In the first nine months of 2011, Yelp generated a whopping 80% increase in year-over-year revenue totaling $58.4 million. Advertising sales accounted for 91% of the company’s revenue during this period. Local advertising revenues grew by 67% year-over-year to $40.3 million, while branded advertising also grew by 67% to $12.7 million.

During the past year, Yelp has been increasing its spending on sales and marketing. Year-over-year expenditures have risen 60% to $38.5 million.

Yelp is currently concentrating on local and brand advertising on its website including graphic and text display ads. While not currently featuring local or brand advertising on its mobile apps, Yelp does “see the mobile market as an attractive monetization opportunity.”

Yelp saw an average of 61 million unique visitors in the third quarter, up 63% from the prior year. As of September 30, 2011, the site was maintaining more than 22 million reviews with approximately 529,000 free business pages claimed. As of the same date, Yelp also recognized revenue from approximately 19,000 local business accounts.

Yelp user demographics are as follows:

• 42% age 18-34
• 45% college graduates
• 36% annual income of $100,000+

Avni Shah, director of product management for Google, said this in a post, “Based on careful thought about the future direction of Place pages, and feedback we’ve heard over the past few months, review snippets from other web sources have now been removed from Place pages.”

Google has been under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after TripAdvisor, Yelp and CitySearch complained that Google used their content without consent. Google has denied it has participated in any anti-competitive practices and has not been accused of any wrong doing by the FTC. However, after removing the content from “other web sources” Google Places showed a decline in the number of reviews for some local businesses.

Originally launched in April 2010, Google Places was designed as an upgrade to the business listings displayed in the standard search engine. Google Places posted review excerpts from other sites and then created an average review score for the business listed. Now Places will only show reviews written by Google users and according to Shah the “rating and review counts reflect only those that’ve been written by fellow Google users.”

This change is likely to have a negative effect on local businesses who are working to improve their Places ranking or to earn a spot in Google Places for a new location or business. The once popular practice of researching citation sources of competitors via their Places page is now no longer available.

With the help of an experienced internet marketing firm, like Qiigo, it is possible to recover from this setback and still have a strong and dynamic Google Places page. To learn how Qiigo can assist your business with improving your Google Places positioning and all your SEO needs, contact us today at (888) 673-1212.

Initial steps toward local search optimization should include:

• Claiming your company’s listing on online sites. Essential sites to claim your listing on include: Yelp, Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local.  Here are few to help:
  • Google Places
  • Yahoo Local
  • Bing Local
  • Best of the Web Local
  • Superpages
  • Citysearch
  • InsiderPages
  • Yelp
  • Local.com
  • Yellowpages
  • Hotfrog
• Embrace social media to promote your brand, interact and engage with your customers and promote your website.  Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the obvious social media choices.
• Explore the use of location based marketing sites such as Foursquare and Gowalla.

All of these techniques work together to enhance the local search optimization of your site.  However of these three techniques, claiming your local listings on search engine sites can most quickly and significantly impact your ranking results.  When claiming and validating your local listing, you are taking control of the data that is seen online.  By taking control of your listing, you also prevent others from claiming your listing.

When claiming your listing, pay special attention to:

• Business Name. Be specific when identifying your business name.  Include the full name of your business.  However, if your company is just named “Qiigo”, consider adding a descriptor that includes keywords.  For example, enter “Qiigo Search Engine Marketing”.  Don’t be tempted to stuff your business name listing with keywords, but do add them when your business name is too vague to deliver adequate search results.
• Location/Address. The search engines place significant impact on your business address when ranking results.  Be as detailed as possible, including latitude and longitude information.  Don’t know your address’ latitude and longitude coordinates?  Find them here.
• Category. Choose the category that best describes your business.  If one category doesn’t exactly fit, test several over a period of time to determine which category garners the best results.
• Reviews & Ratings. It never hurts to ask!  So ask! Ask your current customers to go online and review your business.  Provide them with the link for easy access.  Good reviews and ratings not only help your ranking, but also drive new business.
• Citations. These are mentions on other sites about your business.  In Google Places, they can be found on the “What People Are Saying About” page.  This is another case of the more the merrier, so work on securing citations from many sources.

With these areas completed, you will be well on your way to improving your local search rankings.  The more complete you can get your profile the better.  It is also recommended that you claim your website and submit it to primary local providers listed above.  The time and effort you put into these tasks is bound to pay off in improved ranking results.

If you are interested in commenting on Yelp reviews about your business, you must log on to biz.yelp.com to claim your page.  Yelp has created a guidelines section in its Business Owners Guide to help guide you through the process of managing a negative review. The guidelines include:

• Explain how you have addressed a specific concern raised in a review
• Correct inaccurate or out of date information provided by a reviewer
• Attempt to resolve disputes via private messaging prior to posting the business’ version of the story
• Avoid personal attacks
• Do not offer incentives
• Do not thank a user for a positive review

While allowing business to comment on reviews will not solve all problems, it is a good first step in resolving the issues that have plagued Yelp for the past several months.

It’s not Al Gore’s internet anymore!  MySpace, Google, Facebook and YouTube are changing everything!  If you’re not capitalizing on their dominance, you’re slowing your company’s growth!

Today’s consumers–and today’s franchise buyers–are increasingly sophisticated and use the internet more and more every day.  For shopping, for news, for selling their “stuff,” for keeping in touch with family and friends, for learning, for recommendations, checking on their favorite sports teams, singers, actresses, and for finding the best franchise in which to invest!

If your company is not keeping up with the rapid changes on the internet–you’re falling behind. And it’s obvious!  Your site is “old” if it hasn’t had a major facelift in the last 3 years!

There are 3 main points of focus for Franchisor Websites and we’d like to spend some time discussing how the internet can impact each:

• Prospecting for, and Signing, New Franchisees
  • Search Engine Optimization
    • Focus on Niche Keywords
    • Repeat them on your Homepage
  • Pay Per Click Advertising–Google AdWords, Yahoo Search, MSN Landing Pages
  • Geo Targeting
  • Educating Prospects
  • On Line Reputation Management
  • Sales Presentation: Webinars
  • Video Demonstrations & Testimonials
  • Email Marketing
• Finding Clients & Customers for Your Franchisees
  • Building Your Brand
  • Creating a Buzz
  • Social Media or Social Networking
  • Each City (or Unit) Should Have a Page
  • A Media Room where Press Releases and Articles are posted for the Media.
  • Coupons to Drive Traffic to Stores
  • Geo-Targeting
  • Public Relations
  • On Line Reputation Management
  • Video Demonstrations & Testimonials
  • Surveys
  • Customer Newsletters (Talk to the People that will Listen)
  • How Do You Overcome Negative Postings on the Internet?
  • Social Media–Facebook
  • Email Marketing
• Communicating with Your Franchisees
  • Operations Manuals
  • Forms for Royalties
  • Dashboards
  • Chat Rooms-Bulletin Boards-Blogs
  • Educational Webinars
  • Surveys
  • Franchisee Newsletters
  • Posting Advertising Materials
  • Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP)
  • Quarterly Town Hall Meetings
  • Best Practices Examples
  • Knowledge Repository
    • Presentations
    • Proposals
    • White Papers
    • Training Modules
  • Daily/Weekly News
  • Calendar of Events
  • Team Web Sites
  • Internal Metrics
  • E-Learning: Training for Franchisees & their Staff
• Technical Decisions: Do Customers & Franchisees Use the Same Website?
  • Can Franchisees post their own sites?

Sites You Should Review:

• YouTube.com; Facebook.com; MySpace.com; LinkedIn.com; CopyScape.com; SpyFu.com; Go-To-Meeting.com; MyMeeting.com; Google Analytics; Twitter.com; Google Alerts; Yelp.com; AngiesList.com; Wikipedia.org

Point to Ponder: Is Your Website Your Number 1 Lead Generator or an 8-ton Dinosaur that’s Embarrassing You?