People Are Searching Online to Find Restaurants
I don't know if you are aware that Google has recently introduced a local search feature that detects your location and shows local results instead of global ones. What this means is that, for example, if somebody wants to find a Mexican restaurant near their home, they just have to type "Mexican restaurant" in the Google bar...
...and Google will show them a list with the top 10 Mexican restaurants nearby. No need for them to even tell Google where they are located. Google knows.
Now, if you happen to own the ONLY Mexican restaurant in town, you probably don't need to worry about showing up in the top-ten list. However, chances are that your restaurant is not the only one in your category so you better start working on your web presence or people won't find you online!
In addition of showing the list with the names of the top 10 restaurants, Google also displays their websites, their phone numbers, and the number of reviews that people made. It is just one click away to read what people have to say about your restaurant:
So, OK now you get that you should show up in the Google searches when somebody looks for your restaurant’s cuisine, now what should you do to make sure that your restaurant shows up in the top-ten list?
To start, you should make sure that your restaurant has a decent website. This is a basic requirement. It is not enough to show up in Citysearch, Metaflavor or Yelp. If you’ve noticed, all the restaurants in my search have their own websites.
Also, your restaurant's website should be informative and very easy to navigate. It should contain the following components:
√ To integrate Bing Maps in your site you can read this excelent article: http://blog.harakis.net/2009/06/18/putting-a-bing-map-on-your-website/
√ To integrate Google in your site, just follow these steps:
- Go to http://maps.google.com/
- Enter the address of your restaurant in the Google Address box and click the button "Search Maps"
- Enter the address of your restaurant in the Google Address box and click the button "Search Maps"
- Zoom to the level that you think is best for people to locate your place
- Click on the link called "Link" (original, I know)
- Select the "Paste HTML to embed in website" option (see screenshot below). Copy this HTML code and paste it into your website. You are done!
You can sign for a free account in www.Wordpress.com or www.Blogger.com and start blogging about your place. You can write about your dishes, your staff, your wines, or beers, about geography (country, region) and culture of your restaurant’s food or any other information that could be interesting for your clients.
Of course this restaurant blog will have links to your restaurant's website. You can even link your restaurant blog so that it also publishes to your restaurant's website at the same time…
Also, open a free Facebook account and populate it with content. Link it to your restaurant's website. Open another one in MySpace. Do the same with Twitter and tweet away information, discounts, timely coupons, etc. Don’t forget to point people to your website as well in Twitter.
There are many other ways to promote your restaurant's website. I will cover some in future blogs.
In the meantime, get to work:
