No matter which industry you’re in, these days it’s near-impossible to discount the importance of having a digital presence. And search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the key tools to help get your business noticed online.
If you’re a foodservice professional, it’s likely that creating digital content that adheres to Google’s search algorithms isn’t your primary area of expertise – especially if you’re the owner of a small- to medium-sized business. Chances are you simply won’t have time to do everything yourself.
But that’s okay! Within the booming “gig economy”, there’s always someone you can turn to for help getting your cafe or restaurant to the top of that search list.
In partnership with Fiverr – the experts in helping you outsource your business needs – we’ve compiled some tips for getting your website into top shape.
1. Invest in quality content
Despite what you might hear, Google isn’t out to make you jump through hoops when it comes to creating content for your website. In the early days of SEO, keyword-stuffing (which refers to people over-using certain words to catch all related search terms) was common, with the effect that a lot of content was unreadable. To combat that, Google has since changed their algorithms to simply favour content that people want to read.
Breaking this down, search engines now effectively favour content that is well-written and unique. Every business is unique in its own way – and hospitality professionals are the people who are best-placed to communicate what that is.
This doesn’t mean everyone is a writer. If you want to ensure that the unique aspects of your business are communicated as best as they can be, your best bet is to outsource to a writer. So long as you give them a good brief and a solid understanding of your business, they will be well-placed to do it justice and bump you up the search ladder.
2. Make sure your website is up to date
Businesses are changing and adapting all the time – particularly in the hospitality industry, which is constantly growing and expanding to meet new trends and customer demand.
If your website doesn’t adequately reflect your offering – if there are no recent menus, opening hours, or blog posts reflecting your offering, for example – chances are your reach will suffer.
When your primary focus is the daily running of business operations, you might not have time to regularly update the website. So, why not hire a website manager to help keep you up-to-date?
3. Ensure each page does what it says it does
If your menu page is lacking menus, then customers to your website aren’t going to stick around for very long. Similarly, a good ‘About Us’ page is helpful to giving potential customers an idea of who you are and what you offer before they visit – but if this information isn’t there, or they don’t know where to find it, there’s no point.
Search engines look favourably upon websites that compartmentalise their information into relevant sections – particularly when those sections do what they say they’re going to do. They also track how long customers stick around for – and they are more likely to stay on your website longer if they’ve gotten what they came for.
As a busy hospitality professional, outsourcing to an SEO writer can help save you time, improve your website, and get you outrank your competitors in search results.
4. Good writing needs good images
It’s not just the words on a page that gets noticed by search engines when they’re allocated their SEO scores. Good-quality images improve the experience of visitors to your webpage, as well as your search-engine friendliness.
Just like your written content, it’s best if these images are unique. Size also matters – images that are too small will appear pixelated and low-quality, while photographs with large file sizes will affect how quickly your website loads (not good for SEO!).
It can also be beneficial to change up the type of content you use on your site – for instance, to put up occasional videos that break up the visitor experience.
Hiring a freelance photographer (or videographer!) for a day is a relatively cheap and time-friendly way to get your website looking as good as it can.
Although this might sound like an overwhelming amount of things to think about, don’t worry. For every business need, there’s someone on Fiverr willing to help. Click here to get started on improving your digital presence with a good SEO strategy.