Yes. 100% yes. Restaurants should blog.
But do restaurants actually blog? No.
It’s because blogging is hard and it takes time. Having an effective blogging strategy is key to long-term success in a crowded field. Did you know that about 2 million blog posts are created every day? That is a lot and a bit ridiculous if you think about it. So, if restaurants want to blog, what can it do for their business?
Be first on search results
We have talked about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on the blog before. If you are unfamiliar with SEO, here is an intro into restaurant website SEO.
So how does a blog matter to SEO?
Content.
You’ve probably heard it before: “Content is king.” Bill Gates made this prediction in 1996 and it’s as true as ever today.
Why?
Because a Google user is happy when s/he finds the result that serves their need(s) in the best way. Google always tries to give you the best possible experience by directing you to the most relevant content it can find.
This means your number one job is to produce good, relevant content.
SEO is no different than any other skill – the great results will always come from big effort. Just like the best marketing in the world won’t help you sell a bad product, super advanced SEO will be useless if your content sucks.
So you may be asking, “what exactly makes ‘good content for a blog?”
Glad you asked! Here are factors in Google’s eyes that make up good, relevant blog content:
- Quality – Position yourself as an authoritative figure in the space. Provide useful and meaningful content that is valuable to readers.
- Keyword research – Doing your keyword research up front is a crucial part of great content. Out of all on-page SEO factors, this is the one you should spend the most time learning. What terms are your customer using to search for your restaurant? How would YOU search for the site? What SHOULD it be?
- Use those keywords – Google has gotten smarter over the years. While you should, of course, use your keyword throughout your content, jamming your keyword into your text as much as possible will hurt your rankings, rather than improve them. As long as you make sure your keyword is present in strategically important places (like headlines, URL and meta description), there is no need to mention it tons of times in your text. Just focus on the reader and seamlessly integrate your keyword a few times.
- Keep the content ‘fresh’ – Posting frequently will drive higher search results. But that does not mean creating new content every single day or week. Take old content and update it – include new sources, updated data and links. Even push your content out on other blogs to help keep new eyes coming to your content.
- Answer directly – Finally, one of the more recent updates provides searchers with direct answers. If your content is written clearly enough for Google to recognize it as an answer to a particular question, it will show up directly beneath the search bar.
As we laid out above, creating useful blog content takes A LOT of work. But when done correctly, your organic traffic will skyrocket, creating additional revenue. Not to mention the social media implications and following you will be able to generate; which in the business world is precious gold.
We highly suggest getting into the blogging sphere, but before you do, take some time to work with members on your team. Strategize positioning and create a content calendar for at least half the year. This will help put you on a path for success. As you receive data from on-page and social media, you can adapt to see what is engaging users and what is not.
Happy blogging!
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