Since we are on the topic of Google and that handy little Zagat reference they deliver with the search results when someone Googles your restaurant, I thought I would go a little deeper into the topic, for those of you who are really starting to get your feet wet in the world of digital marketing.
(For those of you who aren’t starting to wade into the digital marketing waters, this is a compelling post about why you should be.)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals spend their entire careers trying to master understanding of Google search results. For the rest of us, Google’s algorithms are a mysterious puzzle we’d rather avoid. Contrary to what you may believe, it isn’t just a matter of tossing up some keywords and getting some links and calling it a day. Great SEO is an art and Google changes canvas regularly, just to keep things interesting.
Throughout June and July, Google made upwards of 86 significant changes to their algorithms. Of those, what you should be most interested in is the fact that they are now working hard to give users immediate access to answers, instead of just a list of places where they can find the answer. Translation: they actually don’t seem to want people clicking on your restaurant link.
Before we go on, please, Google your restaurant. You’ll see what I mean.
After Google made their big updates, what comes up when you Google a restaurant’s name is a handy reference that delivers the key information people likely want when they are searching for a restaurant. There’s a map, Zagat scores and review, pricing, a reservation link.
I covered why this is important to understand here. Today, I want to cover one small but important portion of this handy reference — a portion you can do something about.
One of the elements that comes up with those results are keywords. There’s a big complicated mass of algorithmic explanation one could give for how Google settles on the most important keywords for a restaurant, but suffice it to say that it can be boiled down to the “most prominent keywords written about a restaurant, filtered through what is deemed “popular” by the links from other websites as well as RTs and Likes and Shares.”
You’ll likely notice, in most instances, Google isn’t showcasing they key marketing messages of restaurants.
In fact, if you decided to spend an afternoon, just cause you were curious, Googling the names of all your favorite restaurants, you might be surprised at what you’d find. One restaurant I won’t link to since it’d be mean to has the unfortunate keyword “Joliet Prison,” a few others the customer-repelling keywords of “corkage fee” and “noise level”— and then are the slew of restaurants touting the names of of chefs who left three years ago.
One restaurant I won’t link to has the unfortunate keyword “Joliet Prison”
You might wonder how this happens.
In the case of the restaurant with the unfortunate keywords “Joliet prison,” well, they’ve got lights reclaimed from Joliet prison that the media all wrote about when they opened. And people shared and RTed those stories. And so now that’s what you see. Now, again, this is a really simplistic explanation for a complex process, but you gotta start learning somewhere!
What you don’t need any expertise to understand is that this is a real problem. (And this is one of the reasons I keep writing about great content and social media optimization.)
If the restaurant wants to combat this, they can do a lot of things — some more expensive than others.
Expensive or no, the bottom line is that restaurants need to publish enough compelling (sharable) content to drive new keywords to the top of the heap. This doesn’t mean essentially random Facebook updates that may be clever enough to get comments and some “likes.” It doesn’t mean posting pictures of dishes on Twitter or Instagram, listing the main ingredients in said dish and hoping people click to see the photo.
It means strategy. And that strategy, again, can be easy or hard, expensive or cheap.
I am going to use the RIA model because it is an easy way for me to explain to you how this works, but I also added some ideas for those of you who opt for going all rogue and indie, blazing your own trail.
The way RIA approaches this: asking chefs to put in his 15 minutes a day.
- Set Your KeywordsThe RIA Way: On our members’ restaurant profile, we have set up a system whereby our members set their keywords once and then whenever they share from our site, the share is embedded with keywords. So, everything they post and (they or anyone) shares to Twitter and Facebook drives those keywords.
The Indie Option: First, you’ll need to write down your keywords and then keep them handy for when you write content. When you then write content (blogs, tweets, FBs, whatever) you’ll need to weave those keywords into your writing. So, if it is your goal, you’d need to get the words “Outdoor Patio” into as many posts and updates as you can as often as you can.
The Take Away: Either way, the idea is to plan in advance what your keywords are and then get ‘em out there as often as you can. - Share Shareable Content
The RIA Way: On RIA, we offer up conversation topics, ideas and platforms forsharing content completely. We also coach our members when they post content that could use a little help to be more shareable. They don’t have to worry about embedding keywords in the copy, it’s already done, so they can focus their energy on answering an easy question or telling the story of a dish.
The Indie Option: If you’re going rogue, you need to do the gymnastics and write the keywords and connect the links into the content itself — all the while making it compelling for someone to share. Now, you might imagine that you an only write so many “shareable” pieces of content that include the words “Outdoor Patio” in one given day, making this whole SEO thing a fantastic PITA. You’d likely be right (or if you can accomplish this feat, you’d be Steven King or James Patterson) but you should still work toward the goal of making sure your Google keywords are working for you.
The Take Away: Whichever route you choose, this is a bit of a numbers game so you win the more content you get out that people then RT or share. People RT/share great content. - Distribute Content
The RIA Way: Our goal over at RIA is “post once, reach everyone” so we’ve built our system to distribute what our members post to important audiences automagically. So, posts reach their followers, our followers, influencers media and new diners. It’s just easier on our members if they don’t have to think about it.
The Indie Option: If your going solo, you should look into tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to at least focus all the tasks in one place. You should also spend time every day working on driving people to that content by doing things like commenting on other blogs, reaching out to influencers on Twitter, sending the content to media, also trying to wrangle in new diners — they don’t just spontaneously find you, you know that, right?
The Take Away: If you only post on Twitter or FB, your content is “siloed” and, often times, not even indexable by Google. Meaning, only one small subset of the people that need to see it actually do. So, you need to do something (actively and aggressively) to get your content distributed. You need it to reach media, influencers and new diners — as well as your own list of friends and followers — in order to ensure it is reaching everyone that can impact your restaurant.
Source: RIA Blog (http://goo.gl/uzSILq)
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