SEO coaching: Tandem doubles its traffic and its restaurant room

After Simonne Raffat and his 48,000 visitors per month, Jean Pierre Mercier and his first position on “sales training”, here is another concrete case that shows that taking charge of your referencing through training and coaching is not only possible but also very effective.

Ericka Soleihac and chef Pascal Turgeon of the Tandem restaurant who, thanks to the traffic of their site combined with the quality of their cuisine, will double the surface area of the restaurant in February 2017.
Visibility on the Internet must have concrete commercial impacts… otherwise what’s the point?

The referencing of a restaurant towards the first positions of Google is a real challenge, many review sites and other aggregators (restomontreal, guiderestos, tripadvisor, tourisme-montreal, etc.) impose solid sites and very rich in content, very popular which make the fight competitive to say the least…

The strategy of the “small sites” must therefore turn towards:

• Local positioning by district (downtown, Rosemont, Villeray, etc.),
• positioning by restaurant category (pizzeria, gastronomic, Asian etc.),
• or a combination of both.

We will also see that the “social” activity plays an essential part in this traffic acquisition strategy.

In order to change the narrative style of this series of articles on entrepreneurs who take care of their own SEO, I let Ericka tell her experience and her collaboration with our SEO agency.

A respectable traffic but higher ambitions.

In the spring of 2015, the website of the Tandem restaurant depended on a webmaster; For the slightest modification, it cost us a lot and was frustrating, especially since he “wasn’t in the reactivity”. In addition, the restaurant’s portal received less than 50 visits per month.

We met with the project manager of the SME SEO agency in March 2015 to consider a better visibility of the restaurant in search engine results.

We liked the design of our portal and didn’t want to change it, but the theme was not responsive

After analyzing the site and the competition, Kristof, the project manager, proposed:

• A simple migration of our design / template to the Genesis framework,
• Keyword research.
• A redesigned architecture , based on the keywords searched for
• A content marketing plan and strategy to popularize the site on related restaurant queries and retain acquired visitors.

A “new” site and planned content to be produced ourselves.

The redesign of the site under Genesis, its configuration and its technical optimization included very fine SEO settings and seriously considered the micro-formats specific to our profession. Indeed, the agency’s recommendation to publish the recipes on our menu on our site was enthusiastically validated by Chef Pascal.
The related micro-data was implemented:

• To the recipes under all their parameters;
• The type of company;
• At the address;
• To the owner or head of a business
• During opening hours.

and of course the recipe items, whose photo of the final dish is displayed in the results pages on Google, represent the icing on the cake of our micro-data and bring a surprising traffic charged with esteem and trust.

So today if one of our dishes or recipes is searched for, our site is displayed alongside the unmissable “Ricardo”. These visits make the restaurant known and popularized because Internet users directly associate the photos of our plates with what they will have in the restaurant.

Beef tartare, trout gravlax, Mexican pâté, lobster bisque… are among the traffic generators that turn into bookings.

Recipes and photos of dishes

Of course, we don’t have a culinary guide, but our recipe pages have a big impact on the restaurant’s image, the enrichment of the content of our web portal and SEO-optimized photos also feature prominently in Google image.

Finally, their publication on Instagram and Pinterest also generates “social visits” and diversifies our traffic acquisition channels.

The number of visitors to the restaurant also owes to the quality of the photos on the site and the finesse of the cuisine

Three training courses to gain autonomy.

From our first meeting, the agency offered us training in order to reduce our bill and gain valuable autonomy in the long term. It is not enough to be well positioned, you have to stay there!

If you give a man a fish, he will eat one day. If you teach him to fish, he will always eat. Lao Tzu

The training in SEO-optimized writing reveals to us all the importance we must give to the structure of our articles, so our recipes are published on a custum post dedicated to this type of content.

We do our best to write titles and SEO tags that are strictly focused on the content of each page, we avoid repeating the targeted key phrase but write it in important places.

From the training in netlinking, we remember that it is important to get people talking about us on media whose theme is close to ours.

We are fortunate that there are many sites dedicated to restaurants and culinary arts.
In the following months, we therefore pay particular attention to guest blogging and mention Tandem restaurant in local directories and review sites dedicated to catering, which are also very numerous and influential.

Finally, the training in the content manager of our “new site” gives us autonomy in 95% of the tasks related to the daily management of the site and the online publication of our content. Exit the webmaster!

Content Publishing Strategy:

3 recipes and a blog post per month.

We impose on ourselves – Chef Pascal and myself – an intense rhythm of publication that we distribute via a simple mailing to subscribers whose list grows every day.

And I also offer other articles of general interest to “Web-magazines” and specialized blogs focused on “good food”, which are also very numerous.

Finally, since June, we have been publishing technical sheets on recommended wines accompanying our list, this source of content is an extra work but correlates with our “bring your own wine” label.

Varied multi-channel linking work

Competing with Tripadvisor, Restomontreal, Voir, or La Presse in the restaurant niche is a real challenge. Referencing the restaurant with inbound links is a constant challenge.

It is therefore a “multichannel”, multi-source, slow but steady strategy that is implemented.

Specialized directories

Subsequent listings of all the free Quebec and major directories on the web, taking care each time not to copy and paste the description of my business!

• Nice description of our pages.
• Beautiful photos
• Links to the homepage (anchor = URL or restaurant name) and links to social profile pages.

I also don’t hesitate to make recommendations to my contacts and thus get opinions on my company.

Blog and Forum Comments:

In addition to guest blogging, review sites and specialized directories, once a week I will make a comment on a cooking or restaurant site. I note these acquired links in order to follow and balance the sources of links and distribute my efforts in a balanced way.

Guest blogging and culinary chronicles

In order to get people talking about us and get articles with citations to the site, we invite influential bloggers to our table.

Other partnerships have also been signed that I cannot reveal here.

Our presence on social networks is asserting.

With time and our background work on Facebook and Google+ which are our bases, our social traffic jumps.

Google plus and business:

The optimization work of the Google mybusiness page, including the choice of categories related to the company, has a direct impact on its presence in the local results.

• Care in the description of our pages.
• Polished photos
• Links to the website and to social and specialized media profiles
• Acquisition of reviews
• Regular publication

We relay on “Google +” the content of the site that directs readers to the original pages.

Facebook:

My favorite tool! I use Facebook to get more customers, to create more traffic to our website.

• 4 contests per year in order to get more “likes” on our “wall” and make ourselves known.
• Subscriptions to cooking groups, this allows me to distribute our recipes, once a week, and our articles.
• Posts on my page, one in the morning and one in the evening. Long live online planning!
• I also talk a lot about the partners I work with so that they do the same for us.

Linkedin:

The last in the series was the implementation of the company’s ” LinkedIn ” page and Chef Pascal’s individual profile. Here too, we relay our publications and share articles.

I write small articles specific to this social network with a very professional image.

Once a week, I recommend the skills of my contacts who do not fail to return the favor, yes that’s also a trick that works!

Powerful free marketing tools that I use by posting many photos of the dishes served in the dining room.

Twitter:

Relatively inactive on twitter, we share recipes and articles on our twitter account!

Instagram:

Photos of my husband’s creations, live videos of the restaurant are posted on this social network. Thanks to the ” hastag ” I am looking for a new clientele!

Optimized newsletter info:

We are increasing our efforts on the publication of the newsletter.

The goal is always the same: to get people talking about the restaurant! Remind foodies that the restaurant exists, that it’s a “bring your own wine” thing. Encourage them to visit the portal and learn about our new menus, our new recipes.

The newsletter maintains a direct link with subscribers and builds customer loyalty. The sign-up incentive pop-up is installed and configured “cool” after only several months so as not to be too intrusive.

Traffic doubled from one year to the next, the peaks of 2015 have become the minimums of 2016.

At the back right, the craft paper hides the expansions of the restaurant this summer: Opening in February 2017.

Ericka and Pascal have seen their traffic take off and their customer base grow. If the latter becomes loyal, it is naturally because the dishes served deserve it and the service is suitable.

Success is a whole that also includes the quality of the staff, from the head waiter to the waiters. They are particularly stable in their function and customers appreciate meeting them at each of their outings.