Restaurant Impossible?

10/10/201210/10/2012 mwon

I’m a huge fan of the Food Network. I love to cook. I love to grill. I love experimenting with new recipes. One of the more entertaining shows on the Food Network is called Restaurant Impossible. The premise of this show is about a chef named Robert Irvine, who always reminds me of NFL Referee Ed Hochuli due to them both wearing tight fitted shirts that show off their guns. (Let’s be real, if I was a walking gun show, I’d probably buy my shirts 2 sizes too small too.)

Chef Irvine goes into a failing restaurant and has 48 hours and $10,000 to turn it around. A majority of the show is spent fixing the operational and aesthetic aspects of the restaurant and the menu. However, there’s always a 5-10 minute segment focused on marketing. Chef Irvine always needs to find a way to generate buzz and bring customers to the grand re-opening of the restaurant. In marketing terms, he’s focused on “push marketing.”

I have a handful of friends in the restaurant business and they’re always looking for ways to attract more patrons. They all share a similar sentiment: If I can just get them to try my food, I think they’ll come back. Here are a number of very cool stats published in a collaborative study titled “The Mobile Path to Purchase” by Telemetrics, xAds, and Nielsen. These are some rather convincing numbers. Especially since I my own behavior seems to fit right into these statistics. I hope this helps all you restauranteurs:

89 percent of smartphone owners and 84 percent of tablet users have immediate purchase intent and take action within 24 hours of their research. (that’s not a typo. 89%!)
64 percent of smartphone and 44 percent of tablet users in Restaurants make a decision within an hour.
84 percent of mobile users had looked for a business location or maps and driving directions in the past month.
Smartphone local directory apps are most popular for Restaurant (53 percent)
75% of smartphone users seek restaurant info while on the go and over 50% of that activity is happening in a car.
65% of smartphone users look for restaurants within local walking or driving distance.

Bottom line: get your business on google maps/local apps, yelp, urbanspoon, and other social directories. We can help you get there.

Here’s an infograph for you to enjoy with more data: http://www.telmetrics.com/mobile-path-to-purchase-study-restaurant-searchers/

Cheap SEO and $5 Chinese food

09/14/201209/24/2012 mwon

I have a friend who moved to NYC in pursuit of his dream to become a writer. He was always good with words so I knew he’d be hell with a pen. His talents led him to the position of writer and, eventually, senior editor for publications such as Blaze, Vibe, and Vue. When he first moved to the city, he fit the mold of a typical twenty-something struggling to survive the concrete jungle. Due to the high cost of living in NYC, he often found himself eating what his sister referred to as “$5 chinese food” on a regular basis. Constant stomach aches would accompany these cheap, greasy meals laden with MSG. (That’s monosodium glutamate, not Madison Square Garden)

$5 Chinese food was a good fit at the time for 3 reasons. It was cheap, you received large portions, and it provided sustenance. 15 years have since passed. He’s moved on to enjoying all the culinary treats the city has to offer. $5 chinese food had its time and place in his life… those days are gone.

In the same way, cheap SEO may have had a time and place in our lives. Back in the day, SEO could be offered with the same 3 benefits of low end chinese food: cheap, with large portions, and it provided sustenance. If you do a simple Google search you’ll find countless SEO firms still selling this outdated SEO strategy. Google’s implementation of the Panda and Penguin algorithm tweaks have rendered “cheap” SEO as a thing of the past. Like my friend in NYC, Google eventually matured to the point where “cheap” was no longer wanted or needed. More notably, the stomach aches that accompanied “cheap” were made obselete. Here’s why:

Penguin can broadly be thought of as Google’s penalty for building too many irrelevant, low quality links and overstuffing your content with keywords. Large portions of low quality food was good for a while, but they have no place in our lives anymore.

Panda can be thought of as Google’s way of rewarding quality. No msg in my chow mein, please. No lard in my kung pao, thanks. Those days are gone. Google wants quality content and low bounce rates to deliver better results.

Ok, enough with the food analogy. Back to business. We’ve spoken to a number of clients who have been using low-cost SEO agencies for years. These clients were able to spend a few hundred bucks a month to achieve decent rankings in the SERPs. What they got was a ton of irrelevant or weak links and poor or thin content. After the Penguin and Panda shifts, these clients saw their rankings drop from page one to page 5 and beyond. They felt helpless and confused. You may be feeling the same way.

Nett Solutions has forged a team of experts who stay on top of their game and understand what Google wants. They don’t just want a ton of links to your site. They don’t want a lot of thin content. They want natural links and steady, organic growth. They want insightful content that is useful for your site visitors. They don’t want gimmicky weight loss programs. They want a steady, natural, constant fitness routine. Our entire SEO team is based here in the U.S. We believe the best way to align with Google’s shift towards quality is to use quality content writers, strategists, and campaign builders. The best quality SEO knowledge still comes from America. We’ve become efficient enough to be competitively priced without being “cheap” (low quality). If you’re struggling with your organic rankings, reach out to us. We’d love to help. 949-330-7060.

– Michael