Make your restaurant’s website easy to find
Did you know that 62% of diners search online before eating out? And there are 33,000 searches on Google for ‘restaurants’ every hour? 1
So if people can’t find your restaurant in the search engines you could be missing out on a lot of diners. This is why gaining a high ranking in the search results should be a key part of your restaurant online marketing strategy.
How can I improve my restaurant website’s ranking in Google?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an ongoing strategy aimed at improving your website’s ranking in Google and other search engines for keywords and phrases relevant for your restaurant.
When designing and building your website it’s essential to work a phrase which your local customers are most likely to search on e.g. ‘Thai restaurant in Norwich’ into as many pages as possible. As a rule of thumb, you should use this key phrase at least 3 times in each page’s content and in the page title, headings and meta tags (if you are not using a tool that allows you to do this yourself, like WordPress, your web developer will be able to update these for you).
The trick is being able to slot in the key phrase you want to associate your restaurant with enough times for Google to get the message without making your website difficult and annoying to read.
Start blogging as part of your restaurant online marketing strategy
Blogs are great for SEO because as you write new pages they keep your website updated with relevant keywords (remember to always work that key phrase into each post) and they can, through subscriptions and comments, foster closer relationships with your customers.
Another key factor in SEO is building up ‘backlinks’. These are links on other websites that lead back to your own. If you focus on producing great content that’s useful, answers readers’ questions and offers some interesting insight people won’t easily find elsewhere then, over time, your blog should naturally start to attract links from other websites.
If a site does link to you it’s a good idea to check they’re linked using your keyphrase rather than your restaurant name because this is much better for SEO. For example, when a site links to you the link text should be ‘italian restaurant in Reading’ rather than ‘The Camerino blog’.
You could also consider writing articles and publishing them in free article directories with backlinks in the footer. Publishing press releases is another great way of creating backlinks to your website.
You could also approach popular bloggers in your field and offer to write a guest post. This is where you write them an article for free in exchange for a backlink (and exposure) in the footer or bio section at the end. They get free content to share with readers and you get a high value, relevant backlink – everyone wins!
SEO is a long term game, it can take a few months (or even a year) before it will start improving your ranking in Google. But with so many people looking for restaurants online, making your restaurant easy to find should be a key part of your restaurant marketing strategy.
Useful resources:
http://wordpress.org/
http://www.clickpress.com/
http://www.newdesignworld.com/
http://www.dwpub.com/
http://www.articlesbase.com/
http://www.seobugz.com/
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Joe
