The 2nd Fastest Way To Get Your Business To The Top Of Google Local Searches (Yelp)

So you are probably wondering what is the fastest way to get your local business to the top of Google searches? The fastest way is to claim and fully optimize your Google Places page. I wrote an article on exactly how to do that here.

The 2nd fastest to way to get your business to the top of Google local searches, in my completely aribitrary personal opinion, is the fully optimize your business listing on Yelp and start getting backlinks directly to your Yelp page.

I was amazed. I registered my business with Yelp which is a local online yellow pages type directory. It lists and reviews local businesses. There are many such directories out there and in my next post I will provide a list. But I suggest starting with Yelp. Almost immediately after registering my local directory “Best Injury Lawyer Fort Lauderdale” my Yelp listing was on the first page of Google for the term “Best Injury Lawyer Fort Lauderdale.”

Now you may think it is easy to get ranked for such a local term. However, the keyword phrase “injury lawyer fort lauderdale” is bid on at about $60. per click according to Google. This is a very competitive term even locally.

I included one review in my Yelp listing (you are welcome to add your own. If you join Yelp and want me to review your site I will do so as well.) The review along with the 5 star ranking appear quite prominently in the Google listings. Even if it was at the bottom of the first page most people would be inclined to click on the listing with the 5 stars next to it.

The Yelp listing features the contact info for my directory as well as a nice clickable link back to my main site.

But wait there is more.

I decided to actually promote my Yelp listing with some SEO. I created a basic slide show promo videos using Animoto and submitted it using Contentbuzz to a variety of video hosting and social media sites.

A few days later this is the result.

The first 3 listings for the keywords “best injury lawyer fort lauderdale” are mine. These appear even before the Google Places pages for injury attorneys in Fort Lauderdale. The first listing is the Yelp listing. The second listing is a video I uploaded to Metacafe and the third is a video I uploaded to DailyMotion. This is another lesson to not only upload your videos to YouTube but to the other video hosting directories as well. Here is a list of video hosting directories that work.

Now it gets even better. Even if I take out the local qualifier “Fort Lauderdale” I am listed on the first page of Google listings for the general term “best injury laywer.” Nice!

For some reason Google really loves Yelp. They even tried to purchase Yelp a few years ago but it did not go through. For awhile Google Places was featuring Yelp reviews with their own Google places reviews. This irked Yelp and Google has since stopped this practice. However, there really does still seem to be Google love for this directory.

I suggest you register your local website with Yelp right away here. If you do please write a review of my local business on Yelp as well. Here is my Yelp listing.

Please let me know your experiences with Yelp and other local directories. I would also appreciate it if you would share this post on Facebook and Twitter. Thank you. Matthew Meyer.

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