Setting up a Yelp account is pretty simple and it’s also FREE to add a business listing to Yelp! Yelp lets you update your business information including store hours, contact information, upload photos, and show any offers you want to promote. It also lets you receive and respond to customer messages, quote requests, and reviews. You can check out this link to create a free Yelp account https://biz.yelp.com/.

The steps for creating a Yelp account:

1. Find your business using their search box.

yelp searchIf your business is not in Yelp’s database then you can add your business to Yelp by filling out a form.  When you do so, it’s important you pick relevant categories. Unfortunately, Yelp’s categorization is pretty limited once you get out of the standard local business categories so pick broad categories if you have to—you will be able to narrow these by picking sub-categories later on.
yelp for business

2. Yelp will then send you a verification link via text or email (your choice). From there Yelp will start asking some additional questions about your business.

3. Once your business has been accepted, you can start adding information to it like your coronavirus policy, photos, hours, payments accepted, website URL, descriptions, etc. It also lets you add in holidays and special hours that deviate from the norm as well as whether your company offers virtual consultations or services.

4. At this point you can add in specific sub-categories & services. This will let you drill down a bit more on skills or areas of focus from the broader categories you picked earlier. If you want to change your categories you can remove them and it will let you search for a new category to replace it.

5. Yelp also has some other features that will help you stand out from the crowd if you are willing to a pay a little. You can add business highlight badges like these:

You can also pay to have a call-to-action shown with your business listing or pay to have competitors’ ads removed.

It’s mostly straightforward, but if you have to manage a lot of listings across a lot of sites, this can become a pretty time consuming task.  If you don’t want to have to manage all of this stuff yourself, you should check out Yext PowerListings.

Yext Powerlistings can automatically update your business’ information across 50+ of the top local search sites out there including Yelp, Yahoo Local, SuperPages and more.   They also now do review monitoring. It’s not free but the amount of time it can save you is huge.  Check it out here.

Here’s their fancy graphic showing where they send their data:

yextFull Disclosure: I get paid every time someone buys a Powerlisting via that link.  It’s not much, but it helps keep the lights on at the blog – and I do think it’s a great service. Ok, end of shill…

Check out Yext PowerListings and support this site while you’re at it!