local Archives - Brand Digital

In part one of this series, we discussed establishing the metrics and benchmarks for your restaurant. In part two, we’ll talk about tuning up your website so that when your site is found (which we’ll go deeper into in the next post), you have the best chance to engage the visitor and encourage them to choose your restaurant over the other options.

Build Relevant Content

Every restaurant should have a minimum number of pages on their website that answers specific questions and provides specific information to the visitor while encouraging them to select you for their experience.

Homepage – Establishes the brand look and feel, value proposition (why are you the best restaurant in your niche?), what makes you different and excellent navigation to the rest of the pages. You should also have your phone number displayed prominently on your homepage for mobile users who find your site on a smartphone
Menu’s – What are you serving, when and how much – set the right expectation for the visitor
Directions/Map/Hours of Operation/Payment Types accepted – Make sure this information aligns with all of the other places this data will live like Google Places, Yelp, CitySearch, etc. – We’ll get more into these sites in the next post in the series.
Awards, News, Testimonials – Who else says you are great? Local and national press is best
Review Page > all the great reviews from Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google, UrbanSpoon, etc.
Dining Club, Newsletter or Some other Way to Collect Email Addresses – Converting an unknown website visitor into a known person that you can reach out to via email is critical for relationship building and audience growth. Dining clubs, newsletters, emails, etc are critical for this. This page should have a form, privacy guarantees and a strong reason for people to give you their email address/trust to contact them.
Catering? Banquets? Retail?> any information on ancillary services, space for banquets, sauces or rubs that you sell, etc. These should be built on their own, individual pages
Blog – why every restaurant doesn’t have a blog going nowadays is beyond me. I think of all of the posts around new recipes, new drink cocktails, events, parties, charity projects, big personnel changes, etc.
Resources or Sites We Like or Partners – A spot to link to your favorite source of bacon or the wholesale wine broker of your dreams. Giving link love to the sites that you love should result in getting links back.

Optimize Each Page

There are two major ways to think about optimizing web pages – First, for the user experience and Second, for the search engines. Both of these should be considered and acted on for EVERY page of your site so that the page is as PRODUCTIVE as possible. Here is a quick set of considerations for each.

User Experience Page Optimization

People scan pages first and then read. The makes the information hierarchy on the page (what is big, what is small, what is where) very important. Here is some guidance to the content you put on the page.

A short strong headline is critical – answers the question of where am I?
A sub-headline that qualifies the headline
A little info about what you want them to know – preferably in bullet format or short sentences broken up by whitespace
Videos, Images and good text formats make the page interesting looking and easier to scan
A strong call to action > what do you want them to do next? Call? Sign-Up for Something? Like You on Facebook? Follow you on Twitter? Go to another page? Make this action obvious and in the main eye flow of the page – not jammed in the upper right corner of stuffed into a footer
If you are interested in more information on this very important topic – read “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug.

Search Engine Page Optimization

Some of the recommendations here are dependent on what your content management system (CMS) allows, but all are important so that you have the best chance of presenting your website properly to search engines for inclusion and ranking.

If you have the option to make the page file name (/menu.html) descriptive – please do so. A file name like /3×451.html or ?p=134 tells the search engines NOTHING about the page. This is a CMS issue so depending on which platform your website is built on, this should be updated. It is easy with wordpress, less easy with others – but important!
Keyword specific, clear, unique title tags – also called page title or browser tag. This tag shows up at the very top of the browser when you are on a page and is the title of your page result in Google, Bing, Yahoo when your page is displayed. It should be seen as a way to position and market the page to the person typing in “best restaurant in …” or “great <italian, american, vietnamese> restaurant in downtown <city>”
Keep title tag under 64 characters total (including spaces) so that it all shows up in the search engine results page (SERP)
Create a unique meta description tag – this is the body of the result in the search engine and does not contribute to rank, but contributes to someone wanting to click through to your page. Make it compelling and exploratory like “See why our meatballs are the best in the city!” or “Learn why we have a 4.5 avg rating on yelp…”
Keep meta description under 156 characters (same reason as title tag)
Make your headline styled as an <h1> tag. This give the engines a heads up that this copy is important on the page
Write good copy, but not too much – remember that copy is for visitors AND engines. Make it concise and well organized.
Use Alt-Text for images and video – this gives text to page elements that search engines CAN”T read like images
Use captions under images that describe the picture or video
There are lots of SEO guides out there – Google SEO Guide for Beginners is a good start.

So, there you have part two of our series. Part three will be around increasing your website visibility in search engines, review sites and local portals/information sites. All of which you need to be keenly tuned-in to.

Thoughts?

I’m helping my friend Tom Sciortino promote Wild Sage Bistro online. Wild Sage is one of the best restaurants in Spokane serving an American Bistro fare that is fantastic. The reviews, awards and social chatter support how great the restaurant is, but Tom wants to improve his website and amount of business he gets through his online presence.

I’m going to chronicle the research, steps and results of our program. This post outlines the strategy and game plan for a local, independent restaurant using the internet and mobile to improve online visibility.

Step One – Establish Metrics for Success and Where you are Now

One of the biggest mistakes I see small business owners make is not understanding their key metrics. At the end of the day, you have to have an idea of what works and what doesn’t when you spend resources and the only way to really understand that is to have some some basic measurement in place.

Key metrics that restaurants tend to care about from a marketing perspective include the number of people coming through the door and amount of revenue driven. These are not metrics you can get from your website, however there are several important website metrics that indicate success that drives people to your restaurant and bar. Here are the critical ones to track – more info on how to do this next:

Total visits – how many times people visit your site. The more times people visit, the more interest in your establishment, the more interest the more reservations.
Total visits by source – critical for understanding which online sources: Google, Yelp, Facebook, Restaurant Associations, Emails, Paid Search campaigns, etc. drive traffic to your site. As you invest time and/or money in these channels, keeping an eye on how this traffic changes (hopefully improves) is a good indicator of success (or not).
Total reservations or calls from the website – one tactic I really like is to have a unique phone number on the website and/or a form that generates and email that you can track back to the website.
Track reservation source – have the front desk note the source of each reservation that comes in – this can be really simple – an then summarize in a spreadsheet by day (and by shift if you want). When a reservation is taken, a quick “we look forward to seeing you – and how did you hear about us?” will help tremendously.
Total reviews of your restaurant – Positive/Negative/Neutral – word of mouth is critical to the success of independent restaurants. Creating a way to “listen” to what your customers are seeing online is important to managing and building your online reputation.
Search Engine Rank for Critical Keywords – A high rank in Google for critical keywords such as “Best Restaurant in <your city>”, “<city> restaurants”, Thai Restaurants (or whatever your flavor is) drives site visits and visibility. Understanding where you rank is an important baseline metric.
Rank in Social Review Sites – Where does your site rank in Trip Advisor for Restaurants in Spokane? Wild Sage is #4 and our goal is to get to #1. Trip Advisor, Urban Spoon, Yelp and CitySearch all have reviews and some form of rankings.

There are a ton more metrics you can track which will be covered in an advanced metrics post but these are the good ones to start with. In future posts, I’ll discuss specific tactics to improve those metrics.

Here are the resources to capture these metrics:

Google Analytics – a free web analytics program that is full featured and will give you more information than you thought possible. Create a Google Account with an email that you are comfortable using for a multitude of Google products including: Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Google Places, Adwords (pay per click search), Feedburner and more.

BrightLocal.com – you can get a free 30 day trial of local search engine checking for a small group of keywords.

Non-Personalized Search Results – When checking your own ranks in Google, Bing and Yahoo (in the town where your restaurant is) it’s important to de-personalize the search results as engines use your personal search history to fine tune results. So, using the Chrome browser, fire up an incognito session and do the search. In Firefox, start a private browsing session. In Explorer, click on Safety and then InPrivate browsing.

Twitter.com – There are lots of social media tools set-up to help with “listening” for what people are saying about your brand. Using Twitter.com to search for you restaurant name is free and as good as any. Plus you can follow people who are talking about you.

So, there is the first part of this series. Please shoot me any updates, questions or clarifications.

Next Post in the Promoting Local Restaurants Online Series – Step Two – Tune Up Your Website