interact with people on the platform, as well as a bunch of other factors to achieve and maintain this status.

What does that mean for you?

It means a lot of exposure if you can provide an excellent experience.

You Could Become the Local Expert

Does your business specialize in something? Elite members love going to places where they can get something that isn’t available everywhere. It gives them something to talk about in the review.

It’s the difference between reviewing a hamburger shop and reviewing a vegan gastropub.

If your business does something a little unique or can generate attention for a specific product, it’s worth it to invite a member or a group and knock it out of the park.

How Your Local Business Can Get Involved with the Yelp Elite Squad

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There are a few simple ways to work with the Yelp Elite Squad.

Host Elite Parties

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Hosting a Yelp Elite event could be a way to set yourself apart from the competition. Yelp makes it easy to do this because you can message your local Yelp community manager, and they’ll work with you to host an event if it’s a good fit.

No matter what type of business you are, you’ve got some positive reviews under your belt and a unique product to offer, consider reaching out. There’s no harm in giving it your best shot.

Participate in Forums

Commenting on local forums on Yelp is an excellent way to get your name out there, and you can leapfrog over the competition pretty easily this way. Let’s say you own a ramen restaurant in downtown Knoxville, and people are posting in a forum trying to find something unique to eat in the city.

If you’re staying up to date and checking in regularly, you can chime in on the thread to let people know you opened a ramen restaurant, provide the address, and give a little background on the place.

Bear in mind you most likely won’t have access to communication with Yelp Elite members, but discussing this with regular Yelpers might be a great way to get your foot in the door.

Direct Message

Sometimes you might just have to go all-in and message someone directly. If you find there are specific Yelp Elite members in your local area that you really want to get into your business, you can try this easy method.

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You’ll want to filter based on location and your type of business. For example, if you own a day spa, you wouldn’t want to message a member who usually reviews restaurants.

You can then filter your competition by reviews, and there should be an “elite” status on there. You can collect all the people who review businesses in your niche and message them one-by-one.

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Before you do this, be choosy about who you message. Don’t invite someone who is overly critical. Also, as with marketing of any kind, you need to understand your audience.

Take a look at their profile, see what they like and what some of their personality traits are, and don’t be afraid to butter them up a little.

Don’t just talk about your specials or what you do at your business; talk about the benefits of coming to visit you and how it could potentially be mutually beneficial for both of you.

Businesses That Have Found Success with Yelp Elite

Here is a brilliant example of how local businesses can find amazing success through the Yelp Elite program. In this scenario, six different businesses came together to provide a unique and extraordinary experience for all Indianapolis members.

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In this “Friendsgiving,” Elitists were brought together for dinner, dessert, and drink tasting in a unique setting in the Tomlinson City Market Catacombs. They created an unforgettable experience, and if you look, the five-star reviews are endless. This will likely have a positive impact on their business for years to come.

In a different scenario, we see how you don’t need to own a restaurant, bar, or food brand to benefit from Yelp Elite. In Cleveland’s Playhouse Square, Elite members toured 1920’s construction, received information on the city’s past, and learned all about the mystery behind their city.

This resulted in several amazing reviews, positive experiences, and publicity for the city’s art district in exchange for a little bit of their time.

How Does the Yelp Elite Squad Compare to Google Guides

If you’ve heard of Yelp Elite, you’ve likely heard of Google Guides as well. That platform debuted around 2015, and it’s a way for Google to offer incentives for people who regularly review local businesses. It encourages those people to write more reviews so Google can provide a more pleasurable experience for its users.

Local guides receive a badge on their profile, social media features, and even an annual thank you gift of unknown value.

The one issue I see with Google Guides compared to Yelp Elite is that anyone can receive this badge on Google when they surpass a certain number of reviews. Many of these people only write reviews when they’ve had a poor experience. The reviewers aren’t manually reviewed like they are in Yelp.

The program seems to be a lot more “open” and less coveted than Elite status, but they’re still important because of the visibility a badge can bring.

It also doesn’t seem like Google creates much of a community out of their Google Guides as Yelp does. There’s no way to create events or persuade these reviewers to visit your business other than scouring the internet to try and find their contact information, which might come off as weird to the individual.

Other Ways to Work with Influencers

We live in the age of the influencer. While we tend to focus on Instagram and TikTok today, Yelp Elites were the original influencers, and they’re still relevant today. As a business owner, you should not ignore these people or Yelp in general.

While it might seem painful or even torturous to appeal to “professional reviewers,” it’s beneficial for your business. Though it’s not guaranteed, one great event or a few positive reviews from well respected Elite status members can give your business more visibility in Yelp search results.

If you’re looking for a few different ways to work with influencers, here are a few quick tips to help:

Instagram

Just like on Yelp, send DMs to people in your local area by searching relevant hashtags that apply to your community. Find influencers in your niche and location and send a bunch of DMs asking for them to reach out in exchange for a free product or service.

The good thing with Instagram is you don’t have to follow the Yelp community guidelines stating you can’t exchange goods and services for reviews. You may be able to find a new Elitist looking to conduct more reviews, and this could be a great way to get your name out there!

TikTok

On TikTok, you can become an influencer yourself. The platform is ripe for people who are interested in making a name for themselves. Post some of the most interesting aspects of your business, and be sure to follow trends.

Post whatever is currently trending on TikTok and try to get attention from local influencers. Once you do, find a way to contact them by searching for them on other platforms. If they’re on TikTok, they’re probably also on Instagram, and it’s much easier to get in touch with them there.

Conclusion

As much as we like to keep our pride intact, sometimes it’s beneficial for us to set it aside and do what we know we need to do for our business. Yelp Elite members are the first influencers, and they’re more than relevant for brick and mortar businesses.

If you’re trying to get some attention and become more popular in your local community, Yelp Elite can help. If you’re having trouble managing your reputation, my team can help with that.

Do you think Yelp Elite is an important part of a local SEO strategy?

The State of Local SEO and How to Get More Local Customers

The State of Local SEO and How to Get More Local Customers

Oct 7, 2020 | Seo

Do you want to acquire more local customers from search?… Of course, you do!

First, you need to understand that SEO is no longer the way it used to be. A lot of has changed. In fact, the impact of these changes are more glaring in local search engine optimization.

When it comes to Local SEO, you need to get serious with Google My Business Page and citations.

When you implement both practices, you’re telling local consumers and search engines alike that you’re open for business. And your sales will possibly increase.

Remember that local searches are more likely to lead to sales, compared to non-local searches. According to a research study by Google, 18% of local smartphone searches generated a purchase within 24 hours.

Of course, links are still important to search rankings, but the approach has changed a lot in the last 3 years. You now need to understand the on-page technicalities first, before moving out to get links.

Make no mistakes about it. Modern SEO boils down to listening to and attending to your website’s visitor – people who consume your content, after clicking on your search result from Google organic listings.

It’s no secret that you have to do more to thrive in the search these days. If you choose to manipulate search using blackhat techniques, you may end up losing your precious rankings.

That’s why I created this in-depth article, to help you understand the State of Local SEO & where to pay attention now.

Your SEO is not all about ranking #1

If you think that SEO is all about getting ranked in #1 position, then you’re making a deadly mistake. Of course who wouldn’t desire that spot – but that’s not the focus.

At the end of the day, the focus of SEO is to build sustainable rankings for your target keywords. You want to rank today, tomorrow, and even next year.

For this to happen, you need an effective social media strategy – because social signals have become an integral part of organic ranking factors.

Once you pass some social juice to your web pages, every other effort would yield better results. In fact, your CTR will weigh more – because you have a lot of people engaging with your content on social media sites.

So the #1 result in Google may not always get the most clicks. Remember that majority of your searchers, especially those outside internet marketing field don’t know the difference between organic and paid search results.

To a large extent, what determines whether a search result (both organic and paid) gets clicked on is the title, meta description, and page URL. And more importantly, the local map packs with reviews and star ratings.

For example, I searched for “plumber” but I don’t feel excited with these results. So I’ll skip them and scroll down a bit.

Scrolling down the same page, a search result in the Google maps caught my attention. I thought I should click on this one. With all these reviews and ratings from real customers, how can I go wrong?

Your localized link is your new advantage

In today’s local rankings, where you got your inbound links play a vital role in the search rankings.

More so, if you get more links from relevant directories and websites in the same geographical area, Google may reward you better.

And for that to work, you need to gain links to your brand social media, to your product page (or specific service page), and pass more link juice to your video content. [image

To surmount your competition, you don’t need the best website design or a huge marketing budget. You need compelling content and trusted backlinks. It’s your new advantage.

Compelling content will help you rank for several long-tail keywords that you’re not directly targeting. And being on Google’s first page drives more clicks to your local business landing pages.

Note that when you get few inbound links from a website with high domain authority, this can improve your rankings for highly competitive keyword phrases.

On the flip side, low domain authority websites can result in a nose dive for your web pages that are already climbing the top of organic listings. Ahrefs conducted an exclusive research study in this respect.

If you look at it closely, you’ll agree with me that modern SEO isn’t about keywords, but on the searcher’s intent.

For example, why do people search for “small business tools” in Google?

Are they looking for tools to buy, or they just want to learn how fast new tools are being released in the small business field?

An in-depth market research will answer that question.

Higher Organic Rankings depends on how much you engage your site users

Truly, links are the lifeblood of local search rankings.

But all links are not created equal.

Since 2014, brands that proactively research authority websites, build relationships, and eventually earned links to their web pages, have seen a spike in organic rankings as the year goes by.

The imminent challenge that local businesses face is the time and expertise to build these links. If you’re in the same both, the solution is to:

Build engagement with site visitors.

Engagement is so important.

For instance, when website visitors are engaged, they’ll share content, cite it, leave valuable comments, write honest reviews, and push your brand to the spotlight through word of mouth.

When I did a search for plumber earlier, did you notice what inspired me to click on a search result?

Reviews and star ratings.

You’ll often find reviews and star ratings in rich snippets of the organic search results.

Reviews are hard to get.

Reviews speak volumes and show how responsive your customers and website visitors are towards your content or product.

Customer reviews may not improve your search rankings (at least Google hasn’t made it clear yet), but it improves user experience.

Consequently, the more reviews your local business garner, the more inspired and ready your customers will be. It can increase your product orders.

From the results above, I can boldly say that the trust level you have with customers can be directly or indirectly traced to how engaging your content is.

Yes the term “content engagement” has become a buzzword. So many local businesses throw it around, but only a few people truly knows what it means.

Of course engagement could mean several things at the same time. But when it comes to getting more local customers through content, the engagement that you want can be summarized in these few points:

  • Get local clients to click on your headline and read your content.
  • Your content inspires local clients to call your business.
  • Your ideal customers find your physical business address, and take steps to visit you now or later.
  • Get customers to place order on your online store.

And so forth.

At the end of the day, you want to track conversions, not some vanity metrics like reach, comments, and so on.

However, you can increase content engagement if you understand the consumer engagement cycle. This is more or less the various paths that your ideal customer must tour, before deciding on your business.

Conclusion

Local SEO is all about telling great story of your brand without rambling endlessly. You don’t have to be a natural-born storyteller.

Great storytelling entrepreneurs thrive on a simple secret:

They understand their audience more than the average Joe.

In your page title, page description, and within your content, find reasons to tell stories that pique the user’s mind. Don’t stuff keywords. Instead, stuff your content with stories.

This is Marcus Sheridan’s strategy. Though he’s known as a pools guy, but by telling stories of his brand and the struggles he had to go through, his local business went international.

And guess what? Today, he generates more traffic from organic searches. Every challenge that you’ve experienced is a goldmine when creating content.

Tap into it – and tell the story – while driving your brand message home. Your local customers will understand it better.

 

This article was a contribution from Michael Chibuzor, who is a seasoned freelance writer. If you’re looking for long-form articles that drives traffic and sales, visit ContentMarketingUp.com.

Google My Business – Local SEO Strategies for Small Businesses

Google My Business – Local SEO Strategies for Small Businesses

Oct 6, 2020 | Online Marketing, Seo, website

Written by Zac Johnson

If you have a website or business on the internet, you are likely thrilled with any search traffic and rankings you might receive. However, if you are a local-based business, it’s all about ranking for keywords that are relevant to your location or specifically about your business.

In most cases, local businesses won’t really understand the metrics of SEO or how to improve their rankings in the search results. More often than not, they will simply be happy if they are appearing at the top of Google for their brand name, and also have a Google Business Listing with their hours, location and business details.

This is ideal… but there are definitely more opportunities for traffic, growth, and improvement — especially when you start considering online traffic and content options with geo-targeted traffic.

Google My Business is a great place for local businesses to start with their online journey, but it’s definitely not the beginning and end. Implement these three components into your content creation and marketing efforts to get even more out of your local business listings in Google.

Start a Website or Blog for Your Local Business

Most small businesses and local retail locations should already have an online website or blog, but many still don’t. Unfortunately, way too many businesses think that a listing in Google Local or Yelp is going to represent them well online — however, this isn’t the case at all. Instead, it could actually be hurting them in the long run.

Without an official website for your business, there is no way for your audience and customers to really get in direct contact with you. Any information that might be found on other websites or local directories might also not be updated or accurate. At the same time, without a website of your own, you are letting customers leave reviews on other websites that you have no control over.

With a site of your own, you are always in control over what people see, find and discover about your business. This is also a great way to make a better first impression (through a nice website, pictures and company info). Once the connection has been made, you can then showcase your best customer feedback and ratings that appear within your Google My Business page.

Wouldn’t you rather be sending people directly to your own website when they search for your brand online, versus sending them to another third party website? You should.

Take Advantage of Facebook Advertising

There are currently over 1.8 billion users on Facebook. While the social network has worldwide exposure, it’s also done wonders for localized businesses and brands in the process.

Through the use of both Facebook Page and Facebook Advertising, local businesses can reach audiences within their area, while also growing a following at the same time. This is why you commonly see flyers that say “Like Us on Facebook” in your favorite retail locations. It’s a simple, fun and easy way for brands to connect with their audiences, while also allowing them to build a ‘social mailing list’ in the process.

Advanced local businesses and brands can also take advantage of the demographic and geo-targeting options that are available through Facebook Ads. The same can be said for ‘custom audience’ targeting options, which allows site owners to display ads through Facebook based on visitors to a website or emails on a mailing list.

Keeping with the theme of how to maintain a great online presence and building up your Google My Business profile, Facebook Pages and marketing can also be a great way to lead people to your local search listings where users can leave ratings and reviews of your own. Since your audience is already following you on Facebook, there is a good chance their review and rating would be positive.

Focus on Local SEO, Content Creation and Competitors

The third and final tip for improving a local business’ presence online, is to simply know how to rank your site in Google. As mentioned, it’s not hard to claim your Google My Business listing in Google… but that doesn’t mean you are going to listed at the top of the search rankings for generic search phrases like ‘car repair’, ‘food services’ or ‘pizza’ in your area, even if the geo-location settings are turned on for results. To improve your rankings you need to understand how to do each of the following;

  • Rank for Local Keywords – Ranking in Google is a science. If you don’t already know the basics of SEO, you can follow them here. In short, you need to create valuable content for your website and gain backlinks to your site. Those are the two most simple and straight to the point methods for explaining how rankings work in Google. The same thing goes for Google Local rankings as well… the more content and rankings back to them, the more likely they are to rank higher.
  • Create Local-Based Content – A listing in Google is great for your business, but there is a lot more opportunity if you are willing to put in the time, work and effort. For example, think about the many different things your potential customers might be searching for in Google (besides your company name). Ratings, locations, coupons, how to’s, local events… you name it, all of it can be used for potential content ideas you can create through your own site.
  • Know Your Competitors – As a local business, your competition is everything. If they have a bigger store, better advertisements and higher search rankings… you need to know! Tools like SEMRush and Google Alerts will allow you to keep an eye on the competition, both through search ranking movements and any new content appearing in Google your competition might be ranking for.

Another method that has worked for various businesses to help improve the look and activity of their sites, is to send geo targeted traffic to their sites. This type of traffic marketing will help with Alexa and SimilarWeb rankings. While these aren’t key components to SEO or determining how successful or big a site might be, they are metrics that brands and businesses do keep an eye on. Also, depending on the size of your business, this type of paid traffic can also bring in new audiences and customer to your website (and even local business as well).

Claim Your Google My Business Page, then Build Out Your Own Site

I’m all for having a Google My Business page for your local business, but don’t rely on that for everything. I always tell my audience the same thing — you want to own your own content! This is why it’s so important to have your own domain name and web hosting, versus starting a website on Blogger.com or WordPress.com. At the same time, you don’t want to have 100,000 fans on your Facebook page and not leading them to join your own mailing list of visiting a site you actually own.

No matter how much of your business is coming from local residents in your area, your online presence is of the utmost importance. Follow these Google My Business and local SEO marketing tips to stay ahead of the competition.