I let them give me their full pitch today and it is quite costly ($550/mo with a 12 mo commitment).

I am wondering if any real estate agents have given this a try. They said that they are getting around 1,100 searches per month for real estate related terms and you would get sponsored placement for these searches. That seem very costly to me.

I was also wondering if anyone has done SEO for Yelp? It looks like the companies that are paying are getting premium placement in the organic results as well as the sponsored results. I'm wondering if it's possible to pass these guys up for free by optimizing your profile.

Any feedback or comments are welcome!

I don't use Yelp to promote services, but judging from the cost and return, it seems very expensive for ads. I'd rather use their monthly costs on more lucrative online marketing opportunities such as local seo.

never ever ever would I pay for yelp. ever. Though I do have a profile and have given a review or two.

$550 a MONTH? That's beyond stupid that anyone would pay that. Sorry!

I almost signed up with them a year or so ago. The day I was going to my best review vanished from their site. I balked bacause of this. $550 is way too much I had the talked down to $300ish at the time. I get 3-4 sales a year from Yelp just from my reviews. Paying for placement wouldn't help me at this point. A friend and fellow agent has an average of 8 closed sales per year without paying just from his reviews. I wouldn't waste the money if I were you. Yelp does generate business. From the folks I know it's from their reviews not from the sponsored results.

$550 a month with a one year commitment? That's a big chunk of money for for one aspect of marketing (unproven at that). If anyone has paid for it, please report feedback (good, bad, or indifferent).

I agree with the others that is a lot of money to spend on unproven marketing. That sort of coin can buy you alot of
pay-per-click on google with no commitment.

I agree with everyone one and definitely will not be dumping money into this. It sounds like a few of you are having luck without paying.

What have you done to optimize your profile to get the highest ranking possible (aka Yelp SEO)?

Is anyone else seeing results from other rating sites?

I agree with the others: $550/month with a 12-month commitment is quite a large chunk of cash, especially without proven results and with such a long-term commitment up-front. I would focus on getting more positive reviews up on Yelp, rather than paying out of pocket for sponsored results.

UPDATE: We ran a contest over the holidays that got a good seven of our past clients to review us on Yelp...after a couple of days, 6 of the 7 were filtered leaving only one site viewable.

Yelp implemented a review filter to prevent people from leaving a ton of reviews on their own company. So if you get a client to sign up for Yelp and leave you a review the odds of it not being filtered are slim. The only way for it to be viewable is for the client to leave multiple reviews and add lots of friends. Yelp will only display review by very active users.

Call me crazy but if I sign up for a site, leave a review and find out it was filtered out...I'm not going to leave another review. I left the review because i wanted my voice to be heard. Filtering my voice defeats the purpose of my review.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? If so, what have you done about it?

I think Yelp can definitely be a great place to for a real estate agent to promote themselves, but you shouldn't have to pay for it. Yelp get's tons of traffic, but I think it's used more often by users looking for entertainment, not so much services.

What makes more sense for real estate agents is to ask previous clients to review them on Trulia or Zillow. The reviews there will hold more weight for prospective clients in the future.

I agree with Chris, I use Yelp and don't count it for much.

OK that is JUST WRONG. I understand what they are trying to avoid (someone creating multiple dummy accounts just to leave reviews on themselves) but that would be easy enough to discover using IP address identification.

That's not the first time I've heard of Yelp doing that. So many people are trying to game these review sites (for obvious reasons) but in the end I think Yelp often takes it too far, leaving their target consumer with a bitter taste in their mouth.

I don't use Yelp. I wouldn't pay for the service as well.

*Bump*

Has anyone given Yelp Ads a shot? If so, what has your experience been?