How to stop Yelp from hurting your reputation

Saturday, July 7th, 2012 Tags: online reputation, reputation management, stop yelp, yelp
Category: Blog, Digital Marketing, Social Media 2 Comments

How to Stop Yelp from Hurting your Business Reputation I just read an interesting article about Yelp causing major reputation management issues for small business owners. One of our clients with CI Web Group – Dan Barger with www.apolloplumbing.com just shared the article with me. I wanted to share the article with you and get your feedback. Have you advertised on Yelp? If so, what has been your experience. Does it bring you business, hurt your business or you don’t know because you never did the research to see how it’s impacting your reputation. Just curious… Here is the Article:

How to Stop Yelp

Yelp.com boasts millions of users per month. So, if your site is showing negative reviews from Yelpers, it can hurt your local business.Yelp can inflict damage on your small to medium size business. Below are several suggestions to stop YELP from hurting your business.1. Your own website with your own domain name. (Tip: make sure you buy the domain name most closely associated with your business name and possible search terms. example: SuperFlowers.com and if that is taken take the name plus the town SuperFlowersDenverColorado.com.

2. Make your own review page that is easy to use for your customers.

3. List your business on every local business website instead of Yelp. Examples: Yelllowbot.com, Yellowpages.com,Manta.com, CustomerServiceNumbers.com/LOCAL, Google Local, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, SuperPages.com,Foursquare.com, indeed.com, and Angieslist.com.

4. Encourage your customers to review you on your website and the other local websites. Never mention Yelp.

5. Share all of your positive reviews from every site but YELP, on Facebook, etc..

6. Open Social Marketing Pages for your business on Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, etc..

7. Check your negative reviewers on Yelp. They may be former employees or competitors. Then you can have your attorneys send Cease and Desist Letters to the reviewers.

8. Spread the word to other business owners and associations about Yelp. Warn them of the possible dangers of listing their business with Yelp.

9. Offer discounts for customers on Coupon Sites, (Groupon.com, and LivingSocial.com) etc.. Just not Yelp.

10. Buy PPC advertising with your keywords linked with Yelp. Example: “Florist Denver Yelp” This will buy you space and allow you to compete with Yelp.

Here is a link to the original article. http://www.customerservicenumbersblog.com/2011/04/how-to-stop-yelp.html

I am curious to hear your thoughts.

2 Responses to “How to stop Yelp from hurting your reputation”

Hello.
I am desperate with my Yelp situation. I rent a station at the Rendez Vous Salon in LA. I currently have about 5000 flyers for a free haircut that say Lance christopher at Rendez Vous Salon. I was not thinking when i did these. AS Yelp is giving the Rendez Vous a bad review that is optimized to always be the first Google result for us. Yelp has multiple listings of “Rendez Vous Salon ” in different countries. Is this considered spam? look:
1. http://www.yelp.com/biz/rendezvous-beauty-salon-west-hollywood
2. http://www.yelp.co.uk/biz/rendezvous-beauty-salon-west-hollywood
- lance
- July 8, 2012 at 3:53 AM
Hi Lance,
I will reach out to you this Monday to get you some assistance.
Kathy Marshall
Community Manager
kmarshall@dynamisintl.com
877 839-1122 ext 305
- kmarshall
- August 25, 2012 at 7:59 PM

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