Category Archives: SEO services

Restaurant, bar & hotel marketing – the fast way to get more customers

Restaurant, bar & hotel marketing – the fast way to get more customers     

We’re in the midst of the Coronavirus lock-down at the moment but the restrictions on movement will be relaxed soon. Before we know it, pubs, bar, clubs and restaurants will be open again. The problem is, though, will the customers be as fast to start socialising and eating out again? How do we market our pubs, bars, clubs, and hotels? Is this even the right time for restaurant, bar & hotel marketing? 

Restaurant, bar & hotel marketing – the fast way to get more customers

Restaurant, bar & hotel marketing – the fast way to get more customers

The last recession was very tough for nearly all businesses but there were some very interesting lessons learned. The most important one, however, is that you can’t be complacent. The successful business that came out of the recession stronger than ever were the ones that realised they had to ‘up their game.’ They knew that it would take time for things to return to normal so they had to fight for the customers or go bust. Many of the organisations who simply ‘battened down the hatches’ and stopped investing in their business went under. Now is the time to start your restaurant, bar & hotel marketing

How to get more customers – restaurant, bar & hotel marketing the easy way

I’ve been in sales & marketing for as long as the internet has existed. Since before Google, Twitter and Facebook existed. Even before smartphones and mobile data. The amazing thing over this time has been the change in customer behaviour. We don’t ‘take a punt’ on a new restaurant anymore. Rather we ‘check it out online’ first. We check the website and read the menus. Look at the photos and explore the virtual tour. If we’re not 100% sure it’s the place for us we hot ‘back’ and go to the next listing on Google. This is why it’s so important to get it right first time

How to get new customers for bars, restaurants, and hotels

1 – First of all make sure your website is up to scratch from the visitors perspective. Your customers don’t need much – don’t make it difficult for them to find what they need! On your website, make the following information very prominent; Opening times, your location & parking (with a link to Google Maps), reservation information if available, menus (please not in PDFs!!!), and any specials or happy hour info. This is the most important thing to consider when thinking about your restaurant, bar & hotel marketing

2 – Make sure you have good quality and accurate photos (please no stock photos!)

3 – A good quality virtual tour is the number one factor in choosing a restaurant, bar or hotel. If your new potential customers are able to explore by themselves when it’s convenient for them, you’re much more likely to get them to visit in person.

4 – Next, make sure your website can be found. There is a very nice article on DIY SEO here, however, I’d recommend hiring an expert SEO to optimise your site and build a few links for you whilst they’re at it

5 – Make the most of what Google has to offer. Get your virtual tour on Google Maps, Google Search, Google Street View, and Google My Business. This is all part of getting a virtual tour done. See this article on integrating your virtual tour into Google

What next?

Here is a list of suppliers you may want to get in touch with:

Web development (click here) – make sure your website is up-to-scratch. Click here for good quality web development

Virtual tour & photography (click here) – good quality photos and a high-quality HDR Matterport virtual tour are two of the most important things you’ll need. Get a quote for a virtual tour here

Search engine optimisation (click here) (SEO) – get your site indexing on Google and make sure new customers can find you – Click here to find out more about Search Engine Optimisation

Google virtual tour integration (click here) – get your photos and virtual tour on Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Search and Google Street View with a Trusted Google Photographer

 

 

 

What is search engine optimisation (SEO)? A quick guide

SEO helps websites improve their rankings in search engines – ranking well in Search Engines can be very lucrative

Search Engine Optimisation (otherwise known as ‘SEO’) is an activity designed to help websites improve their rankings in search engines (in particular within Google with around 90% of all searches, and within Bing, the second most visited search engine.) there aren’t many websites that don’t need to rank well in the search engines, so for the vast majority of sites, the closer to position 1 on page 1 of the search results for their keywords and phrases, the better. Search engine optimisation can be difficult & very technical, but a well optimised site can be very lucrative for the owner, so there are companies around the world now who provide high quality search engine optimisation services, for example, Seven Creative, an SEO agency in Sheffield.

The Google homepage from 1998. At the time of writing, Google is the largest search engine accounting for around 75% of market share
The Google homepage from 1998. At the time of writing, Google is the largest search engine accounting for around 75% of market share

Although Google is not by any means the only search engine, it is certainly the largest and most well known around the world, so this is, certainly in the western world, the search engine usually focused on.

To understand Search Engine Optimisation, we need to first understand the process of ranking. In the most basic form, we have potential customers and we have website that would like to be matched with these customers. Google simply provides a way to do this. You type in what you are looking for, and Google provides you with a list of potential websites that match your request. The problem is, though, we want exactly what we are looking for without having to do any of the work ourselves. In other words, we want the best result returned to us first (or as close as possible) so Google has to work out dome way of making sure that happens (so you don’t start using a different search engine!)

Total number of active websites by year
Total number of active websites by year

Obviously there are far too many websites on the internet to be hand-curated by individuals, go Google uses an ‘algorithm’ to determine what are the best results to return for a particular search term and in what order to display these. And Google is very good at doing this! For example, how often do we venture further than the first page? Not very often! And this is because we’ve usually found what we’re looking for within the first 10 results.

This algorithm uses many, many different factors to evaluate a website and determine its authority on a particular subject or its relevance for a particular phrase. As website owners, many search engine ranking factors or out of our control, however, there are a lot we can control. The search engine optimisation you’ll commission from a company, such as Seven Creative (an SEO agency in Sheffield) will be able to optimise your web pages, your website and your linking structure (inbound, outbound and internal links). Most of it isn’t rocket-science, however, its often complex, time-consuming, and the results can take many months to properly materialise.

I suppose the take-away from this article is that, SEO is something that to do properly, you’ll need the help of a professional. However, for the best long-term results, focus on the on-page optimisation first and also learn good practice and habits with regards to creating new pages – after all it’s a lot easier and cheaper to do the SEO as you go as opposed to having to pay someone to go back and do it later on!

PS you have probably noticed that this article is designed to help improve the search rankings of the website www.sevencreative.co.uk – or rather the specific page sevencreative.co.uk/seo-agency-in-sheffield/ – within the search engine rankings, for the phrase ‘SEO agency in Sheffield’. Whereas this article isn’t exactly what we’d describe as a ‘perfect’ example of an search engine optimised article, it’ll certainly go a long way to improving the position in the rankings of the page it’s referring to. This, in combination with many other activities such as ‘on-page optimisation’ will increase its position in the rankings and start to increase traffic to that page. Whether or not the page itself convinces the visitors to pick up the phone is a whole different kettle of fish (or Conversion Rate optimisation aka CRO)

Ever wondered if SEO will work for your business?

Sheffield SEO

Sheffield SEO

One of our fastest expanding services we provide at Seven Creative, here in Sheffield, is SEO, and there is one thing that nearly all our new SEO enquiries have in common – they’re nervous about the idea of embarking on an SEO campaign!

So, why is this? Firstly, not many people truly understand what SEO actually is. To me, it’s simply about making sure a site is of high quality meaning that it can effectively communicate with Google about its subject and purpose (which is a win-win for everyone). It’s certainly not about creating a million inbound links from poor quality sites to manipulate the search results! Secondly, the results seem to intangible. This was something we noticed early on so we made sure that an activity report was available to everyone – regardless of their budget – on a monthly basis. Thirdly, many people have been ripped off in the past. Even now, knowing what we know about how Google evaluates websites, poor quality companies with unethical sales people are still conning trusting people out of their cash by providing poor quality SEO that somewhere between little and no effect to how a site indexes – in fact, poor quality SEO will often have a negative effect on rankings; so don’t underestimate Google’s increasing ability to spot a cheap link!

It’s perfectly understandable why Google doesn’t like the current SEO industry – Google wants to be the one evaluating websites; historically, SEO has been about manipulating results to make a site appear more relevant and important that it would normally appear – so everything the search giant is doing in terms of regularly updating its algorithm is pushing site owners towards best practice and high quality content; and away from link building.

So, to refer back to the initial question, it depends. Of course I would say you should call us but if you don’t here are my top tips to make sure you pick a good company:

  • Avoid companies that outsource – it’s probably a sign that it’s going to be poor quality SEO
  • Ask to see examples of reports – this won’t give you an idea of the results you’re likely to achieve but you’ll be able to see the way those results are presented.
  • Speak to their current customers – happy customers are happy to recommend.
  • Avoid pay-on-results agreements – this incentives the SEO company to provide poor quality SEO for an immediate boost that wears of very quickly when you stop paying.
  • Go local – we all know how nice knowing that the person you’re relying on is available when you need them!

For more information about Sheffield SEO services, call Seven Creative on 0114 383 0711 or click here for more contact options