Restaurant owners are typically not great marketers, many rely upon their physical location to drive most of their traffic. I’m continually surprised when I go to the web and search for a restaurant and cannot find them, either because they don’t have a website, or because they’ve put no resources toward search engine optimization.
The mobile web market is on the verge of exploding and web marketing will be crucial to the success of any restaurateur. As a restaurant owner, you need to make sure you’re on all the local directories, i.e. Google Maps/Places, Yelp, Yahoo local, AOL Local,SuperPages, Citysearch, Local.com, etc. Best part is…getting your listing on all of these local directories is free!
From a users perspective, here are some of my favorite “local” mobile apps. Yelp.com, Google Maps and Where.
Keywords are a pervasive part of marketing today. From a marketing perspective, everything we do today has got to take keywords into account. When I say, “everything,” I mean everything. I am however not suggesting that you write with keywords as your primary focus (the content still needs to be relevant and engaging to the reader). I am saying that you should be aware when writing such things as website/blog copy, press releases, PDF content, videos, even employment resumes. Anything that is, or can be turned digital, should take keywords into consideration.
Here are a few tips to consider:
Create a target list of keywords that are relevant for your company or business so that all involved are aware of the focus.
Put yourself in the searchers shoes…if you were searching a product or service you offer, what keyword(s) would you use?
Once you have a list of keywords generated, narrow it down by doing some research to find out what keywords are most popular, least competitive, etc.
Relevancy is key – the more relevant the content is around the keywords you’re focusing on, the more likely it will be that someone will find your information vs. your competitor.
If you’re using images, be sure to use alt tags and/or captions to identify the image.
Formatting Matters – Text attributes like bold and hyperlinks emphasize info in your document for spiders bots/web crawlers.
Website urls - create descriptive urls links with a keyword…for example, rather than xyz.com/12lkkfdhadf_dfdfk.html, you could create one like: xyz.com/this-is-a-keyword.html
Direct Marketing News had a great article on optimizing your PDFs that is worth a read. If you need further assistance or have questions, please feel free to contact me.
Listen up all you entrepreneurs and small business owners…before you start your company or launch a new product…the very FIRST thing you need to do before you do ANYTHING else is…reserve your domain name(s)! It sounds so elementary to so many, but I can’t tell you how many people I still run into that don’t do it.
Tips on reserving a domain name:
In addition to reserving your domain name (before telling anyone about your business)—reserve social media urls as well, for example Twitter.com/YourDomain, or Facebook.com/YourDomain or LinkinedIn.com/in/YourDomain, etc.
If possible, try and integrate a keyword in your domain…for example: ShubicWebDesign.com (“Web Design” being the keyword). BTW, the reason I used “Web Design” in my domain rather than say, “Web Development” (which is a more accurate term for what I do) is because “Web Design” is searched a whole lot more than “Web Development.”
Reserve your domain for a long period of time; at least five years…this is a search friendly technique. All too often spam-type sites are registered for short periods of time and the search engines know it.
Reserve possible misspellings or variations of your domain and re-direct those domains to your main site. For example, if your main domain is Web2Mail.com you would want to reserve WebTwoMail.com and WebToMail.com…if they were available.
Don’t discount urls with dashes! If you have an online business where you are going to get most of your traffic from search engines, having a domain with dashes is perfectly acceptable and can offer up a keyword rich url where the variation with no dashes is already taken. For example AZWEbDesign.com could be AZ-Web-Design.com
Lastly, there are a ton of Registrars out there, the two I’ve used the most are GoDaddy and Register.com, both are very good.
I subscribe to many newsletters and I have one in particular that always ends up in my “junk” folder. Unfortunately, email delivery is a big problem these days, so to help improve your email newsletter delivery rate, check out some of these terms to avoid and some alternatives to consider.
SPAM TO AVOID
SUGGESTIONS/ALTERNATIVES
Do not repeat words>>
Be succinct; try to avoid ’spam’ words.
Do not use all CAPS>>
Keep everything in lowercase if possible.
Do not use !, $, or 100%>>
Keep punctuation to a minimum.
Affordable>>
Reasonably priced, reasonable, within your means, inexpensive
So many businesses are diving into social media these day…which is good, but often without any thought or strategy. I’ve outlined 10 considerations to look at as you delve into the latest digital phenomenon that is now nearly mainstream.
Depending on the size of your company, it’s very helpful to create an internal list of social media guidelines…outline items that are allowed to be discussed in the public forum and what are not.
Just like any marketing tactic, you need to know where you are and where you want to go. Create a series of success metrics to track your social media efforts.
Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube are not the only games in town, there are a lot of niche social media sites…seek out and leverage. Here is my top-5 list of business networking sites.
Figure out how you’re actually going to connect, communicate and control your messages.
Social Media and the web in general are technologies, therefore constantly changing…in order to be successful you must be malleable in your tactics.
Everyone wants to generate “Word-of-Mouth” advertising/buzz…social media does just that, but you need to integrate it within everything you do.
Marketing your business using social media is merely one tactic in an overall strategy to meet your objectives.
Be prepared for negativity…it’s going to happen! Someone, somewhere will have something bad to say about you or your company…have a plan as to how you will address this situation.
Test…don’t be afraid to try new things, see what works and ditch what doesn’t.
Be careful not to be too self-promotional…the idea is to develop relationships.
If you’d like details or further explanation on any of the above, please feel free to contact me.
Pay-Per-Click advertising, like Google Adwords, is a great way to drive immediate traffic to your site—however, there are some tricks in order to be successful. When your prospective customer searches using a search query that matches your search term or keyword and decides to click on your ad, they expect to be taken to a relevant page for that topic, not just to your home page and then forced to find the information they were looking for.
In the video below, Google shares some ”best practices” for creating relevent ads. The tips provided will give you ideas on how to test your ads, which will help drive more relevant traffic to your site.
Use “Keywords” in the title of your ad – The easiest way to improve the performance of your ads is to think about how to make them more relevant to your potential customers. Chose keywords that are specific to your products or services.
Direct your users to the right page – Ensure that the destination URL you use for each ad brings users to a specific landing page which relates directly to their search.
Add a call-to-action to your ads – Try using a call-to-action in your ads, as this will give your potential customers a clear indication of what they can expect to do on your site.
Include unique selling points – Your ad text should make you stand out from your competitors and highlight your unique selling points. These can be products, prices, delivery offers or services that make your business unique, attractive or different. Your customers will choose you over the competition based solely on the benefits that your ad is selling.
Inter-capitalize the ad text – This may sound obvious, but using appropriate capitalization in ads can really have an effect on how they look.
If you would like to learn more ways to improve your Adwords performance, visit Google’s new Optimization Center, which is full of useful tips. Or, if you’d like to have a professional handle your Adwords/PPC campaign, please contact me for a free consultation.
Search Engines love blogs! Blogs are a great way of adding additional content to your site, which search engines love…ultimately it’s a great way of driving more traffic to your site and more interest in your products/services.
A company that has a blog is serious about succeeding in business. Companies that consistently updated their blog content with back links to their main site will always perform much better in the search engines. So, why don’t most companies have a blog? I’m sure there are any number of reasons; like lack of resources, time management issues, inexperience with the web, etc.
If you’re serious about driving traffic to your site and increasing business, give me a call! I’m happy to walk you through all the necessary steps in developing an effective blog that search engines will gravitate toward. I can develop a fully customized, site integrated blog for you, or give you some DIY tips on how to create your own blog. Call or e-mail me at: 480-983-3100 or Mike @ ShubicWebDesign.com
Have you had a problem launching Google Chrome? Has Google Chrome stopped working, or does it crash? It happened to me, I even uninstalled/reinstalled to no avail. I did some research and found a quick and easy work-around. Click here for instructions.
Setting your clients up for success when developing/delivering an e-commerce, database-driven and or other CMS (content management system) site is just good business. I typically offer my clients a 3-pronged approach–an in-person and/or phone training introduction of the back-end; followed by custom documentation that guides the client through the various steps in order to manage the site; then I send them a link to this site to watch free video tutorials.
PRWeb is offering a Free webinar on how to optimize your online press releases for search engines. Below is information about the webinar and a link to register. Start date is October 23rd thru the 30th, each session is one hour in duration.
Incorporating keywords and search terms on your website is a smart way to drive traffic to your site. However, using online news releases to promote your company while making sure that every release includes those same keywords and search terms is genius!
Register today for PRWeb’s monthly webinar, “How to Search Engine Optimize Your Online News Releases”and get helpful tips on how to use your news releases to drive more business to your website.
During this webinar you will learn:
Where you should place your keywords within your release to optimize visibility and reach your prospects
Helpful SEO best practices that will set your news apart from your competitors
Why using helpful links in your news releases are crucial to increasing awareness
If you’re still trying to figure out how online news releases and SEO can help your business, you can’t afford to miss this webinar!
ither because they don’t have a website, or because they’ve put no resources toward search engine optimization.
