A little information for web marketing for restaurants and local businesses

[DaveO]

Every year for the last six years a web piece comes out about generally how to get high rankings for local businesses via search and primarily how to do it in google.  The latest version just came out:   http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

Its worthwhile for operators of local businesses including restaurants, caterers, markets etc.   Its sort of a "best practices guide" on what is currently working to get high visibility in google for search phrases like DC caterer, Silver Spring Seafood restaurants, Annandale dentist, etc etc etc.

In being transparent I participate in the survey.   Every year I love the comments as they come from people around the globe who are working on this stuff every day with different clients and evaluating what they see or test as to what works or doesn't work in their experiences.

The results are sort of technical.  If I had to summarize what might work best for most bang for your bucks I'd suggest getting a lot of citations that apply to the local "pac" or group of businesses that show up for a local search.

As to restaurants the world has changed pretty significantly recently in google for these types of searches.  On desktops those types of searches now generate this big broad row of up to 20 pictures (or maps) for local restaurants with stars designating the rating of reviews in google.  Its being called the carousel.

For mobile though the same version of local results pop up for those types of searches in a browser with possibly up to 7 local restaurants showing as part of a PAC of local restaurants.   So its worthwhile to get to the top of that PAC or as close to the top as possible.

One of the easiest least expensive way to do this is to get tons of what are called citations that feed into the local algo that partly powers the results of these pacs.  Do that, make sure the citation information is very clean, and get great categories for your business and that should help.

[darkstar965]

Hey Daveo--I'm not "in the biz" but wanted to give you a thumbs up here because I'm sure what you took the time to post can be helpful to restaurant owners who see it.  Nice.  And, nicely done. Great how this website facilitates so much 'give back' well beyond reporting/reviewing restaurants, coffee shops and the like.

[DaveO]

@darkstar:

I don't have much experience looking at restaurant data but I look at a lot of other businesses.  Each industry is different.   With regard to the info in that report it really relates to google search more than anything else.

The biggest change is the carousel view which is dramatically different than what google showed before.  It came out in mid June. It affects desktops and laptops but doesn't show in mobiles.  Even if I didn't pay attention to that part of marketing before, if there was a noticeable change in business, plus or minus after mid June than possibly the carousel view affected new business, new customers, new diners. (all other things being equal).  that is my gut, but I don't have data on it and there hasn't been any comprehensive reporting on it since its so new.