1. Operating Hours
   Make sure your operating hours are very clear and easy to understand and are on every page of your website.  Update them immediately when your schedules change, whether it is holiday hours, closing for maintenance or special circumstances, such as private events or severe weather.  If your kitchen closes before your bar area or main dining room, make sure to note that time as well.  Nothing is more frustrating than making plans to meet your friends at a restaurant, only to arrive and find that it’s closed or the kitchen stopped serving 15 minutes ago.
2. Contact info
   Make sure that all of your contact info visible on every page. This includes your phone number and street address along with either a live map or link to driving directions.  Using plain text for your contact info makes it easy for mobile smartphone users to access as most mobile devices will convert these into touch links that allow you just to push and call.  It is also a huge help for search engines to know your location and contact info.  Bonus: Add links to the social media sites you’re most active on (Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc.).
   
   
3. Menus
   First-time customers want to see your food menu to help them make a dining decision. DO NOT make them download a PDF file to their computer or mobile phone just to see your menu(s) and pricing. Your food menu should be seamlessly designed into your website, just like any page. All it takes is a click and your visitor is browsing your mouth-watering selection.  Also be sure to keep your food menu(s) current, even if that means daily updates. Your website’s content management system should allow for this. Displaying an outdated menu is very frustrating for first-time visitors when they arrive with a particular dish in mind, only to find that it is not available.  That can guarantee they won’t turn into repeat customers.
4. Your best reviews
   Customer feedback is one of the most subtle, but powerful, marketing tools your business has. And there’s no industry where customer testimonials have a bigger impact than the restaurant industry.
   
   Just look at how heavily customers rely on sites like Yelp, UrbanSpoon and Trip Advisor.  Your reviews matter and they should not be confined to those restaurant directories.  Take your best reviews and showcase them right on your website. This is a great way to provide an added sense of excitement as your first-time visitors are browsing your food specials and other pages of your site. A great review could be just the push they need to book that reservation or place an order.
5. Photo galleries
   Even if you spend days crafting the perfect text for your website’s homepage, people will gravitate to your photos first. They tell a story just as well as a copy of your menu can. It is crucial to have beautiful photography on your website. You can hire a professional photographer, or if you’re just starting out, a digital camera with the right lighting could do.  Just don't put bad photos on your website.  This will turn people away quicker than no photos.
   
   Try to provide a variety of photos that showcase both the exterior of the restaurant (making it easy to spot on arrival), the interior (what’s the atmosphere like?), and the food (nothing sells food like photos of food!)

The main choice many business owners face is, “Should I have a mobile website or an app?” Luckily, the answer is clear: both!

Recently,  500 small businesses were surveyed that have mobile websites and apps, and 81% said both are equally important!  Here are the highlights:

Mobile website versus mobile app:

• Value. 61% said an app provided a better return on investment.
• Customer preference. 81% said customers preferred the app to the mobile website.
• New customer generation. 75% said app was better for customer generation.
• Repeat business. 86% said app was better for creating repeat customers.
• Usage. 61% said app was used more often.

The app pretty clearly has the edge in the opinion of most small business owners. But that doesn’t mean that apps are right for everyone. The infographic found at the right contains the rest of our findings, and a wealth of information for small businesses considering “going mobile.”

1. Don't overthink keyword concentrations - To attract the attention of the big search engines you will probably set up landing pages that focus on local keywords or if your company is a local business, making sure your home page text has targeted keywords that links to pages within your website.  For example, if you sell tires near Louisville, you might combine some product-specific keywords with different neighborhoods and towns around the city.  Your SEO keyprhases might include "Goodyear Tires St. Matthews" or "Firestone Tires Jeffersontown".   Ideally your website content will have a 1-3 percent keyword density for each of these terms.  On the other hand, don't keyword stuff which means putting a ton of keywords on a page that really doesn't make sense just to get ranking.  The search engines watch for this.  To be safe, start with a few keywords in mind and write naturally.  You will get much more reliable results, especially in the long term.  If you have great content you don't have to worry about the search engine algorithm changes as you will be good to go.
2. Putting local specific terms where they don't belong - Google's latest updates were focused on locale-specific information.  The search engine can tell the difference between well written content and content written just for SEO.  Your website pages should include some information on local areas.  They should not have paragraphs that resemble Wikipedia entries.  As an example, you might connect with target readers with a sentence that reads "Our tires will keep you safe while you roll across Shelbyville Road".   You will not get the same response and the search engines will punish you for using a sentence like "Louisville has a metropolitan population of 1.2 million.  Buy our tires."  Make sure local specific content makes sense on your site.
3. Not monitoring statistics - Never assume that web users always use the same keywords or phrases when searching for a product or service.  You might need to target different keywords for different geographic areas. Your website analytics/statistics will show you that. Also look to see how long users are spending on each website or landing page.  Relevancy is important and well designed local SEO campaigns require constant quality checks.  Monitoring analytics and keyword use will help you keep your content fresh and valid.

1. Use Doorway Pages - Google defines doorway pages as those that are large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. Google always frowns upon manipulating search engines and deceiving users. In 2006, BMW suffered Google’s wrath for setting up doorway pages to attract search engines and redirect traffic to its German website, BMW.de. BMW’s page rank was reduced to zero. While BMW stated it did not intend to deceive users, the company added, “However, if Google says all doorway pages are illegal we have to take this into consideration."
2. Selling links that pass PageRank violates Google’s quality guidelines; this includes advertorial pages with embedded links that pass PageRank. Google recently penalized Interflora, even removing it from branded search results, for using advertorials to solely influence search rankings. An example of this, is that Interflora reportedly sent bloggers floral arrangements in exchange for links. This was once considered a gray area, but is clearly black hat now.
3. Scraped Content - In 2012, Google blacklisted a network of websites run by the family of U.K. Parliament member Grant Shapps after the search giant found the sites breached rules on copyright infringement and that they were based on scraped content. This latter black-hat tactic is typically when webmasters use content from other sites to try to increase credibility and the volume of pages.
4. If your site belongs to a blog network whose purpose is to create backlinks, Google will de-index them and penalize you. In 2012, this happened to Build My Rank, which ultimately closed down and relaunched as HP Backlinks. The relaunch, however, has many people wondering if (and when) Google will go after the network again.  Your best option is to not purchase backlinks.
   

Keep in mind that when you get those email and calls from companies saying they can make you number one on Google, they are probably using some of the tactics that we have discussed over the two posts, so steer clear and use a reputable web company to handle your online presence. You will be glad you did.

Ref: Website Magazine March 2013

1. Most importantly, beware those companies that call or email and say they can get you on the 1st page of Google in 30 days.  If it sounds too good to be true, in this case it is.  Run away.  (See #2 below)
2. Don't participate in Link Schemes to manipulate search ranking.  Any links intended to manipulate a website’s ranking in Google search results may be considered a link scheme.  That was the case in 2011, when the New York Times uncovered a link-building scheme by J.C. Penney. The retailer was ranked number one for bedding, dresses, area rugs, and other vague and specific keywords, with “uncanny regularity” for several months. After consulting with an industry expert, the New York Times found 2,015 pages with phrases like “casual dresses,” “evening dresses,” “little black dress” or “cocktail dress,” which all bounced directly to the main page for dresses on JCPenney.com. 

   NYT excerpt: There are links to JCPenney.com’s dresses page on sites about diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminum sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, fishing, Adobe Flash, glass shower doors, jokes and dentists — and the list goes on.

   J.C. Penney said they did not authorize and were not involved or aware of the posting of links that the New York Times sent to them. J.C. Penney immediately fired their SEO agency, but not before Google took manual action against the brand for violating its guidelines. Overnight, J.C. Penney was vanished from search results for anything other than branded keywords (a.k.a. direct searches for J.C. Penney). It took about three months for J.C. Penney to move up the rankings and regain lost rankings.

On Thursday we will look at a few more of the tactics that can get you banned from Google.

Ref. Website Magazine March 2013

So where do you find all of these videos?  The study shows that Google sites garner half of the US video market at 50.4 percent with second place going to VEVO third place to Hulu. There are over 3 billion  videos viewed on YouTube every day not to mention that YouTube is the second largest search engine.. 

So what does this mean for your company?  Use video is what it means.  There are many ways to use video for your company including:

• Company info video - What is your company about?  What do you do?  How can you help your potential customer?
• How to videos - Are there how to-s you can video for your visitors - how to change a furnace filter, how to use Quickbooks, how to use a flat iron to curl your hair, how to check windows for air leaks, how to teach your dog to sit and many, many more.
• FAQ videos - Answer questions for your customers that you are asked frequently or that are more informative in video than in writing.  How long will it take for the incision to heal, how do I set up my email account on my phone, etc.  The possibilities are endless.
• Instructional videos for employee training, sales tools, etc.
• Fun videos on different topics in your industry.

How long should the video be?  The average length of an online video is 5.8 minutes.  Keep in mind not to make it too long, as you can only hold their attention for a small length of time.  For a company video, we recommend 2 to 2-1/2 minutes.  For how-to and FAQ video, 1 to 1-1/2 minutes in length. For fun videos or instructional videos, those can be longer in length.

Try it out and see the visibility it can bring to your company.  Remember, if a picture is worth a video is worth a million.

Some important things to consider for site navigation are:

1. Let visitors navigate your site from any page - Visitors often get stuck in a site after a couple of clicks and don't know how to get back to where they came from.  A top placed navigation will allow visitors to navigate to other pages without having to go back to your home page to start over.  Make sure to include the navigation bar on all pages.
2. Display breadcrumbs - As visitors browse your site, they often need to know how they got to the page they are on or how to get back to an earlier page.  By displaying breadcrumbs, visitors know where they came from (Ex. Home > About > Staff > Programmers)
3. Consider adding images in the navigation to indicate navigational categories, such as product types, brands, etc. 

When developing your site navigation, thing like your customer.   After the site is built, navigate through it to make sure it is easy to get to the information that is most important on your site.  When you do this, you will be pleased with the results.

The next step is to consider how your business can provide a high quality of useful content going forward, and that may require trying some new channels you have previously avoided until now. If your company is already producing regular blog posts and whitepapers that will draw in links from quality sites, perhaps now is the time to consider video, webinars and/or podcasts, and distribute them through YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Slideshare, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Be social, but smart
The first, and most important part of building links in the Panda era is about producing useful content to which quality sites throughout your niche will want to link. The second and next most important part is about forging and building those relationships that will be the most valuable to your business.

Like the mention of video in the paragraph above, if you have not been taking proper advantage of social media until now, it is definitely time to start. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are three excellent places to start for finding and exchanging links with reputable websites in your specific niche or business category, but they are only the beginning. Building links in the Panda era requires a lot more work than previously, and hours of research and dozens of emails and phone calls may be required to build and maintain the necessary relationships with other website owners.

But be careful about the relationships you pursue, because the Panda algorithm will judge your business by the quality of the links you are able to build. That much has not changed; what has changed is the premium value put on today’s content, and the amount of work that will be required to create and distribute that content in order to build the quality links that will net the best search results.

Most online businesses are having to make adjustments to achieve the desired search rankings under the new algorithm, and your approach to building links has to change as well. No longer do the old rules of link building apply, where you could purchase links to your site.  Those will only hurt your ranking.  A well defined link-bulding plan is your best option now.

Here are some guidelines to build links post Panda: 

Check Your Site First
The goal of the Panda update is to improve the quality of content on the Web, thus improving the quality of Google’s search results. Sites that engage in content farming or otherwise low-quality content creation have been the primary targets, and the updated algorithm was designed to punish those sites by significantly lowering their search rankings.  Have lots of pages with duplicate content is one of the worst things you can do (Ex. having pages for each state saying you do business in that state but that has mostly the same content except for the different state names and a few other words).

The way that this effects link building going forward is that businesses must be very careful about whom they share and receive links.  Linking to and from sites that Google has deemed as having a low quality content is a virtual death sentence. Before starting any new link building initiatives, businesses and website owners must ensure that their sites do not fall into this category.

A professional design is imperative, as are acceptable page load speeds and signals of trust that provide clear indications to users and other businesses that your business website is a reputable destination. Most important, of course, and the whole reason behind Panda, is the ability to produce quality content that is useful, accurate, authoritative, current and free of grammatical and spelling errors.

In our next article, we will look at more guidlines for Panda.