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Local online marketing for small businesses can get a real boost from using Yelp. Until about 6 weeks ago, I hadn't spent much time focusing on or using Yelp. Yelp happened to be a topic of discussion at a BNI Seattle Professionals networking meeting I was attending.). Several members were touting the benefits of Yelp as well as the amount of business generated. Because of their comments, I thought it was time for me to do some homework and reexamine Yelp more thoroughly. Here's what I found.What is Yelp?Yelp is a website / directory / social media service all in one allowing users and small business owners to search for, then rate, and critique a business. Yelp has a very large and growing passionate and loyal following. Most speak loudly with praise about the benefits they've received being part of the Yelp community for both users and small business owners. Yelp currently stands as one of the top places to get information about local businesses.Certainly the passion of the user community is paramount, but don't' over look the size of the audience. According to figures reported from Yelp, they received more than 33 million monthly visitors in July 2010. Those visitors have written more than 11 millions reviews about their experiences with local small businesses. Those are mighty numbers for any size business!How Yelp Benefits Small BusinessesTo get started, you have to register your business on Yelp. Yelp, or even customers of your business can create a listing for your business and provide reviews. If a listing exists, the owner of the business (you) are the only person who can "claim the listing" and then create an official business profile. If your business doesn't have a listing, then you can create one.Yelp provides a great local online marketing opportunity for small businesses. Basic contact information, hours of operations, detail service information and much more can be provided. The more detailed, informative and entertaining the content provided, the greater the return for the business owner. Added photos and video profiles are a great plus to help tell your business story. You can create promotional coupons as well.The greatest benefit from Yelp is to get your customers to leave positive reviews. As I previously mentioned, Yelp is a social media site as well as a directory service. Yelp users rely on the comments from fellow users to evaluate small businesses. Users treat positive reviews as the primary measuring stick for each small business.One additional issue I recommend is the links to other businesses. Yelp provides up to 5 links to other business. Treat these links the same way an SEO professional would look at a backlink for a website. Enter links to businesses with high traffic and active users. The intent is to get your business seen by as many users as possible.Challenges with YelpEven with the size and passion of the user community, there are a few challenges with Yelp for the small business. Let's take SEO for Yelp at a few.Anyone can post a review or comment. Positive feedback from a customer is worth its weight in gold, again anyone can post a review. People who leave only one or two reviews tend to get filtered out by Yelp.There are some reported cases of companies paying for positive reviews.As previously mentioned Yelp doesn't directly moderate reviews they receive. They have an understandably secret algorithm used to post comments without rebuttal from the small business owner. Don't expect help from Yelp to resolve negative comments. Small business owners can comment on any negative reviews publicly online or they can contact the negative reviewer privately online. Any reviewer can remove his or her own reviews.With the growth of smartphones, mobile search and in particular local mobile search is the holy grail of growth for the two online marketing behemoths, Facebook and Google. Both have several recent business announcements about new services offering and significant leadership changes to address these markets.Google reports more than 2 billion searches monthly focused on the local markets. Independent sources estimate those numbers to more than double in the next 15 months.Facebook reports more than 200 million mobile users, with those users twice as active as non-mobile users. Both companies plan on spending significant resources to capture the lead in the mobile market. Yelp may just get caught in a crossfire leaving them with a cloudy future. Only time will tell.