Getting a Full Reservation List, Part 1

You had a dream for a long time and you finally made it come true. You have opened your own restaurant. It’s possible that you hadn’t thought everything through to the smallest detail about running a restaurant. You have found that there is a lot more to it than creating fabulous food and paying the rent. You and/or your manager are making things work together great and you’re even making a small profit. You have some loyal customers, but to feel really successful, you need to be bringing in more customers.

Attracting New Customers

Running ads and coupons in your local newspapers can always bring in new customers and it can be a great way to make yourself known to the local area. However, in this age of electronic connectedness, you also need to have a presence on the Internet. You need to have an attractive website that will bring new diners to your doorstep. A web design also needs to be easy for visitors to navigate and find the information they are looking for.

These days, almost anyone can create a website using one of the many programs available on the Internet. They may work okay for some, but for the most part, they are a “one size fits all” set up. Certainly, you can customize them to a certain degree, but based on the very nature of the service, there is a limit to what a program can do for you and your business.

To create a successful online presence for your restaurant, you need an SEO company such as Axiom Internet Marketing that knows how to design a website that is just as unique as your restaurant.

If you already have a website, but it isn’t bringing in the kind of business you want, then we can help you as well.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is something of the Holy Grail. The successful use of SEO is what brings business to your doorstep and to do it well takes experience. Knowing how to design a website takes a thorough understanding of how search engines work and how best to take advantage of that to get your restaurant to the first page of an organic search (appearance on the first page that you don’t pay for).

In easy terms, the point of SEO is to make your website more popular than the others in your category. Each search engine uses an algorithm that assigns “points” to different aspects of a website. The more points, the higher up a website appears in page rankings. Search engines use different algorithms, but the principle is the same.

Search engines send out web crawlers, or spiders, across the World Wide Web and they look at every website and most every word on those websites and create an index for later information retrieval – such as when someone makes an inquiry. Along with other factors, the more times a spider comes across your website, the higher it is placed in page rankings.

In simplified terms, the spider begins with the most used servers and well-liked pages and indexes the words and each link located on the site. The spider then makes use of the links and follows them to other sites, moving outward like a spider web.

Online marketing and search engine optimization is an intricate process that requires extensive knowledge and skill about how to make a website work for your restaurant. Axiom Internet Marketing has what you need to get to the first page of search results when someone is looking for your type of restaurant. We use every modern method available to bring more patrons into your business including blog creation and social media networking. Call us today for a free consultation and learn how we can help you get a full reservation list.

In Part 2 we will further examine SEO and online marketing methods.

Published by Axiom Internet Marketing