The news has been buzzing the past few weeks about Yelp - and some small business owners are very upset with the service.
According to this critical piece in the East Bay Express, some businesses are claiming that Yelp sales reps are promising to remove negative reviews if the business will advertise with them.
Many business owners I’ve talked to are frustrated because some of the reviews customers have left for them are disappearing with no explanation. And there is no way to appeal this to Yelp to get the reviews added back in.
Other articles, like this piece in the New York Times: The Review Site Yelp Draws Some Outcries of Its Own take a more balanced view of the situation (unfortunately registration is required to view this article.) And Greg Sterling added some thoughtful perspective in this article: The Long Knives Out for Yelp.
It seems that Yelp is trying to fight dishonest reviews, and seems to be aggressively tuning their algorithm to drop off any reviews that may not be legitimate.
Relying on online directories and review sites
Whatever the reasons for these problems, they underscore the importance of taking control of the online presence for your business. I tell my clients not to become too reliant on a single online directory or review site, such as Yelp, CitySearch, Merchant Circle, and others.
If you rely on a directory or review site for your traffic, your business can be seriously affected when they change a policy or their algorithms.
Another problem with directory listings in sites like the ones mentioned above, is that if you are not a paying advertiser on their site, they can advertise your competitors on your own profile page!
Here’s what Yelp advertisers receive, according to an e-mailed sales pitch that a local business owner sent to the East Bay Express.
They can highlight a favorite review to appear at the top of the page about their business. They also show up first in search results for similar businesses in their region (for example “coffee” near “Alameda, CA”). Ads for that business appear on the page of local competitors, while competitors’ ads do not appear on their page
.
Would you advertise a competitor on your own website?
Establishing your website as the hub of your online presence
As a small business owner you should establish your own domain name and website. I bring this up because I’ve met a lot of small businesses that initially don’t want to go through the hassle to register a domain name and set up a site, optimize it for search results, etc.
One business owner I talked to was getting a decent local ranking for her Yelp profile, and pretty much relied on that as her web presence. Then she got one negative review, and some of her positive reviews dropped off for an unknown reason.
She felt very out of control because things were happening to the primary web presence for her business and she had no way to do anything about it.
Once she set up her own website, and established a process for getting online reviews from her best customers, she was able to show a much better side of her business online and increase customer referrals from Google and Yahoo searches.
When establishing your own website, these local profiles can be very valuable as “citations” that act as references for your business website - Google uses them as external validation that your business is legitimate, and your website belongs to your business.
So make sure you claim them - and then use your profiles in these online directories to link to and support your website in the search rankings.
When you set up profiles in Yelp, Merchant Circle, CitySearch, Google Local, an Yahoo Local make sure to point these profiles to your new website address. They will become the local search equivalent of “back-links”, establishing your website as the primary source of information about your business.
Now you are in control
Doing this will help insulate you from policy changes or support problems with the online directories.
Over time, your website will gain more and more of the referrals from Google, Yahoo and MSN searches. You will still get referrals from your online profiles, but they will no longer be the primary (or only!) place people find out about your business on the web.
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Don Campbell is the publisher of Expand2Web, a blog that helps small business owners like Chiropractors build WordPress websites, and get a steady stream of new customers from Google and Yahoo.
In his leisure time Don enjoys downhill skiing, wake-boarding, and learning to play Jazz piano. He lives with his wife and two daughters in the San Jose, California.
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Tags: citysearch, merchant circle, online reviews, yelp
I just saw this timely post from Greg Sterling: Yelp to Allow Businesses to Talk Back.