SEO. You have heard the term before many times and are certain that it is an important tool to get your Cafe new business. How many times have you received an email asking you to spend just a little amount in exchange for top Google rankings? Tempting, isn’t it? We say, no. It is a trap. Don’t fall for it because if they are telling you this, they have probably told this to every other potential client as well. Think about it. Can everyone be on top in the search results? No! That explains everything. This was just another money making tactic by yet another SEO company. Hopefully, in a desperate attempt to be found by your prospective customer, you haven’t fallen prey to any of this because if you have, then your money just went down the drain. Irrespective of whether you have or haven’t, you need to understand how local SEO works.
Here is all that you should be doing to help your Cafe reach more people instead of shelling out money to scammers.
1. URL
Your URL needs to be search engine friendly. By that is meant that if your Cafe is present in multiple locations, each franchise needs to have a dedicated page. The URL for each of these outlets needs to be in a certain pattern that mentions each one’s location.
For example: www.yourcafe.com/locations/India/Mumbai/Andheri/400053/809-link-road/15
This looks very long and is a little bit of work but the outcome is fantastic. It makes it very easy for search engines and for your customers to locate you. How does this happen? So, when a customer is looking for location specific ‘cafes’, Google will churn out the most relevant results, which means, your cafe will definitely show up because the URL of each outlet contains the entire address. Kind of magical, isn’t it?
2. Meta titles
Meta titles appear nowhere on your website but they have a big role to play when you are being searched on any search engine. Every result on Google has a certain title. This title needs to be short, not exceeding 50-70 characters. Most importantly, it needs to be relevant. If not, Google has a tendency to change it.
The best way to boost up your local SEO is to include your address in the Meta title. Location based Meta titles are extremely friendly with local searches and up you will pop in the results when someone is trying to find cafes around the area your cafe is located in.
3. Meta description
Meta descriptions are nothing but the text that appears below the Meta titles on a search engine. This text does not appear in your actual website but is just to lure people to click your Meta title. Your description needs to be relevant and in sync with the Meta title. It should describe the page your potential customer is about to click on.
Use relevant keywords and the description should not exceed 160 characters. You can use keywords like ‘coffee’, ‘cafe’ and your local address in the Meta description since those are the words which will be searched for the most when someone is looking for a cafe. Also, check your restaurant software from time to time or any scheduled or ongoing promotions and contests. You can include these as well in your Meta description along with the usual keywords to attract more customers.
4. On-Page SEO
There are so many tactics you can apply to pump up your local SEO by changing a few things inside your web pages as well! Every page on your website needs to have at least one heading that has your top keyword. You can include the name of your cafe, the city or state as well for an even better outcome.
What more can you do? Well, most people on this planet are on their smartphones instead of laptops or desktops these days so it is better to add a phone number too! It needs to be coded in such a manner that a potential customer can directly make a call by clicking on the number. Very convenient for your customer and therefore, for your Cafe’s bank account!
5. Local citation link building
This one is an off-site tactic for boosting your local SEO. These are actually local business listings where the name, address and phone number (NAP) of your Cafe appears. Where does all of this appear? On the websites of other businesses or general listing websites like Yellow Pages, Yahoo Local, Facebook, Manta and Yelp.
This may or may not contain a link to your website. A citation is an extremely powerful local SEO tool and is the third biggest ranking signal, making up for 15.5% of overall ranking criteria. This explains why you can’t skip this.
There are so many ways to bring your Cafe up in both, the online and the offline world. For these points, you don’t need any expert. A little help, maybe? Most of it, however, can be done by you. Local SEO is not just an addition to your other SEO. It is in fact, one of the essential tools to help your business come alive. In a world where competition is soaring every minute, you need to make your flight smooth, with the help of the right kind of wings!
