On Long Island you can’t really walk a block without passing three restaurants (not that we’re mad about it). But what about the competition between the neighboring restaurants? Of course, many restaurants gain popularity through regular customers and word-of-mouth. However, the Internet provides higher competition for restaurants through search rankings. A new and effective method to gain online leadership is inbound marketing for restaurants. Our Fat Guy Takes Long Island inbound marketing series continues with a restaurant that always keeps our glasses and our stomachs full! Uncle Bacala’s Italian Seafood and More is a great client of ours, and we are happy to help with their website marketing strategies. An inbound marketing strategy would not be perfect if the company did not have a great website. With Uncle Bacala’s, our team worked on their site to create content and web pages that search engines will easily pick up. Here are some of a few practices we used for their website design to improve their inbound marketing strategy:
Inbound Marketing for Restaurants with Web Design
Inbound marketing for restaurants through web design is done by a series of search engine optimization best practices. SEO for web design includes, a responsive design, geo marketing to target a location through the website and content marketing for textual data to allow for a quicker response time. Prior to working with us, Uncle Bacala’s did not have domain authority. This means their website was not their own but through a search website. The first step was to create a website, separate of any search engine site, and give Uncle Bacala’s their own domain. Once the domain was created, we were able to move forward with a sitemap that allowed visitors to navigate through the website as smoothly as possible. Responsive Web Design A crucial key to inbound marketing for restaurants is having a responsive website. A responsive website is defined as a site that adjusts to the size of the screen. So whether a searcher is using a computer, device or smartphone, they can easily navigate through the website without having to zoom in or out and adjust what part of the page the screen displays. 
A responsive website is beneficial to restaurants, in the sense that searchers who are on the go and searching for a place to eat will be more attracted to a site where they can see a menu, map and address that is readily available. You wouldn’t want to swipe around the screen to find what you’re looking for. If a couple is visiting a town and does not know a lot of restaurants on the street, they look to the Internet and the search engine will find the easiest navigational restaurant websites within that area. Our objective was to create that kind of website for Uncle Bacala’s. Geo Marketing Uncle Bacala’s now has a Google Plus account, which is featured on Google Maps, to increase the odds of Google’s search engine to crawl through their site. On the search results ranking page (SERP), their location will be shown on a map with their contact information. 
Textual Data In order to further optimize Uncle Bacala’s website, the written content was recreated. The more keywords that appear throughout the website helps search engines crawl more easily. Before the website design, the menu only featured pictures of the dinner selections without a description. Now, the menu is written out with the names of dishes and useful descriptions. Pictures featured on the website are alt tagged with necessary and relevant keywords. 
There’s nothing better than an updated website, which is why Uncle Bacala’s management has access to the backend of the website. If the menu or specials change or if there is an event coming up, management can readily add that information to the website without having to go through us. This is used with a tool that provides access without ruining the code of the website. For more information regarding Uncle Bacala’s web design and inbound marketing for restaurants, feel free to call us at 516.535.5353 or email us at sales@fatguymedia.com. 