SEO tips

What Makes a Successful Restaurant

Jan 16, 2022 admin 0 Comment

Restaurants Need SEO & Digital Marketing - Here's Why

With covid constantly changing the restuarant industry, we find many local restaurants are needing to alter their way of marketing.

If you are interested in getting more customers for your restaurant, the ideal thing to do is invest in a good website. When I talk of a website, I don’t just mean an ordinary website, I mean an SEO optimized website that will drive visitors to your site and create new customers for your restaurant.

Why Can't Customers Find My Restaurant?

When someone is looking for lunch or dinner, customers typically resort to searching on Google or Yelp for good restaurants in the area. That means SEO for restaurants is no longer optional but nessecary to bring in new customers. Local SEO is extremely important to restaurants because its what customers see first when seaching for restaurants near me. Let’s face it — we are visual animals and customers skim quickly through web pages to find what they want. Having an appealing website with eye catching photos help gain attention and look professional. To get more customers, you will need a well designed website that is fully optimized to deliver results.

Did you know that ordering online for catering services is now the most fashionable thing in the restuarant industry? Most organizations and individuals have invaded the online market to search for catering services as well as place orders for different foods and meals — all conviently located online. Coming in to order is the way of the past with delivery services and online ordering.

Benefits Of SEO For Restaurants

Increasing Traffic to Your Website

When you invest in your website with SEO, you will increase the digital traffic to your website. More traffic to your website means more oppurtunities to gain customers. It also create more awareness of your restaurant and the services you offer. Imagine delivering pictures of your mouth watering dishes to hungry people searching for dinner. SEO can help get your website in front of those hungry people.

Building Brand Awareness

New restaurants can really benefit with SEO by creating brand awareness in your area. even if your a seasoned restuarant, search engine optimization can launch your business to greater heights if done by an expert. SEO experts in restaurants know what content to include and how to identify the right keywords for your restaurant. SEO websites for restaurants must contain the right content so Google can correctly and positively give it a high ranking.

More Money

More traffic to your restaurant website means more conversions. More conversions mean more money for your restaurant. This is why many restuarants are now seeing the nessecity for search engine optimization to help their business grow. Competition in the restaurant industry has become fierce — don’t get left behind.

Increasing Customer Engagement

Good content is engaging and informative. People are becoming hungrier for good content and Google uses it as a ranking factor. Keep customers engaged with content they want to see like healthy cuisine, how to cut weight while eating healthy and other informative health news. Relative and unique content acts like magic and soon you will find your website flowing with more and more of visitors.

While content is extremely important, including a good keyword strategy to your web pages is also crucial as Google and other search engines use it to rank your website.

SEO Tools For Restaurant's Websites

Keyword Planning Roadmap

You should incorperate target search terms that will give your restaurant website ranking with search engines. Some restaurant websites have become very prominent online with simple keywords such as ‘Chicken Wings’ or ‘Pizzas’. A keyword plan with the right target can boost your restaurant business to greater heights in the long term.

Local-based SEO

Your restaurant serves customers within a certain range of your business location. Location-based SEO helps restaurants reach their goals through local SEO for restaurants by optimizing your Google Business Listing and geo-tagging. Local SEO ensures that your restaurant features prominently to customers searching for “food” and “restaurants” within your proximity.

List Your Restaurant On Review Sites

When your restaurant receives positive reviews from existing customers — it can propel your business even further. Word of mouth and online reviews are like stricking gold. They can make or break a thriving business. Make sure your restaurant is listed on Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook. Reputation management is another key element in maintaining great ranking online. As hard as we try, every customer may not leave happy, so make sure to respond to reviews online — whether they are good or bad.

Get Relative Websites To Link To Your Restaurant’s Website

When your website appears on other websites related to your business, it builds trust. Google uses backlinks as a ranking factor and can help improve your visibility in search. A great example would be a blogging customer tries your restaurant, writes a compelling post about it — then linking to your website. Not only do you gain a backlink but also referral traffic. Another way to discover your restaurant in search which means more people will visit your website and may become customers.

Online Ordering System

One of the biggest adjustments due to the pandemic is the importance of online ordering for restaurants. One of the many industries hit hard from Covid was restaurants and hospitality. The online ordering system is another SEO tool for restaurant to perform better. Many visitors now resort to online ordering and delivery services to get their favorite dishes and drinks. Even after Covid dissipates, online ordering will more likely be nessecity and be expected by customers to use.

Mobile-Friendly Website

And finally, make your restaurant website mobile-friendly. 75% of searches now happen through a mobile device instead of a desktop or laptop. Google recognized this and now ranks web pages based the user experience through a mobile phone. Not sure if your website is Mobile-friendly? Try Google Mobile-Friendly Test.

Get An SEO Expert For Your Restaurant

An SEO Specialist can provide maintenance to your website’s visibility, increase traffic, and gain more customers with measurable data! Laced Media has the professional SEO experts to get your restaurant thriving. Schedule a free consultation call today.

SEO tips

How To Get Google Reviews

Jun 18, 2021 admin 0 Comment

Are Google Reviews Important?

Google has pretty much dominated the online search market, but how important are the reviews left on Google?

The answer is simple… extremely important! Google likes to use it’s own products to help in how well your business shows up in search. A great example would be Google Maps Listings.

Your Google Business Listing is directly attached to your Google Maps listing. This is were you appear in search locally. Don’t have a listing? We can help with Local SEO.

5 helpful Tips To Increase Google Reviews

Simply Ask – Ask and you shall receive, well sometimes. There is no shame in asking a happy customer to leave a review on Google.

Scan a QR code – Have a QR code created to go directly to your Google Review Page. Google requires a Gmail account in order to leave a review. Great thing about android users is they have to create a Gmail account in order to use apps. With android taking up 46% of the market, this is an easy way to get those users to leave a review.

Review Page – Have a page on your website with a link to your Google Reviews. This can showcase your excellent reviews as well as capture them. Don’t have a website? Laced Media can help. Get a web design quote

Email Marketing – Email blasting still exists so collecting customers information is still important. Follow-up emails, new products or newsletter. Don’t forget to ask in the email leave a review and provide a link to your Google Reviews Page makes it easy to do since a lot of people check their emails from their phones.

Friends and family – Asking your friends and family to leave a review is ok in the eyes of Google. Fake accounts can be detected and Google will know if they are fake and deem them as spam.

Build Your Google Business Listing

Google reviews tie into your Google Business Listings which show in organic search. Local business listing need optimization to be visible in search. Contact us to see how we can get your business visible.

tips

Take Professional Looking Photos On Your Phone

Mar 23, 2019 admin 0 Comment

How Do You Take Professional-looking Photos From Your Smartphone?

Anyone with a smartphone has the potential to take fantastic photos, right from their phone. Smartphone technology has quickly developed into an all-in-one compact computer equipped with cameras exceeding some professional gear like Canon and Nikon. Here are 5 easy tips for getting professional-quality photos from your phone.

1. Gridlines

Gridlines are like a blueprint for balancing out the photo. Gridlines are a series of lines that divide the shot into 9 sections. Don’t worry, your photos won’t end up with lines through them. The photo doesn’t capture the gridlines, they are simply a guide that shows up on the screen as you take your picture. When taking a photo, use the gridlines to take a straight photo, center it or balance the focus.

How do I get the gridlines on an iPhone:

To turn on the Camera gridlines, open Settings and scroll down and Tap on Photos & Camera. Then scroll down to Grid. Tap the toggle for on and off.

How do I get the gridlines on an Android:

Open the camera, Tap Settings (gear cog icon) in the upper right corner, and scroll down to Gridlines. Tap to toggle on and off. *According to Softwares using Android 9.0 Pie*

2. Clean Your Lens

A clean and clear lens can make a huge difference when taking a photo on your phone. Many people forget to clean them but your fingers tend to touch the lens a lot especially if your phone has the finger scanner on the back, like mine. If your phone is in a protective case like OtterBox, you will get a cleaner image if you take your phone out of the case for the shot as well.

3. Get Different Angles

It’s all in perspective with photography. Try taking photos low to the ground while focusing on the background. Most camera phones will focus on the items you want by tapping on it. This will create a foreground, middle, and background so your viewer doesn’t get stuck on one single point of view in the photo. Always take multiple pictures, in case the phone shakes and you get a blurry picture.

4. Using Filters & HDR

You can get a great photo without using filters or HDR mode, but that can depend on lighting. Light is how photos are created so keep in mind lighting when taking a photo. Be careful of shadows, light beams, and reflective surfaces. If the lighting is low or creating dark shadows, try moving around or creating more light. After you take the photo, you can always add a filter later. If you take a photo with a filter, the filter cannot be removed and you’ll be stuck with it.

5. Keep It Simple

rofessional phone photos tend to look best if they are clean and simple. Take time to stage your photo by removing anything from the frame and background to keep it clutter free. If the photo is set up well at the time of the photo, photoshop time can seriously decrease. You can always crop your images to get rid of unwanted, excess areas.

There you go! 5 easy steps to help improve your photos taken on your phones to get a professional feel. Use them on social media, website, or print! Customers want to see real photos of your business, products, or community presences.

Need help with Social Media? Contact Us for Social Media Pricing.

SEO tips

Tips & Secrets for SEO

Mar 7, 2019 admin 0 Comment

Online Marketing is crucial to any type of business, big or small. If you are a fortune 500 company or a local dentist trying to get new patients, online marketing can take your company to a whole new level. Though there are many Types of Online Marketing, we will be focusing on SEO Tips, Search Engine Optimization.

Since every company is different, these tips for SEO may not work exactly for your business. For a complete evaluation of your company and how to improve your SEO, we offer Free SEO Evaluations.

Learn SEO – M.A.D.A.M.S.

Since there is so much involved in SEO, we will stick it to some of the basic. These SEO secrets can provide a great foundation for any starting website.

Metadata – Page Titles & Descriptions

Metadata is the text search engines use to index your page. Like categorizing a page about Poodle into the Dogs category. This is the place you can put relevant keywords targeting your page in order to be found in search. Titles are the most important element in the metadata. Metadata Titles influence the most when Google Indexes your website. Descriptions are supporting text to the page titles. It’s best to place some keywords here but make it readable so viewer know more clearly the subject of the page.

Architecture – Website Structure

Everything from your code to your content is crawled by search engines. Google looks at your website structure to determine what things are important and less important. Navigation hierarchy is a great example. Have a page listing in the top navigation indicates to Google it’s important to your website topic. Now if you had a page buried in sub navigations where people are less likely to find it, Google may take that as a less important page. Another great example of the proper structure is organization. Countless times I find website have these issues where rogue pages are out of place making it difficult for people to find them or even transition to other relative topics on your website. Which leads us into our next section, Creating a fluid User Experience.

Design – User Experience

Google takes User Experience seriously. From navigating the website to color contrast, Google crawls every bit of code and text on your website. When a website is not Mobile Friendly, more likely people are going to leave the website. On average, 46% of the population search using their phones. When they click on a site that does not display properly, chances are they will leave the site entirely. Every website has its own goal either gain leads, sell a product or educate. When building a website keep this in mind to serve your target audience better.

Need Help Building a Website? We build websites tailored for you. Your success is our success! Contact Us Today

Authority – Link building – Directories – Business Listing

Building authority for a website is not easy. The best way is to encourage Google to trust your website. Here’s how…

Directories are great since they act as another venue to discover a business through search. Though in many cases, the information can be inconsistent. Making sure the information is correct will help Google trust the information it finds on the web. Link building is much like building friendships. Creating a referral to the website in order to increase traffic and authority. Lastly, and the most important… Google Business Listing. If the business doesn’t have one, hasn’t claimed or verified it then they are already losing customers. Zero-clicks means people find the business before even entering the website, most times through a Knowledge Graph. We can help you create, optimize, claim & verify your business listing. Contact us about SEO Services.

Make it your own – Content – Relevant – Unique

In the SEO world, content is gold. Always create content that is written for your audience and is relevant. If the business is not able to provide content in their own words, SEO content writing is available.

Copying content from the internet or Web Design Marketing Agencies who use the same content for all their clients can seriously hurt a business’s website.

Site Speed – Loading

A fast loading website is a productive website. 56% of all online traffic is done through mobile phones. Which is why Google decided in 2018 to crawl mobile-friendly websites as ranking factors before the desktop version. Here is why site speed is important. 53% of mobile users abandoned a site if the mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load. Every one-second delay in site load time can decrease conversions by 12%. Making sure the websites mobile load time is 3 seconds or less to prevent losing customer.

Hiring an SEO Company

Though you may feel confident to do SEO on your own, these are only a few tips in best practice SEO. Unfortunately, there is no “cookie cutter” way to SEO as every business is different and has different needs. When hiring an SEO Specialist or SEO Company makes sure the goals are realistic. I see countless companies promise “Rank 1 guarantee” when realistically there is no guarantee with SEO.

Basic SEO - What Every Business Needs To Know

Online Marketing is crucial to any type of business, big or small. If you are a fortune 500 company or a local dentist trying to get new patients, online marketing can take your company to a whole new level. Though there are many types of Online Marketing, we will be focusing on SEO Tips, Search Engine Optimization.

Since every company is different, these tips for SEO may not work exactly for your business. For a complete evaluation of your company and how to improve your SEO, we offer Free SEO Evaluations.

Why Can't Customers Find My Restaurant?

When someone is looking for lunch or dinner, customers typically resort to searching on Google or Yelp for good restaurants in the area. That means SEO for restaurants is no longer optional but nessecary to bring in new customers. Local SEO is extremely important to restaurants because its what customers see first when seaching for restaurants near me. Let’s face it — we are visual animals and customers skim quickly through web pages to find what they want. Having an appealing website with eye catching photos help gain attention and look professional. To get more customers, you will need a well designed website that is fully optimized to deliver results.

Did you know that ordering online for catering services is now the most fashionable thing in the restuarant industry? Most organizations and individuals have invaded the online market to search for catering services as well as place orders for different foods and meals — all conviently located online. Coming in to order is the way of the past with delivery services and online ordering.