General Digg News - Friday, May 29, 2009 14:56 - 0 Comments

5 SEO tips for local restaurants, with a side of usability


As it’s now summer in Chicago, there’s plenty of opportunities to dine al fresco and I’ve been looking for new and fun places to eat. The one thing I don’t find is actual restaurants ranking well in search engines for common phrases: wrigleyville al fresco dining, restaurants with outdoor seating in chicago, or outdoor dining in the loop. The majority of sites which are ranking well are listing websites (Yelp, Metromix, CenterStage, etc.). Herein lies a real opportunity for a local restaurant to take advantage of this situation with some simple changes. Below are five tips any local restaurant could use to improve their rankings:

Page title, party of 65. Your table is ready.
Although brand recognition is something to strive for, especially in a competitive market like Chicago, you can’t rely on that alone. Unless you are Starbucks or Alinea, people are probably just looking for a lakeview mexican restaurant. You have to give your users, as well as search engines some context as to what your restaurant is, who you are, and who you serve. And you only have 65 characters to do it in. I know, that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s more than you think. Here’s some examples below of what I’m talking about:

Instead of “Mom’s Diner“, say “Mom’s Diner - Quality Food in Northcenter Since 1935“. That’s only 52 characters, you still have about 13 or so left.

Here’s another one. Instead of “The Road House Bar“, say “The Road House Bar - Roudiest Bar in the South Loop and West Loop“. That’s 65 characters. This can be as much a part of your branding as the design of your website itself. Remember, Google is only as smart as the information you provide it.

I’ll take a website sandwich, hold the flash.
Many local businesses are victims of this, but bars and restaurants are especially bad. I’ve heard it before and I’m sure I’ll continue to hear it.

Client: “I want a website with music and strobe lights and lots of flashing images.”
Web Developer: “So you’re telling me you want lots of Flash?”
Client: “Sure, whatever gets me that stuff.”
Web Developer: “You know this will make it difficult for search engines to find you, right?”
Client: “Yeah, but it will look cool!”
Web Developer: “Ok…[sighs]”

Although there are ways to effectively build a flash website to rank well in search engines, my advice is to use flash as sparingly as possible. One benefit of this is that your website will rank higher in search engines for having indexable content. Another benefit is that users on mobile devices will be able to access your site. Mobile devices are just now starting to support flash, and that’s only the very high end phones. Most mobile users who access an all flash site will not be able to see any of the content.

The directions say it’s right here. Let me check my hCard.
In case you’re unfamiliar with it, hCard is a format that many search engines are now using to identify physical addresses outside of other data they may find. The reason this is beneficial to your business is that search engines can instantly identify your address [street, city, state, country], phone numbers, and even your logo. Google and Yahoo maps are already incorporating this data into their results to ensure accurate maps and business data, but more applications will use it in the future as it becomes more readily accepted. The one big thing going for hCard is that it’s extremely easy to implement. You can get the full syntax breakdown here and there’s even an hCard creator here.

What does this menu say? I don’t speak PDF.
This is an issue I see time and time again on websites. Restaurant owners will take their physical menu, scan it, and put it on their website. Although this is a quick and easy way to do this, it often frustrates users when they realize Adobe Acrobat is loading. It often slows their machine down and they are not able to do other tasks while it’s loading. Another issue is often the scans are poor or low quality, which makes reading them online even more difficult. The best option would be to have an HTML version of your menu. This would also benefit mobile users who are visiting your site from a mobile device, as many mobile devices are not PDF enabled.

That place was great! I’m glad I read the hReviews.
Along the same lines as hCard’s, another microformat you can implement on your site is called hReviews. Much the same as how hCard provides context to search engines as to where your restaurant is, hReviews allow them to aggregate reviews of your restaurant, assuming you have them on your site already. Often, search engine cannot determine a positive review from a negative review or whether a restaurant is rated out of 5 stars or on a scale of 1 to 10. hReviews allow for a consistent sharing of information across data platforms and more importantly, it provides a voice for your exisitng customers to speak to new customers.

Well hope those help. After all this, I’m hungry. Let me know if there’s anything I forgot in the comments or check out some of my previous articles on local business SEO below:

Picture courtesy of your truly - olive burger.

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General Digg News - May 29, 2009 14:56 - 0 Comments

5 SEO tips for local restaurants, with a side of usability

As it’s now summer in Chicago, there’s plenty of opportunities to dine al fresco and I’ve been looking for new and fun places to eat. The one thing I don’t find is actual restaurants ranking well in search engines for common phrases: wrigleyville al fresco dining, restaurants with outdoor seating in chicago, or outdoor dining in the loop. The majority of sites which are ranking well are listing websites (Yelp, Metromix, CenterStage, etc.). Herein lies a real opportunity for a local restaurant to take advantage of this situation with some simple changes. Below are five tips any local restaurant could use to improve their rankings:

Page title, party of 65. Your table is ready.
Although brand recognition is something to strive for, especially in a competitive market like Chicago, you can’t rely on that alone. Unless you are Starbucks or Alinea, people are probably just looking for a lakeview mexican restaurant. You have to give your users, as well as search engines some context as to what your restaurant is, who you are, and who you serve. And you only have 65 characters to do it in. I know, that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s more than you think. Here’s some examples below of what I’m talking about:

Instead of “Mom’s Diner“, say “Mom’s Diner - Quality Food in Northcenter Since 1935“. That’s only 52 characters, you still have about 13 or so left.

Here’s another one. Instead of “The Road House Bar“, say “The Road House Bar - Roudiest Bar in the South Loop and West Loop“. That’s 65 characters. This can be as much a part of your branding as the design of your website itself. Remember, Google is only as smart as the information you provide it.

I’ll take a website sandwich, hold the flash.
Many local businesses are victims of this, but bars and restaurants are especially bad. I’ve heard it before and I’m sure I’ll continue to hear it.

Client: “I want a website with music and strobe lights and lots of flashing images.”
Web Developer: “So you’re telling me you want lots of Flash?”
Client: “Sure, whatever gets me that stuff.”
Web Developer: “You know this will make it difficult for search engines to find you, right?”
Client: “Yeah, but it will look cool!”
Web Developer: “Ok…[sighs]”

Although there are ways to effectively build a flash website to rank well in search engines, my advice is to use flash as sparingly as possible. One benefit of this is that your website will rank higher in search engines for having indexable content. Another benefit is that users on mobile devices will be able to access your site. Mobile devices are just now starting to support flash, and that’s only the very high end phones. Most mobile users who access an all flash site will not be able to see any of the content.

The directions say it’s right here. Let me check my hCard.
In case you’re unfamiliar with it, hCard is a format that many search engines are now using to identify physical addresses outside of other data they may find. The reason this is beneficial to your business is that search engines can instantly identify your address [street, city, state, country], phone numbers, and even your logo. Google and Yahoo maps are already incorporating this data into their results to ensure accurate maps and business data, but more applications will use it in the future as it becomes more readily accepted. The one big thing going for hCard is that it’s extremely easy to implement. You can get the full syntax breakdown here and there’s even an hCard creator here.

What does this menu say? I don’t speak PDF.
This is an issue I see time and time again on websites. Restaurant owners will take their physical menu, scan it, and put it on their website. Although this is a quick and easy way to do this, it often frustrates users when they realize Adobe Acrobat is loading. It often slows their machine down and they are not able to do other tasks while it’s loading. Another issue is often the scans are poor or low quality, which makes reading them online even more difficult. The best option would be to have an HTML version of your menu. This would also benefit mobile users who are visiting your site from a mobile device, as many mobile devices are not PDF enabled.

That place was great! I’m glad I read the hReviews.
Along the same lines as hCard’s, another microformat you can implement on your site is called hReviews. Much the same as how hCard provides context to search engines as to where your restaurant is, hReviews allow them to aggregate reviews of your restaurant, assuming you have them on your site already. Often, search engine cannot determine a positive review from a negative review or whether a restaurant is rated out of 5 stars or on a scale of 1 to 10. hReviews allow for a consistent sharing of information across data platforms and more importantly, it provides a voice for your exisitng customers to speak to new customers.

Well hope those help. After all this, I’m hungry. Let me know if there’s anything I forgot in the comments or check out some of my previous articles on local business SEO below:

Picture courtesy of your truly - olive burger.

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