Five essentials of SEO for every restaurant website

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2 Five essentials of SEO for every restaurant website PURPOSE This document will provide restaurant managers and restaurateurs with a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and its importance for a restaurant website. INTRODUCTION Every business with a Web site should make Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) a part of their growth strategy. At its most basic description, SEO means finding ways to increase the chances of your website s appearance in web visitors search results - which means your website is displayed higher on Google, which in turn generates more web traffic to your website. This is why SEO has become an essential function for any website, and will help you position your website to be found at the most critical points in the search and buying process of diners. While intensive SEO can involve complex techniques from consultants or firms, we will outline five simple steps that you should consider to increase your search engine visibility: 1. CONTENT Search engines want to do their jobs as best as possible by referring users (your diners!) to the correct websites. Search engines rely on content that is considered the most relevant to the topic the user is searching for. Since you know your restaurant best you are the expert on this subject matter. Make sure that the content on your website reinforces what your restaurant is about.

3 What keywords would your diners use to find you? What would they type into a search engine to find your restaurants? By going through this simple exercise, it will give you an idea and samples of keywords that you should be using. Placing these keywords throughout your web content will help associate your website with these search terms in search engine results and therefore improve your search ranking. Furthermore, it will also increase the user experience, reducing the number of visitors that bounce off your website if they do not think it is relevant to their search. 2. META DATA Now that you have gathered and gained an insight into the keywords that diners use to find your site, have a look at the meta data on your website. The two most important meta data tags are the Title and Description tags. These tags are what a diner would see when searching for your restaurant online, and sometimes these tags determine if the user clicks on your site or a different website altogether. Make sure that the Title and Description tags stand out with your restaurant s unique messaging. Title Tags refer to the title of your webpage and should be unique. Think of the title of your page as a four to eight word advertisement, so do your best to entice your diner to want to click and read more about it. It appears at the top of the user s web browser when they visit your page. Your meta description should also be unique and give a description of the specific page. Duplicating meta descriptions from page to page will not do anything for your SEO, so make sure each description is unique. For example, your home page could resemble something like this in a search result: TOM S DINER TOP ITALIAN CUISINE IN MELBOURNE (TITLE TAG) The best value Italian Cuisine in Melbourne since Read diner ratings and recommendations. (description tag) If you have a CMS (Content Management System) such as Wordpress, Kentico, etc, you should be able to make these changes easily. Otherwise, speak to your web developer about any changes you would like to make.

4 3. AVOID FLASH If you are looking to create a new website or currently have a website, this is a tip that you will need to heed. Avoid Flash. Once considered a very popular platform to build websites on, Flash has seen its popularity dwindled due to its effects on SEO. It might look pretty but adds nothing for your SEO. If you currently have Flash for your website, you may want to look at alternative options. Reasons why you should avoid Flash: Flash pages do not get indexed properly by search engines because the search bots simply can t read flash content. Most mobile web browsers have no Flash support so they will not be able to display flash websites at all which does not bode well when diners and visitors are looking for your restaurant on their mobile device. Flash generally take longer to load due to the complex programming that is involved imagine your diners frustration of having to wait for your website to load. Changes to Flash websites is not an easy process. There are many better alternatives to consider which can still make your website pretty and cool ask your web developer about HTML5!

5 4. CREATE A SITEMAP Once you have your website up and running, make sure your web developer adds a site map - which is a page listing and linking to all the other major pages on your site. This will make it easier for spiders (an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web, typically for the purpose of Web indexing) to search your site. This is important because these spiders can t find pages that cannot be crawled, which means that your pages are less likely to show up on search results. Imagine if someone searches for your menu and can t find it, and as a result decides not to dine at your restaurant. A site map will help spiders find all the important pages on your restaurant website, and help the spider understand your website s hierarchy. This is will be especially helpful if your site has a navigation menu that may be hard to crawl.

6 5. HAVE WEB ANALYTICS IN PLACE AT THE START Web analytics software such as Google Analytics (free), SiteCatalyst, and Insight, are useful tools to have on your website from when you launch (or at the earliest instance that you can). These tools will give you visibility on web traffic that your website receives, and more importantly how visitors are finding your website. Wouldn t it be great to know where your visitors are coming from, and what they are doing on your website? Once you have signed up for an analytics account, you can give the code to your web developer to implement, and you will then be able to view reports on your web traffic. With analytics you can identify: Which search engines are generating the most traffic for you (so that you could get into paid search if you wanted), What key words users are finding you from helping you refine the content that you have on your website (back to the first part of this resource), As well as what devices they are visiting your site with, helping you with what is working for you (are more people visiting your site via their mobile phones or on their desktops. This can help shape how your content and images are presented to your visitors), How they interact on your website are they hitting your menu page, or are they dropping off before they get there? Are they trying to make a booking at your website but are unable to do so? This will assist you in deciding the types of tools that you can use to enhance your diners experience to make a booking for your restaurant. BONUS: BE PATIENT! Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are doing business online. SEO is an ongoing process to tweak the way your website is displayed and found online and to find the best fit for your audience and diners.

7 Activity Identify three to five of the most important pages of your website. Put together different phrases for each of these pages that you think your diners/visitors will use to find your website/web page. This will be what you think these pages will look like on the search results page. What will the page title be? (four to eight words) What will the description of these pages be? (160 Characters) What key words would your diners use to find these pages? Title Description Key words that your diners might find you with Next steps: Now that you ve identified your most important pages (and have decided on the description and keywords that summaries the pages) ensure that your web developer implements them into the appropriate areas of the website. Or if you do not have these pages yet, include and list them on your sitemap so that web crawlers can find them easily! Additional resources: SEO terminology:

8 This content is sponsored by AS Digital. AS Digital is a full-service Digital Agency providing world leading software & internet solutions together with marketing strategy, design and development to venues in the hospitality industry and their customers. With a global footprint in over 40 countries and over 2500 clients worldwide, AS Digital connects restaurants with their diners. ResPAK is the most comprehensive and reliable Table, Reservation and Guest Management software solution in the hospitality industry. With seamless integration into the world s leading POS and PMS systems, as well as bookarestaurant.com for real-time, instantly confirmed online bookings, ResPAK provides venues with a 360 degree view of their front-of-house operation. Since 1983, AS Digital has seated more than 250 million diners at partner restaurants, ranging from Michelin starred fine dining restaurants to casual suburban eateries. The company is based in Melbourne, Australia with products and services available via direct or reseller relationships throughout the world. W: E: info@asdigital.com P: