Meredith's Husband: 0:42

Hey, this is Meredith husband. I've got some SEO advice for you, but I'm gonna keep it really simple so that you can understand it. So make sense. And most importantly, so you can actually use you gonna talk about Yelp today? Yes, I do. Yeah. Some help with Yelp. Some help with Yelp. Yes. Give me some Yelp help. Yeah, absolutely. Like how you how you can, you know, try to ensure that you're getting the most out of Yelp. Without having to pay Yelp.

Meredith: 1:13

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because they want you to I actually just got an inquiry through Yelp? Oh, yeah. Well, they contact me directly, because I have to pay for I have to pay to reply to

Meredith's Husband: 1:28

increase a Yelp. Yelp is a is a, they're, they're kind of a necessary evil. So they're necessary evil, because they have a very kind of aggressive sales mentality,

Meredith: 1:40

oh, my gosh, they called and called and called and called. And I kept saying, Look, I have over 50 reviews that are positive, and you put them in the restricted or whatever the word is pile. So unless you can support me, I'm not going to support you. They didn't like that.

Meredith's Husband: 2:02

And I feel that they, you know, their, their algorithm that they use to determine their rankings and show those things. They they keep 100% secret, like, it's a total black box, they never indicate anything. And I My gut feeling is they do that so that they can, you know, pay before they're gonna call you and ask for your advertising money. They're gonna take a whole bunch of your positive reviews and put them on their restricted list. I mean, it's just I can't I can't prove that, but it see it. Their sales techniques are so aggressive, and they're so strong. I mean, how many times has Yelp called you? Over the years?

Meredith: 2:39

Oh, yeah, hundreds of times, literally hundreds of times

Meredith's Husband: 2:42

times your money. And I, you know, I've had clients who pay to advertise on Yelp. And I can see, you know, through analytics, how well it's working.

Meredith: 2:53

And it doesn't work at all. Are you serious?

Meredith's Husband: 2:56

Yeah. Yeah. They pay that I'm only talking about two or three situations here. Because Yelp, so I say it's a necessary evil, because they have I mean, they're really,

Meredith: 3:10

highly visible for go to, they're the go to,

Meredith's Husband: 3:13

but it's, but it's but it's for consumers. The so it's from my clients are are usually our businesses, and they are b2b businesses. So business to business. So my clients are like software companies that supply other businesses. So those types that those industries, businesses are not going to Yelp to check reviews, right. But somebody's looking for a photographer, or a restaurant or a, you know, a gym, those those specialty Yelp, yes. Yes. Ice cream, and, and they have vegan ice cream, right. And they have a huge hole. I mean, they're, like, like I said, they're a necessary evil, you have to deal with it, because a lot of people are gonna be going there. So how do you get the most ideal without having to pay Yelp for their advertising. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So there are two ways. There are two things, there are two kind of aspects of Yelp that you need to think about. People go people go directly to Yelp and do searches at Yelp. That's one way that Yelp is used. Yelp also appears in Google in search engines. So if you do, if some if you do a search on Google for something, there's a decent chance that some of the first listings might be things on Yelp. Yeah. So you want you're gonna need to as a local business owner, you're gonna need to optimize your Yelp listing. So that it appears so that the Yelp algorithm so that you appear highly in searches when people do a search on Yelp. Yeah. And then also try to optimize that listing. So if people are doing a search on Google, Google chooses your listing, in addition to Yelp, right, yeah. So every so all these all websites today all have algorithms, right? Google,

Meredith: 5:08

do algorithms have algorithms?

Meredith's Husband: 5:10

No. They might actually, they might. I don't know exactly. You know, they might have sub sub algorithms. I don't know. But you know, Netflix, Spotify, eBay, Etsy, Pinterest. Everything is trying to learn about your behavior as a user. Using these types of algorithms. Everybody has an algorithm. Some algorithms are better than others. Yeah, has an exceptionally high quality algorithm. I don't think yelps is that great. To be honest, I don't know. It's it's 100. It's totally black box. So, again, my suspicion is that there's some manual manipulation?

Meredith: 5:48

I think so. So well, who knows? I think that's not true. I have no idea.

Meredith's Husband: 5:54

So the idea is how can you please this algorithm to get your your, your site fed up as much as possible? There's several things and not too dissimilar algorithms fed up is no. Oh, yeah. Like, like, like you feed like you like you have an Instagram feed. A Facebook feed. You want you you want to appear in a feed? Essentially? Yeah, I've never used that you want fed? You want to be you want your your you want your listing to be fed to users? That's what you say. Yeah. No, that's I said that on purpose. Oh, that's what you want? Yes, that

Meredith: 6:28

is true. I

Meredith's Husband: 6:29

know. It's kind of Yeah. You want to think of when you think about

Meredith: 6:33

a feed? You don't think like a feed for chickens feed for?

Meredith's Husband: 6:38

I didn't say chickens, for you know, feed.

Meredith: 6:41

What do you think of feed? Yeah, like, do you think of food, the seed food which they call feed? So

Meredith's Husband: 6:47

I don't? Hmm, I think of a feed, I think of like an RSS feed or you know,

Meredith: 6:53

your feed, fed.

Meredith's Husband: 6:57

You want to you want your content to be fed,

Meredith: 7:00

when you feed your feed your feed, feed your feed?

Meredith's Husband: 7:05

I don't know. Can we get back on so your feed field? So we want we want to, we want to show you our website and show your work to people who are looking for? Yes, what you do. So there are several things by your feed. So there'll be fed. Yes, one of them nice and full. So there are several things you can do that are going to help improve those chances. Like I said, I think Yelp ultimately is a black box. So this is not going to guarantee anything, but it's certainly improve your odds. Okay, so number one, got to choose the correct business category. So when you set up your listing, yeah, when you go to claim your listing, there's a business category. Yeah, got to choose the right one. So what the way I would do this, because it's because the business categories are different on every site on Google on Yelp on Yeah, they're all different. So what I would do is I would go to some of your top competitors. So go to Yelp, do a search. So if you would do this now. No, you don't need to do it. But you would do a search on Yelp for children's photographer in Brooklyn, go to the top couple listings, what business categories? Have they? That's what you want to do? Yeah, if you can choose more than one, a lot of times you can do the same thing? Yeah. No, just one, okay, then just choose the one. Do it, you know, do that. That's what you want to do. If you don't choose the correct business category. There's a, that's definitely going to harm you how often you appear in search results. Number two, you want to make sure you complete as many fields as possible. So there's a bunch of different things you can fill out, right? There's a there's a business description. Yeah, there's about the owner. There's like a history of something. You can do image captions, you can do our like, anything you can fill out, yeah, fill out the more the better. Okay. Yeah, including image captions, if you can put images image captions in there, do it.

Meredith: 9:00

Yeah. And then I've seen people say, like, beautiful, professional family, a very side by my mega packet that professional family, professional photographer family photography by and then there's a direct link to their site. So they can just click on and go to the website through those photos.

Meredith's Husband: 9:27

If you can do that, if you can put a link in the description in the business description to your website. Yeah, do that. Yeah. If you can put your keywords in image captions and stuff like that, I would say do that do that also. But try to make it sound natural. So I've said in the in the past when you do that on your website, you gotta be careful because Google is going to see that and they're gonna say you're trying to spam the system. You're trying to over optimize your site. Like I said, I don't think yelps algorithm is that sophisticated. Yeah, so I would say you probably can mix in some more of your keywords whatever you want to appear for it you probably can do that and it's not going to backfire don't overdo it don't make

Meredith: 10:11

stuff the feed

Meredith's Husband: 10:15

don't keyword stuff and stuff your keywords but I would say do mix them in whenever it can be whenever it can read sort of naturally do it. Yeah. And every every field that you can fill in, do it okay. Why? Because you don't because because we don't know what the Yelp algorithm Okay, exactly what it's choosing, but the only information that's going to have available are these fields. So if you leave fields blank, that means it's going to have less information to try to match your site with what people are looking for. So the more the better. Okay,

Meredith: 10:47

okay, good, good.

Meredith's Husband: 10:52

respond to reviews. Yeah. Number three, respond to reviews.

Meredith: 10:56

What was number two?

Meredith's Husband: 10:58

That was number two, complete all fields. The business category number two, yeah, complete all as many fields as you can respond to reviews, and not just the bad reviews. Right? So don't only respond when somebody says you're a terrible person, don't. Don't, don't just respond to those ones, right? Respond to the good ones say, hey, thanks. I loved our shoot, you know, whatever. People read reviews, probably more than anything, including the response to those reviews. So it is one of the best opportunities online anywhere.

Meredith: 11:31

Have people say who you are, how you react

Meredith's Husband: 11:33

with. Yeah, and don't respond and somebody leaves you a bad review Don't be negative, right? Right. Don't say, you know, you've seen responses like, well, I said this, and then you said that, and you didn't do XYZ, so bla bla bla bla bla bla bla blah.

Meredith: 11:49

don't embrace it and say, Thank you so much for that input, you know, just because people are going to be reading how you respond to problem

Meredith's Husband: 11:58

exactly, because I know. So sit, I would say something like, you know, I'm so sorry, this didn't work out or meet your expectations. And then if you can kind of include some sort of like, I'm sorry, when we tried to resolve this in person that you did the show after the phone call or something, you know, you can kind of if it's, you know, most often people who leave bad reviews, some of it's on them, often, you know, so you can share ways to deal with it. Yeah. Yeah, deal with it, you know, vary as well as you can. Okay, because remember your future clients are are reading. Exactly, yeah. Okay. Next. Yes. Links. So we've talked about links, how important to remember. Yes, we're on number four.

Meredith: 12:45

Okay, just just, you know, keeping things on track keeping things rolling.

Meredith's Husband: 12:50

So we've talked about how important links are for Google in determining their rankings. Yes, same thing is true for Yelp. So this is more specifically, if you want your Yelp listing to appear in Google. Yeah, directly in Google. Yeah. If you build if you build links to your Yelp listing, that's going to help that. So now, the priority, obviously, is building links to your website, you want your website to appear. Don't be afraid, however, to also sprinkle some links to your Yelp profile or social media, you can sprinkle in just a sprinkle, sprinkle of feed, don't overfeed them.

Meredith: 13:29

Don't choke them to get death,

Meredith's Husband: 13:31

right? Because Google will will see those links, labor. If if there are 10 children's photographers in your area on Yelp. And one of them has 100 inbound links, and none of the others do Guess which one Google is probably going to feed up

Meredith: 13:51

with links,

Meredith's Husband: 13:53

right. Number five, yes. Any additional features, and this is probably this is might be more applicable to like retail stores, like check ins, check ins are very important. But you're not going to as a photographer, you're not going to people are not coming to your location and checking in, right. But if there are things like discounts, if there's, again, similar to the earlier point, enter as many fields as you can. But number six, get reviews, try to get reviews from your from your clients. Don't leave reviews for yourself. Don't ask like you, Meredith would not want me to leave a review for you. Because it's going to be coming from the same IP address that that your machine is Yeah. If if people are connected in any way, you can put that together if they see if your friends on Yelp, if you have the same IP address. That is something that they probably can see. So don't ask and that

Meredith: 14:51

works against you. What I've actually told people if they've not left a Yelp review, previously, to go ahead and give a great review to some thing in their neighborhood that they love first and then review you.

Meredith's Husband: 15:10

Right, because that is that is a factor. Yes.

Meredith: 15:13

Yeah. Just don't take it that. Oh.

Meredith's Husband: 15:19

Good for you. Yeah, don't hit don't ask somebody to sign up for Yelp and then leave you a review that's gonna get flagged, almost guaranteed. It won't appear. If somebody you know has a Yelp account, but they've never left review. Like you just said, you know, ask them to leave another review first. Don't leave yourself review, don't have your roommates, your family, your best friends, leave your reviews. That's just, that's the type of thing that Yelp is looking for when they don't recommend reviews. That's the type of thing that they're going to say that they are filtering out. So don't do that. The other thing I've heard is that you should optimize your Yelp listing for voice for voice search. Now, I

Meredith: 15:59

don't mean does that mean?

Meredith's Husband: 16:01

I don't. So when you know, if you interact with your phone via voice, Hey, Siri, hey, Google, Alexa, you know, what's what's, uh, yeah, but people do that will increasingly, increasingly they will. So they say optimized for for voice. I don't even know how you would do that really on on Yelp. But one one trick when you do write stuff, and I think this is probably this is probably valid for at whenever you write a blog, you might want to do this, or, or something on Yelp, put it through a, like a text to speech. emulator. So like, Google Docs has this if you just type out a paragraph, and then I don't know where it is exactly. But somewhere in there is a feature. They will it will read it out loud. It'll handle like robotic sounding voice, right? Yes, it would. Yes, thank you a lot, I think, if you use Word or whatever, I mean, a lot of programs are going to have this if you have, if you don't have the ability, just do a Google search for like, you know, text to speech, something editor. And there's probably free tools that will do it. Run your, your text through that and just listen to it. A lot of times you'll feel something that might look fine. You know, visually, just reading it is gonna sound very odd when a

Meredith: 17:25

computer likes to shoot kids.

Meredith's Husband: 17:29

Yes, exactly. So make sure. So this I think is a good, a good way to kind of future proof or voice proof your content. Because someday, this is what's going to be happening. Yeah. And it's and it's to be honest, it's it's now it's happening now. And it's only going to increase. So I would I would suggest doing that. I've heard I've heard you should do that with Yelp. I don't really know the details, but it probably wouldn't hurt on your website on the main pages of your website. You don't need to do this. Okay, I think but your blogs, your resort, your resource blogs. Yeah, a lot of times, if if people are finding your blogs, they more and more they'll be using Voice Search. And

Meredith: 18:12

I love shooting families and pets. Yeah, yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 18:17

And some of the some of those voice things like are getting really good. They're like, there's some sort of like neural networks that Amazon I think is kind of has one of the best ones. If Amazon poly some of their voices, it's hard to tell that they are Yeah, I know. But sure enough, if if you listen to it, there might there'll be a phrase somewhere where she's like, What is that, like? So you just want to avoid that. So you want to make you know, as much as possible. Make it sound okay, if a computer's reading. And that's what we're gonna talk about next week is voice search a little bit. Oh, excellent. That's how that's how that's changing.

Meredith: 18:58

I look forward to all right. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for

Meredith's Husband: 19:03

listening. Yes, thank you, everybody. Bye. Okay, I hope that helped. I hope that helped your website. I hope that helped your business. I hope that helped give you a little bit of confidence that SEO is not this convoluted, cryptic, crazy thing that nobody can understand. If you did like it and you found it helpful. Please share it with a couple of your colleagues. Tell them what you like or more importantly, tell me what you liked. Let me know interview. leave a review on Apple. Tell me what parts you like. And I'll try to do more of those parts. And again, thanks for listening.