You are tired and hungry. You need food very badly. As you are new to this town, you do not know much about it either. Where will you search for a quality restaurant? Hey, but, you have an iPhone with you. Call your friend Siri and say, “C’mon Siri, find me a decent restaurant.” Within not time, you get the information on your phone with the directions.
Where do you think Siri got the information from? Very simple, Siri has access to Apple Maps and Yelp. What else do you need? You do not have to search for restaurants on the internet. Typing out your requirement, especially when you are tired and hungry takes some doing. Bawling out your instructions to your companion, Siri is easy.
Apple Maps – The Concept
Apple Maps is a popular navigation app used by users all over the world. The number of Apple product users is increasing. It is time the local business enterprises use Apple Maps as their navigational . This app is gradually gaining popularity and proving to be a great alternative to Google maps. Apple Maps pulls a lot of its data from Yelp. With this background, we shall see 5 different ways for to rank better on Apple Maps.
5 Ways to rank better on Apple Maps
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Ensure your listing is accurate, not duplicated, and claimed
Apple procures its information from Yelp. Hence, it becomes imperative for your Yelp listing to be accurate. Yelp is different from other local directories in the sense that it does not ask for any verification when users post new business listing.
There is no counter checking mechanism whether the listing is a duplicate one. This can harm the business reputation primarily because this splits up the reviews. It can confuse the customers thereby forcing an unwarranted internal competition.
It is Yelp’s responsibility to manage duplication, but it is always better on your part to ensure your listing is not a duplicate. In case you find one, you have to email Yelp with the details to enable them to remove it from the website.
Checking it out on a regular basis is important because nothing prevents any user from creating a duplicate listing again.
On ensuring that there is no duplication, you should proceed to claim and manage your listing. This enables you to present the right kind of information to your customers. The customers should get update information about your business when they check it out with Siri. There is another advantage of updating the listing. You get alerts whenever a customer posts a new review thereby allowing you to respond to it immediately.
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Understand how Yelp ranks businesses
Yelp has a reputation of being a community directory listing service. Hence, customer reviews matter a lot. Yelp encourages people to post their reviews on the website as frequently as possible.
Such active members of the community gain prominence because of frequent interactions with other community members. This allows them to earn the ‘Elite Status’. Hence, those who do not participate in the interactions see their reviews getting filtered off gradually.
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Increase your Yelp rankings
In the world of SEO and advertising, ‘Customer is the King.’ The best way to have the maximum reach is to rank high on Yelp. This will automatically get you noticed on Apple Maps as Siri prefers to pull its information primarily from Yelp.
In order to improve your rankings on Yelp, you should have as many reviews in your favor as possible. In addition, you have to ensure that these reviews do not filter out. Hence, ensure that the people who post their reviews on Yelp are active Yelp users.
Thus, you need to find a way out whereby you are able to separate reviews from regular Yelp users from the non-regular ones. You can have a mechanism that enables you direct such reviews to an alternative platform like Google. Such reviews can help you get a good local SEO ranking in Apple Maps as well as Google.
Obtaining positive reviews from Yelp regulars and Elite Yelpers can boost your Yelp rankings thereby propelling your Apple Maps rankings in the bargain.
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Refrain from buying reviews on Yelp
Yelp is very strict about businesses incentive’s their positive reviews. In fact, Yelp does not hesitate to shame such businesses in public in case they catch them doing so.
Elite Yelpers are influential people as they can play a great role in improving your rankings. However, never try to buy reviews from customers on Yelp. If an Elite Yelper is your existing customer and wishes to place a positive review, he is most welcome. Naturally, his reviews carry weight. People always sort out the review search by “Highest Rated.”
In addition to the ‘Highest Rated’ category, Yelp looks for details in the ‘Most Searched’ category. There may be reviewers who post reviews about specific products rather than the name of the business. This gives you an option to ask your customers to use the long tailed keywords in their reviews. Such an activity serves a dual purpose as your business name will figure in both search results.
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Consistency is the key
Maintaining consistency of information is important to rank high on any local SEO. The same rule applies here as well. Ensure that your name, address, and phone number (NAP information) is consistent. Apple Maps gives importance to local directories like Localeze, Acxiom, and Factual. Therefore, it should be your endeavor to ensure that you maintain consistency as far as your NAP information is concerned.
Bonus Tip
Another factor that is gaining importance today is the check in factor. You are able to check in directly to a venue from Apple maps. This increases the number of check-ins on Yelp thereby working towards improving your ranking on Apple maps.
Final words
There are two types of businesses in the world. One type is that which works hard whereas the other one works smart. Hard work does pay in the end but smart work pays you every time. The choice is yours, either work hard or work smart.