Go on a day trip and find out how to get a cafe ranked on Google
It never ceases to amaze me how many SEO related opportunities you can spot in everyday life. Perhaps I’m too focused on work, perhaps I’m far too boring. However, yesterday was a great example of where a business should have investigated how to get a cafe ranked on Google. Had they done so, they may well have received revenue from my patronage.
I know I might be guilty of making this sound very easy, and there are some prerequisites and knowledge requirements, but it applies to a lot of businesses nowadays.
How the cafe ranking thought came about
I was out for the day, visiting two locations in Northumberland. The first was the National Trust property, Cragside. It is a quite wonderful location and rightly self-labeled as the “original Smart-home” in the UK. Some of the inventions that were first seen in a residential property at Cragside saw visitors calling it the “Palace of a modern magician“. That was all down to the incredible engineering and technical marvels of William Armstrong, but you can visit the Cragside website or, better still, go to the house and witness it for yourself.
The second location is what brought about this blog. We drove from Cragside to the town of Alnwick, home of the Duke of Northumberland and perhaps best known for the fabulous Alnwick Castle (itself known the world over as one of the filming locations for the Harry Potter series of movies).
Alnwick is a tourist hotspot in the summer months, widely known for it’s market, array of shops (among them a very well known bookshop called Barter Books, which we visited whilst there), and the architecture and history of the buildings.
It was a pleasant and relatively warm day, with a storm having passed through the region overnight and in the early morning.
We walked from the main street (known as Bondgate Without, and there is a Bondgate Within too!) to the bookshop and then headed back to the centre of the town. On the way, we wanted to stop for a drink/coffee and a bite to eat.
Google Search for cafes
Many people might simply stop at the first place they encounter. That’s not us. We always pull our mobiles out and Google whatever we’re looking for. We’ve developed an addiction to checking reviews on places we go to, largely borne out of frustrating experiences in the past.
The classic result with TripAdvisor
When we Googled “cafes in Alnwick”, we were met with the usual Google maps listings and, yes you’ve guessed it, TripAdvisor. Before I go on, I have nothing against TripAdvisor. I rate it highly and it has allowed us to avoid many more poor experiences than we’d have had without it. That said, you can never gauge what one persons expectations are against another persons. More to the point, one person might have a very different opinion of what “Excellent” means compared to someone else.
A few years ago, we suffered at the hands of TripAdvisor when we booked an annual holiday to Mallorca. We went to a hotel that was highly reviewed on TripAdvisor and came out with high ratings. Unfortunately for us, most of those had been left by families with young children and that isn’t us these days. It wasn’t as much the fault of TripAdvisor as our own fault, but I’ve always been wary of reviews since.
Where were the cafe websites?
What struck me was the lack of independent websites, owned by cafes or small restaurants, at least in respect of the opportunity to get themselves above TripAdvisor (trust me, it is perfectly possible). A few appeared, but they were way down the page below the map listings and TripAdvisor (I am not discounting the value of Google Local and the map view – I do appreciate this gives cafes a lot of visibility). I see this a lot, but I was intrigued by the fact that I noticed it wouldn’t take much effort at all to attain a high position for “best cafe in Alnwick” or similar search terms.
Cafes on Google Local/Maps
Cafes in Google Snippets
Google loves snippets, the small sections that answer questions or provide other information at the very top of search results. They’re fantastic opportunities for niche or subject specific questions to be answered and for a summary search result to be shown. They’re not too tricky to obtain, if you follow Google’s guidelines on them.
Indeed, ironically, there were a number of Google snippets for other searches about Alnwick, but nothing that was directly cafe related:
Google is also, as another recent blog highlighted, desperately trying to get businesses to understand how much it values original and good quality content. Any number of cafes (there are a lot) in Alnwick could take advantage of this and undoubtedly capitalise on a variety of search opportunities.
Localised Google Search
Something to consider throughout this is that you are likely to be given localised results on Google Search. That is, if you’ve shared your location, the search results will be based on that. It is something I often have to explain to clients if they see different search rankings compared to the reality of what their customers see, particularly if they’re a national or international e-commerce site.
Think about how visitors search for cafes
Think about the way consumers or visitors to a town, village or city behave. They do actively Google information during their visit. What do they search for? Look it upon Google by experimenting with search phrases and seeing the search suggestions that Google shows to you in the dropdown box that appears as you’re typing:
Google even gives you search suggestions
Using cafe related long-tail searches
Consider this, at no point did I see any cafes (or similar places) making use of the search phrases people are likely to type (and I’ve backed this up by looking at the search volumes), such as:
- Best cafe in Alnwick
- Coffee shops in Alnwick
- Good places for tea in Alnwick
- Nice cafes in Alnwick
What struck me about this is that not many of the above are what I’d consider to be particularly “long-tail searches“.
For clarity, a long-tail search is when the search phrase is more specific. It could certainly be argued for “Google places for tea in Alnwick” is a long-tail search.
A short-tail search would be “Alnwick cafes“. It is broad and it doesn’t contain many words. A long-tail search is what it sounds like – it is longer and more specific in nature, such as “Where are the best cafes in Alnwick?“. You could make it even more niche with “Where are the most dog friendly cafes in the Alnwick area?“
Long-tail searches are huge opportunities and a great way of answering the question we began with – how to get a cafe ranked on Google.
Using these words in your website page titles and descriptions is a wonderful start to obtaining visibility for long-tail searches. They’re niche and they’re lower volume, but they do deliver you visitors and with that comes time on your website. Subsequently, Google begins to take more notice of you in general, and the benefits can spread with increased authority for your website overall.
Are low search volumes worth the effort?
Authority, as in a mark Google gives to your domain name and individual pages (known as domain authority and page authority), is a gauge of the trust and authority Google places on your website. Think of it as a score of importance.
Increased authority will, ultimately, bring better search results (there’s a lot more that could examined in that statement, as it isn’t always guaranteed that everything on your site will achieve high visibility as a result of high authority, but the principle benefits of high website authority remain accurate in terms of visibility).
Amend existing web pages first
Tweaking the titles and descriptions of some of your existing web pages might be sufficient to attain increased visibility and rankings for the low volume long-tail search targets.
Adding content to the body text and headers of these pages that relates to the search terms will increase your ranking chances, but at this stage all you’re doing is expending a relatively small amount of time on existing pages.
There are a few basic rules to keep in mind when doing this:
- Keep the page titles between 55-60 characters (don’t exceed 60)
- Page descriptions should be 150-160 characters (don’t exceed 160)
- Try to use the target words in headings
- Try to use the target words at least once on the page body text
When doing the above, keep your writing style as natural as possible. Please don’t fall into the trap of choosing non-sensical placement of the words just to try to meet the criteria I’ve recommended.
Cafe search related landing pages
Consider the creation of landing pages for specific searches. All that means is creating a page that doesn’t feature in the menu/navigation of your website but is designed to capture specific searches, and the content of it is curated to do that.
You shouldn’t simply create and stuff a page with “best cafe in Alnwick“, but you could very easily create such a page, set the titles, description, headers and content appropriately for that search term, and then populate it with good quality content about why you’re the best cafe in Alnwick and reap the rewards in search visibility.
Not sure how to create a landing page?
If you’ve got control of your website through a CMS (content management system) such as WordPress, Wix, Squarespace or any other number of website platforms today, creating landing pages isn’t a difficult task (and if you don’t know how to, visit YouTube and type in “How to create a page in <insert platform name here>” and you’ll be given countless video guides on how to do it.
Don’t simply use your cafe name
In summary, consider using words and phrases on a variety of pages across your website that directly answer the search “questions” that people are likely to ask search engines.
Don’t simply title all your pages with the name of your cafe – because that’s what the majority of cafes appear to do. I researched it and I was astounded to see what I can only think have been titles and descriptions written by the original web designers and long-since abandoned.
Most web designers don’t give SEO much time or thought
Here’s some news for you – web designers give very little though to your SEO. The split between web design and SEO has been dramatic. Few designers give more than a minute, if you’re lucky, to thinking what you want to be found on Google for.
If you’re a web designer that I’ve just offended, please don’t be. You know as well as I do how many web designers do exactly what I’ve said. If you’re not one of them, that is credit to you.
You might also, rightly, point out that it isn’t a service you’ve been paid to provide, and that’s a fair point; it doesn’t change the fact that a client site can often be left with woefully performing pages from an SEO perspective.
Be the tourist looking for a cafe
Be the visitor. Think about what they search for when they’re in your town, city or village and looking for a cafe, and don’t presume they’ll rely on Google Local/Maps and TripAdvisor.
Will it get your cafe ranked on Google?
You’ll be surprised how quickly you could rank on Page 1 of Google. However, that is assuming your website foundations and structure are good and it isn’t awash with errors or has all the solidity of a website designed by a 4-year old child. Competitor activity, their strength in SERPs (Search engine ranking pages) and good content on your pages are all factors. That said, the advice I’m giving you is very specific to long-tail keyword searches and the opportunity to rank for them – they are niche opportunities from which you can build traction.
If you’re thinking “I’m not a cafe in Alnwick“, don’t. You can apply the same methodology to anywhere and almost anything (i.e. not just cafes) where you have local visitors to a physical location and niche searches are likely.
All I’ve done is look at how the use of long-tail searches is commonly under-estimated, particularly if you target them in numbers.
It is not uncommon for the total of long-tail searches to outweigh the volume of visitors you might attract if your primary target was a broader search term with high volume.
Let me know of any questions or feedback you might have on this subject. It is always good to hear of your own experience, particularly if you’re a business owner not involved in SEO.
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