Let’s state the obvious fact first: businesses NEED websites. This statement is true for almost all businesses globally, especially the ones in the hospitality industry. Every business owner in this niche knows that fact well enough, but how important is having a website if it doesn’t bring revenue?
Many people still think that restaurants don’t really need a website, and their marketing strategies mostly revolve around more traditional methods. But gone are the days when people chose restaurants solely based on brochures and leaflets.
These days, the number of people that search online to find a suitable restaurant for a date or even a quick lunch has risen significantly. That number increases even more when speaking of restaurants in tourist destinations like Sydney and Melbourne. That means most of the customers you receive daily could have found your restaurant with a Google search.
While that might sound exciting for some restaurant owners, it could prove difficult to generate organic traffic for restaurant websites. After all, that is why you paid all that money for that web designer to make your site look pretty, right? But don’t worry. Here are 4 tips that will help you generate more organic traffic for your restaurant website.
1. Social Media
I mean, this one was a given, right? These days, if you want to get anything done, your path will somehow cross social media networks, and that is not surprising at all. Famous social media networks are the best places to connect with your consumer base, potential suppliers and influencers. But owning an account by itself isn’t enough. If you want to drive more traffic to your restaurant website through your social media account, you must be active.
The best course of action is hiring a content creator who will post quality content every day. Anything that engages your audience with your name is a good marketing strategy in itself. And obviously, you shouldn’t forget to remind your followers that you actually own a website and they’ve got to visit it in order to earn special discounts and win competitions to get coupons and such (that’s a whole another topic, maybe I’ll get into it later).
2. Google My Business Account
This one is a must not just for restaurants but any type of business. But when it comes to restaurants, optimising your Google My Business account becomes more critical. Just on the surface level, if users see your colourful dishes and decoration, they are enticed to visit your website (and later on, your restaurant) without being affected by any traditional marketing methods. That in itself is very crucial to understand.
But it doesn’t end with posting a bunch of pretty pictures of your foods. You have to put as much info as you can into your account. Everything starting from the essentials like your address, URL, description, user reviews, restaurant-exclusive items like the reservation tab, menu, specials of the day, and many more things should be included in your Google My Business Account.
3. Local SEO
This might be the most critical component of generating organic traffic for your website. Now you might be thinking, “I don’t know much about SEO; I’m not a tech nerd!”. But it’s important to realise that some aspects of local SEO can be executed without working with an SEO company.
To restate that sentence: some actions can be performed with the help of your web designer and developer (provided that they work well together). Since this blog isn’t about local SEO, here are some quick ways to optimise your restaurant website:
- Post quality content and be consistent in your schedule.
- Create backlinks from other eligible websites
- Work on relevant local keywords
- Use online directories
- Optimise your on-page SEO
If you are overwhelmed by all this information, you can wait until I write a more thorough blog about local SEO. If waiting isn’t an option, you can always count on Team-X digital marketing agency for optimising your restaurant website.
4. Creative and Responsive Web Design
If you look at the most famous restaurant websites, you will soon realise that one of the most captivating aspects of them is the design. Imitating from your rivals’ isn’t exactly the best business strategy, but analysing their design and seeing what worked for them could be the gateway to your success. Try to stand out as much as you can.
One more important detail in web design is responsive design. You need to know that the people who visit your restaurant website don’t share the same computer. Your web design must be responsive towards all kinds of devices, especially cell phones since most of your consumer base have probably found your website with their smartphone’s web browser. Don’t alienate your customers. Make your restaurant website accessible to all people.
Your journey towards having a well-functioning restaurant website that generates good traffic doesn’t end here. But having these 4 tips in mind when working on your website will undoubtedly be beneficial in the long run. If this wasn’t enough, well, you could always do more research.
Getting traffic for website is challenging task whether it is website of restaurant or anything else. But the point you mentioned above are very useful while attracting traffic towards website. One should follow all this tatctis to get organic traffic.