Yelp SEO

I start by claiming the Yelp page. If you have not done that, nothing else matters. Yelp requires a phone verification, sometimes a postcard, and it can take a few days. I have seen businesses skip this step and then wonder why their edits never stick. Once verified, I audit the existing data against the [local SEO checklist](/local-seo-checklist/). Name, address, phone, website, hours — every digit must match what is on Google, Facebook, and the [citation SEO](/citation-seo/) sources. Yelp is notorious for surfacing old or incorrect data if you are not careful.

Next, categories. Yelp lets you pick up to three, but you should not use all three unless each is genuinely relevant. I once optimised a Thai restaurant in Manchester and chose "Thai" as the primary, then "Noodles" and "Street Food" as secondaries. The owner wanted to add "Asian Fusion" because it sounds broader, but I argued against it. Yelp’s algorithm weights the primary category heavily, and diluting it with a vague term confuses the signal. I tested this: the restaurant’s impressions in Yelp search for "Thai food" dropped when we added "Asian Fusion" and recovered when we removed it. Stick to the specific term that matches what you do.

I write the business description after the categories. Yelp gives you a few hundred characters, and I use them to describe the business naturally, including a few service keywords without stuffing. For a plumber, I might write "emergency boiler repairs, gas safety checks, and central heating installations in South London" rather than "best plumber London plumber emergency plumber." The latter reads like spam and Yelp’s moderator may flag it.

Photos come next. I upload at least 15 images: storefront, interior, team, menu, work samples. Yelp’s own data shows listings with photos get 2.5x more page views (BrightLocal confirms this). I schedule a reminder every 4 weeks to add new ones. I have found that a photo of a staff member holding a finished product outperforms generic stock images every time.

Then reviews. I do not solicit reviews, full stop. Yelp’s automated filter is aggressive and will bury any review it suspects of being incentivised. Instead, I build a process: every customer who leaves a positive review on Google gets a thank-you note (not a request to cross-post). I respond to every Yelp review within 48 hours, thanking the reviewer and addressing any complaint directly. This signals to Yelp that the page is active, which may help with ranking.

Finally, I add services, booking links, and deals. For a restaurant, I connect the OpenTable or Resy widget. For a service business, I add a link to the booking page. Yelp treats these as conversion signals, and they keep users on the page longer.

The biggest risk is treating Yelp as a set-and-forget exercise. I have seen businesses claim their page, fill it once, and never return. Six months later, the hours are wrong, the photos are stale, and a negative review sits unanswered. Yelp’s algorithm rewards freshness, so you need a quarterly update rhythm at minimum.

Another watch-out is the review filter. Yelp famously hides reviews it deems suspicious, and you cannot appeal individual decisions. If you accidentally encourage reviews — say, by putting a "Review us on Yelp" sign in your window — you risk having every review filtered. I have seen a café lose 30 reviews overnight because the owner posted a Facebook request. The only safe path is to let reviews come organically and respond to them.

Categories are another trap. Many businesses pick the broadest category available, like "Restaurants" instead of "Italian" or "Pizza." Yelp’s search results favour specificity. A [local SEO audit](/local-seo-audit/) I ran for a dentist showed that changing the primary category from "General Dentistry" to "Cosmetic Dentist" (which was accurate for their business) doubled their profile views in three weeks. The trade-off is that you lose visibility in broader searches, but if your target audience is specific, that is a win.

Consistency with other listings matters more than you might think. Yelp scrapes the web for your business information, and if it finds a mismatch — say, your Google My Business page says "Suite 100" but Yelp says "Ste 100" — it may flag the listing as unverified or even create a duplicate. I always cross-check with [Google My Business](/google-my-business/) and citation SEO sources before finalising Yelp data.

Finally, do not ignore Yelp because you prefer Google. Yelp pages rank well in Google’s local pack for many queries, especially for restaurants and services. I have seen a Yelp page outrank the business’s own website. If you neglect it, you hand traffic to a third-party page that you cannot fully control.

For years, I treated Yelp as an afterthought. I assumed Google My Business was the only local listing that mattered, and I spent 90% of my optimisation effort there. I was wrong. Yelp has its own search traffic, and it feeds into Google’s local ranking signals through citations. A client in Dallas who runs a plumbing company saw a 15% increase in organic leads after I fixed his Yelp listing — leads that came directly from Yelp’s own search, not from Google. I had been ignoring a channel that was already generating business.

I also underestimated the power of photos. I used to upload three or four images and call it done. Then I ran a test: for a restaurant client, I uploaded 20 photos over two months and tracked profile views. The first month after adding photos, views increased by 40%. The second month, another 20% bump. I now treat photos as a primary optimisation lever, not a nice-to-have.

Another mistake was not responding to negative reviews. I thought silence was safer than engaging with a complaint. But a negative review without a response looks worse than a negative review with a thoughtful reply. I once had a client who ignored a one-star review about slow service. A competitor responded to a similar review, apologised, and offered a free dessert. The competitor’s overall rating stayed higher, even though they had more complaints. Yelp users see the response, and it builds trust.

Finally, I used to write generic business descriptions. I would copy the same text from Google and Facebook. But Yelp’s algorithm seems to reward descriptions that mention specific services, because users search for those terms within Yelp. I now write a unique description for each platform, tailored to the audience behaviour on that site. It is more work, but the incremental traffic is worth it.