Keep searching, and you will find…NOT!

June 12, 2009

After reading an interesting mention about a restaurant in Miami yesterday, I went to my computer and searched in Google for <name of establishment><Miami>.  The results were intriguing, to say the least.  Their own website was not listed in the top 100 search results; that’s the first 10 pages of SERPs if the viewer is using the standard setting.  To add insult to injury, there was one local listing placed at the top of the page and it displayed the name of another restaurant, hyperlinked to a hotel website.

Two questions immediately came to mind:  How many potential customers read about the restaurant, searched, as I did, for their website and came up empty?  This led, inevitably (I’m a marketer), to a much more pressing concern: how much money is this restaurant leaving on the table by not utilizing effective internet marketing strategies?

I’m by nature a bit obsessive and bossy when given half a chance (just ask Matt) and I couldn’t let it go without using this eatery’s misfortune as a tool from which others in the restaurant  industry could learn.  Below is a synopsis of the top lessons to be gleaned from this restaurant’s plight; I’ve omitted the establishment’s name and any other identifying attributes to protect the innocent.

When TwoTables contracts to promote a website, our first undertaking is to perform extensive marketing research, measuring more than 50 distinct internet marketing benchmarks as they relate to the client’s website. These elements fall into various categories, including SEO, local search, social media and reputation management, among others.  When I put this Miami restaurant to the test based upon our 50-point assessment, I was not surprised to find that it received poor scores in almost every category.  While it’s clear that the owners had not had any guidance in internet marketing to date, I would offer the following advice to them, which is applicable to any brick-and-mortar entity with a website:

• Lesson #1:  Own www.YourBusinessName.com. This critical step may seem elementary; however, it is one that this restaurant overlooked.  Their branded domain is registered to someone else until 2018, which could prove very costly if they are forced to try to buy it back.  Had they owned and promoted a branded domain in the past, they would have ranked #1 in the results when I searched for their website by name.
• Lesson #2:  If you don’t invest in search engine optimization, your website risks being invisible. If your website can’t be found on search engines, you are losing out on a lot of potential business.  Unfortunately, as Matt mentioned in his previous post, this seems to be a common happenstance in the restaurant trade.  You may enjoy great reviews and lots of buzz but where do you rank for <your city><restaurant> in Google?  Yahoo?  MSN?  Can you afford to remain in those low positions on the most utilized research tool in the world?
• Lesson #3:  Focus each page of the website on one keyword phrase. Each page of the website offers the chance to rank for targeted searches that are performed by potential diners every day.  Do an experiment and check out Google’s keyword tool. Type in the name of your city and restaurant in the keyword box (ie, “Miami restaurant”) and view the results.  Likely the list is much longer than you expected.  There are many, many ways in which people phrase their queries.  Each page of your website represents a golden opportunity to target each of these phrases and gain more customers as a result.
• Lesson #4:  Create a consistent local presence.  As I mentioned earlier, our test case’s local listing was inaccurate in Google’s results, displaying a defunct restaurant’s name which linked to a hotel website.  Had management claimed the local business listings on Google, Yahoo, MSNLive and many other sites, they would have control over the information displayed for their company.  In order to rank in local search results, the information out there needs to be consistent, correct and complete.
• Lesson #5:  Engage your customers. I’m obviously not the first person to search for this restaurant’s website.  Had they conversed with their patrons via a company blog, social media sites, city/regional sites, or face-to-face  in their restaurant, I wouldn’t have had any material for my post today.
• Lesson #6:  Include your website address whenever and wherever possible.  www.<your domain name>.com should be listed on every marketing piece you generate, every press release submitted and with as many articles written about your business as possible.  If you can get a link directly to your site from the piece, do it.  A website is the single most powerful marketing tool in a restaurant’s arsenal; make sure your customers can find it.

At the risk of sounding a familiar refrain, in this often brutal economic climate it is necessary to work hard to gain and retain clients.  If, like our unfortunate test case, your website can’t be found by people looking for you or the services that you offer, those guests and the revenue they generate will be enjoyed by your competition.

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