Catering is a kind of business that has a great opportunity to be flourished with time. In current times if you want to plan a party or a celebration, then the first thing that comes to your mind is hiring a caterer. Because a caterer can supply the much-needed delicious, mouth-watering food for your invitees. If the quality and the presentation are good, then the caterer earns a reputation only to get more and more clients. But the technique of the catering business has changed, and now it becomes smarter than before. Today the catering company needs to reach people with its entire prospectus to lure clients in its favor. And what better you could do than have a website to earn the maximum benefit out of it. To make this possible, you have to go for SEO or search engine optimization.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a kind of strategy that helps to optimize your website by making it attractive, informative, and well-designed. In this way, the web pages get more traffic and reach a higher ranking in search engines like Google and some other search engines.
Why SEO is important for a Catering Company?
It has been a long since we entered the great digital age. From the very beginning things have been started changing and the business whatever might be, growing fast. Now the worth of billboards and paid commercials become lessened and the client’s trust shifts to the online platforms. Even the catering companies are not lagging behind. They also jumped into the wagon. So, it’s time for SEO to prove its value. It’s a kind of medium that helps your website in different ways. Such as-
1. It helps your website to rank high in search engines using all the techniques that can make your pages more popular only to boost the credibility of your catering company.
2. SEO and original content must come together to create the kind of content that includes images and videos related to your business so that your website will rank better in search results.
3. Using SEO in the proper way that works for creating a mobile-friendly website that includes user experiences, you can outrank your competitors although they have invested a good amount for their pages.
4. SEO helps you to select keywords from the Google keyword tool so that you can attract more visitors to your site and that can flourish your catering company.
5. Local SEO in most cases attracts those clients who are ready to buy your service early. You should start creating a GMB [Google My Business] account and try to get reviews from your clients. This can earn more traffic to your site.
On-Page SEO for Caterers
On Page SEO for Caterers is one of the most important part of ranking a site on Google. It comes with best and low competitive keyword research, proper silo structure, optimise content using proper H tags, Image alt tag, etc. There are many more factors and we will discuss one by one.
Now it’s time to take a close look at various topics related to on-page SEO and try to get a better understanding of the relations between SEO and the catering business.
1. Keyword Research
Promoting your catering company using SEO might not be the only thing. But keywords are the prime things that play the leading role to attract visitors and earn more traffic for you in the search engines. Finding keywords relevant to your catering business and using them smartly on your web pages is one of the most effective SEO strategies that can provide a new dimension to your company ahead of others. To make this possible you have a clear understanding of the search intent of the clients who are looking for a caterer who can fit their bill. So now you have to research what kind of keywords are right for your catering business.
But it’s not necessary always that you’ve better control over keywords. Sometimes selecting wrong or not-so-attractive keywords can damage the possibility of a company. Keeping this factor in mind, instead of taking charge of this, you should hire an SEO agency to do all kinds of research work for you.
Let’s suppose you are providing Catering service in Miami. The main keyword may be ‘Catering Companies in Miami’. But we have to do research on it and find more easy keyword. One of the very low competitive keyword may be ‘Wedding Catering Miami’.
Here you have to know few things. The search volume of the main keyword may be low as low search volume rank fast rather than a high search volume.
The search volume of ‘Catering Companies in Miami‘ is 320/month and ‘Wedding Catering Miami‘ is 140/month. We will go for low search volume keyword becuase it will rarrow down the competiton. But if you want to rank ‘Catering Companies in Miami‘ for your home page then you have to invest a lot money in SEO.
2. Using Main Keywords in Home Pages
The homepage of a website is considered the ‘main door’ of your online business where all the necessary details and options are given to provide the viewers with a clear idea about the purpose of your website. Therefore, you have to use the main keywords that you’ve previously selected for your website, to attract the viewer’s attention so they can get more information about your catering business. As per our example, the main keyword will be ‘Wedding Catering Miami‘. So, you should use this keyword in your home page in H1 tag.
3. Using LSI and Secondary Keywords
LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are an important part of SEO. They help Google better understand the content of the page, as a result, it helps to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). LSI keywords are related terms or phrases that are very close to the main keyword of a page. In the catering business when you’re desperately looking for more and more clients, the LSI certainly going to be a better source to get that. If the main keyword is ‘Catering Companies in Miami’ then LSI keywords will be ‘Event Catering Miami‘, ‘Miami Wedding Caterers‘, ‘Party Food Catering Miami‘, etc.
On the other hand, secondary keywords has also SEO value and it provides a good support to main keyword that helps the visitors to get some additional information about your website. Such as, ‘Vegetarian Food Caterer‘, ‘Budget-Friendly Food Caterer‘ etc.
4. Maintaining Keywords Ratio
Since you’re considering SEO for Caterers to rank your website higher in search engines, you cannot ignore the keywords that are an integral part of any SEO strategy. Unlike in the olden days, considering the requirement keyword ratio turns higher to make the content more attractive as well as informative so that the prospective viewers who are looking for a caterer can find all relevant information for their convenience. But it also doesn’t mean that you can stuff your content with keywords as it can hit the quality of the page only to affect rankings. Usually, you can use 2-3 keywords on a page of 1,000-1,300 words to get a better response from the visitors to your site. My suggestions is that always make it natural and don’t just put the keywords randomly.
5. Using H tags in Best Ways
Having unique and attractive content in the catering business is not everything. Until it’s not visible, you cannot reach your target audiences. To draw the attention of search engines towards your content you must have a visible <H> in your HTML code as it works as an information guide for the search engine bots. There is a general idea that the H1 tag should be on the top of the page to get more viewers, but it can be placed anywhere you want to keep in mind that the target audiences can find it easily. The H1 tag should be a unique one and include a highly searched keyword to make the whole content better understandable for the search engines only to allow them to bring more traffic to your website. By default, most of the theme comes with H1 tag as Page title.
6. Get Google Search Console
Google Search Console presently renamed as Webmaster Tools is a free service provided by Google one of the best thing that can tell you the problem in your website and also let you know the way how you can get the opportunity to secure a better rank in search engines.
This is one of the best free tool that Google provides us. There we can see how your website is performing on Google search engine.
This is a screenshot of Search Console. You can see in left side has few option that will provide you a complete report of your site. We can easily find the indexing and non indexing page and start working from there.
We can also see the list of keywords that currently on Google top 10 pages. In a short word, this tool is very important for a webmaster like you.
7. SSL Certificate
Creating a website, hiring an SEO agency, and writing high-quality content using relevant and unique keywords, but hey, it’s not done yet!! Apart from doing all these, you have to secure online transactions and keep client’s information secret and secure. Secure Sockets Layer, in short SSL; is a security protocol exactly works on this issue to prevent miscreants from following and modifying information transferred between web server and the web browser.
8. Robots txt File
A robots txt file is a set of instruction for bots just like a “code of conduct” that tell them which web pages they can or cannot access. This file is included in the source files on most websites. There are both good and bad bots and good bots are called web crawlers that crawl the pages and index the content so that the web pages can be shown in search engine results. This is certainly a good thing for you as your website can be kept safe from bad bots.
9. Submit a Site map
A sitemap is nothing but a file where you can provide all necessary information about your web pages, videos, and some other relevant files on your site and set a relationship between them. This helps the search engine crawl your pages and understand the value of your website. A sitemap should be submitted or included if you have a rather larger site that has a huge number of URLs. Only then you can rip off the benefit of having a sitemap.
10. Check The Content Quality
Digital marketing heavily depends on the content that should not be limited just as good but it has to be excellent. To reach this level your content should be well-written, grammatically sound with perfect visuals, relevant, loaded with some essential information, and of course, all of them are optimized. And now it’s time for Google to check if the content matches up with the standard of its ranking algorithms, then your website is definitely able to secure a higher ranking and that must be a very good thing for your business.
12. Image Optimization
If you’re in the catering business and you own a website then you must know how images related to your business can create a good impact on the prospective client’s mind and also give them a better idea about what kind of performance you can provide if you’re given an opportunity. But the images should be perfectly shaped, sized, placed, and also well chosen. It means you have to optimize the images that you’re going to add to your web pages so that your site could rank high in search engines only to get more traffic.
13. Inbound and Outbound Links
Globally acclaimed search engines like Google, and Yahoo, don’t fully rely on the way your website shapes up. But according to Google, your website is worthwhile only if it’s linked with sites of other domains. This certainly indicates how many people you’re being watched. Inbound and outbound links are there to introduce you to the online market and also help you to establish a relationship with other sites even from different domains. Inbound links are those backlinks that come from other websites while outbound links go from your website to other websites. Both links are equally important for your site as the search engines like Google and Bing rank your page considering the links that you have so they crawl the sites to know how popular your site is and this certainly can make things simple.
14. Meta Tags and Meta Description
These two are the integral parts of a website that help browsers as well as other web pages by providing specific information regarding the page and simultaneously telling what the webpage holds. Meta tags are a large part of a web page design while Meta description is a small part of the Meta tags which gives the viewers a small summary of the content that the page holds. These two are certainly the prime things that a viewer comes across first while browsing. Therefore, it requires being a smarter one that can influence the viewer to through the page. If you do not optimize these two, it would be almost impossible to appear in the first positions of the SERPs. Therefore, it would be better to hire a smart and reputed SEO without trying your hand in all these matters.
15. Website Loading Speed
In recent days and ages, speed matters most. No matter in what kind of work you’re engaged if the pace of your work is better than most of the others, only then you win the race. Same thing you can say about the website loading speed. It refers to the time that requires loading content on your web page. It means, if you would try to link in the search results, the corresponding page would appear instantly on the screen. Optimizing for speed [1 to 3 seconds ] of website loading means your site has the higher conversion rate than if your site takes more than 5 sec. of time for loading content. Besides, a fast page improves users experience, poor experience means they go elsewhere and visit other websites. And if that is so, it’s a strong signal that the website is not going to get a high rank in any search engines.
16. User’s Friendly Website
This would perhaps be one of the main issues on which the ranking of your website depends quite heavily. While browsing users always look for convenience and if they can search effortlessly, then you might get more and more traffic to your site. This certainly will help your site rank higher in search engines. Now you need to know how you can determine to make your website. To make this possible, you have to take care of certain things. They are-
1. Clear structure, navigation, and page name.
2. Responsive and compatible design.
3. Easily Recognizable links.
4. Simple forms.
5. Easy accessible and adaptive.
Optimizing your website so that it can be considered as user’s friendly is a kind of work that has many difficulties. Even in some cases, it’s not possible for you to manage all the things and that might be a risky affair for the ranking of your website in search engines. Therefore, you have no other way left but to go for experts who can handle SEO better than you, and this must bring more and more visitors to your site.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to those actions that have been taken from outside of your own website only to improve your ranking in search engines. There are two different ways that off-page SEO follows. The first one is non-link off-page SEO that includes social media, guest blogging, etc. All these certainly help to create interest in users on your website and this might work to promote your business.
Backlinks
There is one more way which is popularly known as backlinks. It’s a kind of SEO strategy to create a link that appears on some other’s websites of different domains. If that link can draw a curiosity then to him or her you would be a just click away. Backlinks have the strongest ranking factor. These can either push your page to the top or sink it to the bottom. Two types of backlinks that help your page link to another website. These are Dofollow and Nofollow baklinks.
Do follow backlinks are simply the default links that allow the link to move from referring to the linked site and it doesn’t require any special attribute. It can be taken as a signal of trust that comes from the referring site. Now when the referring site trusts your site, it allows the search engines to crawl your website. In this way, your website earns a good amount of links which means your site is going to rank higher.
No follow link is exactly opposite to the do follow link, which doesn’t allow the link to flow from referring site to the linked site. Therefore, no follow links have little value when it’s considered for page rankings. But you have still some reasons behind including no follow backlink to your webpage. No follow links help to reduce comment spamming on popular blogs. Besides, it also tells the search engines that though you point to a website but do not want to trust it.
Here are the most powerful link building methods that you can follow:
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is one of the most effective link building methods. This method involves writing a unique and relevant blog post on another website with a link back to your website. It not only improves ranking but also provides direct traffic from that website.
Guest blogging can be done either in exchange for payment or as a way to build relationships and promote content in other communities. There are 2 ways to get Guest post links. Either providing some money or building relationships or promoting content in other communities.
When choosing which websites to do a guest post for, it is important to make sure that you select ones that have good traffic, and good authority.
Skyscraper Technique
The Skyscraper Technique is one of the most advanced link building methods. At the very first you have to find one of your competitors that have a backlink from a high authority site. Then you have to study the whole content of your competitor and after that create killer content with updated information. Finally, you have to reach out to that high authority site owner and request to mention your quality content page on their website.
Note: As these are very time consuming process and most of the site owner has not enough time to manage these works. You can hire SEOglaze to do such types of link building.
Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) unique free business listing feature that allows you to upload photos, services, and some other vital information related to your business. This helps you to increase your visibility in search engines like Google. And even also gets a chance to appear in Google Search, Google Maps, and also some other services.
But to make this happen you should have a physical location (Restaurant- if you’re in the catering business) and also need to provide services in person. Google My Business provides your site better with visibility that attracts clients searching for your business.
Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are another strong medium that helps to create an impression in viewer’s mind that is browsing your site. If your performances, what you have been doing so far seem better or even good to your clients and they have positively given their comments, then it must be a great benefit for you. The most popular search engine like Google gives your site that opportunity as customer reviews to get more traffic to your site.
Social Signals
In this era, you can live without friends but you cannot stay a moment without social networking sites. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Reddit, and Medium- all these social platforms are no less than an integral part of human life. We are now connected much with each other, and share all our feelings, likings, and dislikings through these. And even all these social media work excellently to campaign for any brand, product, or service. Therefore, you cannot deny the worth of social networking sites aka social signals to promote you and your company and invites more and more curious clients to your website.
Conclusion
The worth of SEO for online marketing for any kind of business is above everything that has been conventionally applied so far. SEO can put the best effort to create an effect on the viewers mind by providing all necessary information and evidence to prove your company is yards ahead of your competitors. This definitely brings much-needed prospective clients to your site only to flourish your business. But you still have to be careful about this matter. If you have enough confidence that you can handle SEO well, then you’re on to take the challenge. But if you have a little confusion, then all I can say is, don’t spoil the chance for your company to sail through and go for hiring a professional and expert in SEO so that they can manage everything for the betterment of your company and take your business to the next level. I strongly believe with your fine sense of judgement this would happen very soon. Till then Good Bye, and very Best of Luck!!!
