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Should my small business website link to Yelp?
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I'm kind of on the fence about this one. Should I include a social media icon for Yelp on my website? We have great reviews, but so do most of my competitors. I'd like to share my reviews, but I also do not want to send traffic away from my website to another website (Yelp) that lists my competitors. What do you think?
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I'll probably do the API.
I know that Yelp doesnt want business owners to solicit reviews. However, it's extremely difficult to get reviews unless you do. I send out follow up emails to clients after each job and ask for a review (positive or negative), but I've still only received about 13 reviews in a year. I'm even thinking about creating a giveaway drawing for those that review each month.
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I wouldn't worry about linking to a site that also lists your competitors. People are likely to search around looking for service reviews and multiple vendors.
One option is to use the Yelp API to pull recent reviews into your site. I believe the API lets you pull in 3 reviews to display directly on your site:
http://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation/search_api
One thing to keep in mind when linking to Yelp is to avoid soliciting positive reviews. They want reviews to be as organic as possible:
http://officialblog.yelp.com/2010/08/dont-ask-for-reviews.html
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