Caterers already know that online presence is very important. The Internet has become an essential tool of promotion and restaurant website important channel that informing your potential guests about your restaurant offers. Your website must be well-designed, concise and functional to provide useful information about your restaurant.
In order to have successful website it must meet several criteria, and the most important are:
- Design
- Content
- Navigation
Restaurant’s website design shows credibility and professionalism of your restaurant. A poorly designed website can easily distroy the image of your restaurant. The lack of titles and descriptions, excessive use of animation and graphics, not matching colors and text fonts are just some examples of poor web design. Check your website and if you recognize any of these problems you should consult your web designer immediately who will help you and come up with a new design ideas.
Website Content is the main reason why people visit your website and this is directly affecting on website success. Whether the content is quality or not so interesting, causes the good or bad ranking of the website on the internet search engines and the number of visits to the site. Good content should animate the guests and encourage them to visit your restaurant or make them to visit your website again.
Webpage navigation must be simple and useful. Webpage elements such as header, footer, navigation menu, content and other , should have a logical layout. The visitor should not be confused and disoriented when seeking, for example, restaurant menu, because as soon as your visitor sees that he can not found what he/she is looking for with one click, he will leave the page. Result – you just lost your potential guest.
Those three elements are characterized as the most important but the success is also depending on how information is provided to reach potential customers.
Even if you have super website that is well designed, with attractive and interesting content, and it provides useful information and good deals : The web site will not and can not attract potential guests, if they do not know that it exists!
So if you want to have prosperous and successful website, SEO is something what you need to do!. SEO will bring targeted visitors to your website. How?
What Means SEO and Why Is So Important?
SEO or ” Search Engine Optimization ” is optimization of your website to get better ranking in results in different search engines like Google or Bing.
Most Internet users use search engines every day to explore a particular topic, find the product they want to buy or find a restaurant or bar where they want to spend a Saturday evening.
Google search engine users generally only considered credible results the one that appear on the first page of the list, second page is considered only from a small number of users, while a third page will be be rarely. 90 % of them will click only on the first 10 results that shows up at first page. (source)
Every caterer needs to know that Web sites are no longer just for the big and famous restaurants and restaurant chains. For owners of small and usually not so well-known restaurants it is essential to have high-quality and well- optimized website if they want to get wide audience.
Guide To SEO For Restaurants
You do not have to be a genius to realize that SEO – website optimization for search engines is of great importance when we talk about the prospects for the success of the restaurant website. If you do not do SEO this one of the most common causes of collapse or half of a successful individual web projects. If you have a good restaurant offer and service, and at the same time you do not have an online audience – you’d hardly succeed.
SEO brings you visitors to your website, then to your restaurant, and later reminds them to come and visit your restaurant again.
Website optimization can be done in a two ways:
- On page optimization and
- Off page optimization.
On Page Optimization
On page optimization working for your restaurant website to get better ranking in search engines. There are millions parameters that determine the validity of optimization that must be considered when determining website position in search engines results.The following are the most important ones.
Define Important Keywords
The first and most important step in SEO is to find keywords and phrases that must be included in your restaurant website content.
Choosing the right keywords, popular words and phrases that people write in a search engines is not an easy task. You need to find out words and phrases that your potential clients “googling “. On the other hand you should not choose keywords where competition is very high, since it is impossible to reach the top on Google search engine so quickly.
Keyword tool like Google AdWords can help you to choos the right keywords for your restaurant website. We would definitely recommend that you use this Google service while planning the keywords for website optimization. First of all, you must carefully analyze and put on paper all the keywords that seem to be interesting and describing your facility, and the Keyword Tool – Google AdWords will give you ideas and information about keywords and phrases with numbers of people who use it for their search. If you become a registered user of the Google keyword tool you may use it without restriction.
After you define target keywords be sure that following parameters and website elements contain these keywords or phrases:
domain name, page title and meta description.
Domain name. The keyword in the domain name is very important and have big impact on positioning your web page in the search engines results.Think how you can make a connection of keyword and the name of your restaurant, and check the availability of a certain domain for your website. Chosen keywords should be relevant to your type of restaurant and also contain the restaurant name.
Title Tag or Page title that is generally displayed in the top right corner of the browser is very important because it is something that website visitors first notice. Title tag should clearly describe the content of the site and must include chosen keywords. Title tag is one of the three most important elements. The important thing to note is that it should not have more than 70 characters.
The formula for a good page title is : The main keyword – The second key word – the name of the restaurant.
Meta description is a short description of the restaurant that will contribute to website position at the top of the list of Google Search. This description, which should not contain more than 160 characters should present your restaurant and restaurant offer in the best light. Meta description emphasizes the content of the page on the Google search list and it is extremely important item for the acquisition of new website visitors. Short and high-quality meta description content will help to Google to understand what kind of information you offer on your webpage.
Website Content should be original, search engines like Google does not like duplicate content. Google gives preference to content that is trustworthy, interesting, original and useful. That’s why it is necessary to provide high quality content with properly chosen and allocated keywords. Spelling and grammar should be impeccable too.
Alt and Title tag. Photos are also very important part of SEO for restaurant websites. Nice pictures on your restaurant website can raise sales by 25-35 % , so it is of great importance to optimize pictures too. What you need to do?
You need to add alternative text – alt tag and title description of the image – the title tag. In this way many potential customers will “stumbled ” on your page. Keywords should clearly describe the image, for example the name of the object – a seafood restaurant – grilled sea bream would be good name and alt text for image description. If this procedure is done properly, the images will assist in site positioning.
Page menu should link to all sites in a clearly accessible way to all website visitors. Links in the page menu should also contain keywords that clearly describe the content. It is important that you manage page menu that visitor can find anything in only one or two clicks.
Blog can be a great way for promotion of your restaurant offers and one of the reasons why the ranking on Google searcher has been improved. I m sure that you don’t have time to write a blog but you may use voluntary or professional blogger who write articles about creative catering and cooking. You could for example write a blog about the specialties that you offer and in this way inform the public about the list of daily specials in your restaurant. Or you may write about the special event that has been planned in your restaurant. Google loves original content and recognize it. It is mandatory to use keywords in the blog, but be careful that you use them smartly to avoid to not become recognize as spam by Google. It ‘s quite tricky, but after some time you can handle this !
Off page SEO for restaurants
Of page optimization includes all activities that we do to make better ranked restaurant website in search engines. Off page SEO means linking sites with other sites on the Internet. The aim is to achieve as many different websites links appears (interconnectedness between) that indicates the website of your restaurant.
Search engines “believe” that if other domains of similar content placed a link of your website on its website then your restaurant ‘s website is growing popularity and ranking better position on the search engines.
Instruments for off page optimization are: social networks, sites with similar content, comments on blogs and forums, bookmarking , YouTube and some other channels.
Social Media for SEO
Social networks have a major impact on the search engines and therefore it is essential to optimize the profiles for your restaurant on social networks. Be sure to fill in the “about us ” field and that you are using the keywords that describe your restaurant, restaurant offer and the service that your restaurant provides.
Address, web address, email address, phone number and other important information related to restaurant should be also part of the description. The content ( images, videos, offers, planned events ) that you share on social network should also contain keywords and hash tags. Create the content that people will gladly share with their friends. More sharing means more links and more links means better SEO.
I will emphasize Google Plus from other social networks, because who will prefer Google Plus more than Google? If you still don’t have your restaurant profile on Google Plus, then now is definitely the time to create it. Login to Google+ Business page and enter as much information as possible about the restaurant and the restaurant offer. Use the opportunity of adding links to Google Plus profile and be sure to put a link to your website, the official blog and your other social media profiles. After some time you will need less then 15 minutes work per day on social network and Google will reward you by improving your position on a Google search results.
Tip: HootSuite will help you to improve your social media presence and to save your valuable time. HootSuite gives you a direct view into all profiles on social networks and allows you to set the message that you want to send at a specific time during the day.
Visit popular restaurant forums and become active member. After some time you will gain authority. This give you possibility to get a lot of free -back links and new visitors who will click on them.
Involve local bloggers in your website building. Ask local bloggers who write about the catering, hospitality and / or cooking to write a short article about your restaurant. In exchange for this service offer to bloggers and their friends free dinner. Articles about your restaurant at other web sites will improve ranking in search engines .
If you sign in Yelp, Urbanspoon, TripAdvisor and OpenTable you will make sure that your restaurant will appear in results on Google list. These specialized web portals where guests can leave comments about how they liked staying and eating in your restaurant can bring great benefit to your business.
Create a Google Plus – Places for Business and find your restaurant in the first place on the list of Google. I will remind you that 72 % of all searches are relating to locational content and you must be 100 % sure that your website will be displayed in searches related to restaurants in your environment. Google Plus Local Places allows guests to easily find your restaurant and get all the important information in one place : address, phone number, working hours, availability of parking …
Use Google Photos Virtual Tour for your restaurant promotion. The important thing to note is that virtual walk through restaurants extending time that visitors spend on your website, and this is also essential for better rating of web page on search engines.
Google Authorship. If you write interesting blogs and have interesting content in the website of your restaurant, then be sure to connect your authorized content with Google Plus profile of your restaurant. Google authorship increase your website visibility, build credibility, reputation and image on the Internet. If you want to appear in Google’s search results with your picture and that Google recognize you as the author of a particular content then join the Google tool for authorship.
Website Analysis
There is no need to pay for SEO experts to optimize your web page because there are many excellent free tools for website analysis.
Google analytics is the most popular free tool for Web page analysis. Using this tool you can track statistics about website visits and information about how visitors interact with the site such as details about how visitors found your website. If you want to follow how many visitors come to your site or blog daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, then Google Analytics is the right solution for you. With this tool you would not need SEO expert.
Check is your website optimized properly using simple tool that you can found here. Simply insert your website url and this service will give you detailed analysis in a few seconds.
This tool also suggests you how to resolve possible problems and failures, pointing to things that could be improved, as well as the important SEO elements like frequent use of keywords, the number of links in the page, number of characters in a titles, check alt tags in images, … it’s all there! Take advantage of this free service and soon you can expect better ranking.
Is the SEO 100 % Reliable Method for Better Rating?
Definitely yes, but even the best SEO experts do not know everything about it except the Google. The fact is that programmers from Google are constantly working on search algorithms while consultants for website optimization trying to figure out new algorithm for best optimization. In practice this means that SEO methods that works would not bring good results for a long period. SEO is a process and it is changing all the time.
Also, the entire SEO process can be destroyed if the content is not good and the site is not well designed and does not attract visitors. My advice is that you need to optimize your website definitely, but beware that the site remains beautiful and natural. Remember, your potential guests are people not robots.
