Local businesses have more difficulty in attracting new visitors and audiences, whether it be to their online platforms or in person. By virtue of having a smaller natural audience in your precise geographic area, converting as many people into customers and clients is not necessarily possible.

Online platforms that focus on exploring local customer and visitor experiences can be a powerful influence for local businesses. Platforms such as Google via its Maps and locally-relevant search results can help, but there are other options – like Yelp – to consider as well.

Let’s examine how local businesses can attract more people via the proper use of Yelp.

Be Thorough with Information

Much like with any page that search engines index, local businesses benefit from filling out as many fields as possible. Besides adding the standard name, phone number and address details, there are many other details to consider. By pinging servers with your hours of operation, specialities, photos and more, search engines will see your content and be more likely to rank it prominently in local results. This will ultimately lead to more visitors finding your business online via Yelp – which brings more people through your doors.

Engage with Reviews

One of the best ways to ensure your Yelp pages are being seen is to keep is updated and active. While you can’t always be providing new information or details about your brand, you can help encourage search engines – and readers – to look at your Yelp page by engaging with reviews.

Not all reviews may be positive, but finding amicable ways to engage with each person who takes time to leave a review has benefits. Besides helping to keep the content on your page fresh, it also shows readers that – regardless of the review’s opinion – you care about the opinions of others and are responsive to customers.

Optimize Your Presence

To further encourage your Yelp page’s visibility in local search results, consider optimizing in the same way you would a website or blog: via keywords and multimedia. While Yelp pages don’t allow for the same level of complexity as pages and posts on your own website, you can carefully select keywords and phrases to include in various fields to better target your ideal audiences.

Likewise, adding more photos to your Yelp page can further boost visibility in other ways. For instance, local image searches for specific niches may very well feature your Yelp-hosted images, providing both an additional source of traffic and increased authority within the niche.

Focus on Backlinks

Even though most Yelp traffic comes from search engine results, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be pinging servers across the internet with links to your Yelp page.

First, earning backlinks for your Yelp page can send signals to search engines that your page – and any pages related to your business – deserve to be more prominently ranked. Given that Yelp already gets prominence in specific search results, the benefits here are smaller than with backlink strategies for traditional websites.

However and additionally, backlinks earned in the right places can also help drive more traffic to your Yelp page and increase awareness of your business. Given you’ll most likely be targeting local websites, the selection is more restricted – it is still worth the effort, though!

Showcasing what others are saying about your business via its Yelp page is a sound strategy for increasing traffic, customers and visitors. Through these simple strategies, you can better position your Yelp page and ensure additional visibility in local search results – and that ultimately leads to better tangible results for your business.