Can you outrank Yelp?

16 replies
  • SEO
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I'm gonna build a review website for a specific industry.

Could not find other review sites for this niche. The top Google positions all belong to Yelp.

My question: How hard would competing with Yelp be? Would it be possible, without being crazy difficult, to outrank Yelp, given that my website will be focused exclusively on this industry? Have you had similar experiences like this?
#outrank #yelp
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  • Profile picture of the author Carlfourtoy
    It would be extremely difficult. Many would call you crazy and it really is unthinkable. If you know your website technology is better and faster than yelp and has a lot more to offer, you may go for it. If not, you might be better creating a Yelp for an unsaturated market or be prepared for a long and perhaps painful road ahead.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mat Odysseus
      I will have some differentiators in the feature set.
      Better and faster than Yelp? Probably not.
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  • Profile picture of the author fastestseo
    It is not very hard, it is super difficult to drop the ranking of YELP because yelp is one of the biggest site available for those who want to explore new things and provide feedback and review for a particular store, restaurant & etc.

    If you compete with yelp then you have to spent lots of BUCKS in marketing and advertisement & after it there is no guarantee that you succeed in your challenge.

    If you think that you can, Then go for it!
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    • Profile picture of the author Mat Odysseus
      It is a big and rich industry, and there are no other review websites besides Yelp.

      Not planning on spending anything. Will see if I can validate the market and if the business owners and their customers would use the site. If they don't I'll probably won't bother too much.
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  • Profile picture of the author expmrb
    Originally Posted by Mat Odysseus View Post

    I'm gonna build a review website for a specific industry.

    Could not find other review sites for this niche. The top Google positions all belong to Yelp.

    My question: How hard would competing with Yelp be? Would it be possible, without being crazy difficult, to outrank Yelp, given that my website will be focused exclusively on this industry? Have you had similar experiences like this?

    I saw your post in other forum too. I think you are desperate so I will suggest that rather than focusing on getting traffic organically by outranking you should try something else. Such as small budget ad campaigns, getting listed in the directories, use fb sponsored ads for brand awareness etc. Try getting exposure.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mat Odysseus
      Just gathering lots of opinions.
      Not looking to spend a single cent before I validate this idea properly. Which means talking to the business owners and their customers in this niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jamell
    Ranking factors depend on a number of things and are subject to change when ever google updates its algorithm. The quality of your content ,site authority ,Page load speed, Fixing broken links, reviews,home page, about me page helps to give you an advantage in the rankings . I wouldn't focus on outranking yelp. I would focus on maximizing my on and off page seo which will in directly help you out rank any competitor.
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  • Profile picture of the author Maca56
    Yes, you really can on some instances for that matter, I have outranked Youtube, Amazon, Ebay, AliExpress, NewEgg and a lot of other brands really for many many keywords. Do you really think it should be that way for sure ? Just use all you know about SEO a be better then them at that keyword
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    • Profile picture of the author Mat Odysseus
      The more I work on this, the more examples I see of people outranking not just Yelp, but all the websites you mentioned. Thanks!
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  • in ubersuggest you can check all you need about competiton on your niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author JUnderwood
    With such a site is quite difficult to compete, but everything is really possible. Just be result oriented and allow time for promotion.
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    If you post AUTHORITY content that's longer and more comprehensive than the Yelp reviews, you can do it.

    Domain authority (not Moz but authority of site content as a whole) is not everything

    If you have enough content on your site ranking for longtails AND your yelp competing content is TOPNOTCH as well as EXHAUSTIVE (thorough), you should prevail

    It also helps to have a lot of authoritative (not spammed) backlinks.

    If YELP can't be outranked, a WHOLE LOT of ORM service providers would have to shut down.

    Obviously, this isn't the case.

    Warning: it's not going to happen overnight - a lot depends on your content's bounce rate and other indicators of quality
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  • Profile picture of the author Medon
    According to me, you can out-compete yelp. Even though, it will need time and a lot of sacrifices. It also requires enormous resources which I know you don't have. So it is better to only draw inspiration from YELP and do your thing.
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  • Profile picture of the author sparrow
    I'm in agreement you can outrank big websites.

    What I am finding is directory types of websites are on the rise again and if you can offer a better user experience you have a chance.

    I see this all the time when doing research little websites out ranking big websites/brands because they have a better UX or give the visitor a reason to click something on their websites.

    Play to what clickstream technology is, Google can see clearly how people are using websites with this technology.

    When I see little websites outranking the status quo and you look at how they are built for how a user interfaces with it the only conclusion is the UX.

    You can't out link a brand.

    The reason directory websites are on the rise in my opinion is you have to click something on the site to navigate somewhere. If Google can see those clicks as I suspect with clickstream I'm betting this is ranking signal for relevancy.

    We are testing this out by also creating directory types of websites.

    I think your challenge is not so much getting ranked but getting users to enlist and participate.

    So good luck with your endeavor.
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    Sure it can be done Mat, but ask yourself this buddy: "Why give my energy to outranking Yelp when it is better to give my energy to writing helpful reviews for my readers?"

    The best move I made online was giving zero attention to competition and giving all my attention to having fun helping readers and building a tribe. I need not go against anybody. My tribe follows me, promotes me and builds my business. Sweet, Google-free way to succeed. Plus when you give 100% of your energy to your tribe, and to co-creating with top folks in your niche, organically, you will notice your site outranking some pretty impressive sites. I just figure success is so much easier when you are for, not against.
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  • Profile picture of the author riyasharma431001
    It is very difficult to do that but not something that can't be done. You have to make a reputation similar to Yelp to outrank that. But it is super hard. I also work on to outrank Amazon for my e-commerce but I am not getting the good result yet from 2 years.
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