Low Price Airfare Tickets - What is the Value of Online Restaurant Guides?

This is really what the owner wants to know. And how much do they help? How so, and if so? But do they? Increase the online exposure of those restaurants listed in the guide, . Etc, OpenTable.com, CitySearch.com, Metromix.com, Chow.com, Urbanspoon.com, RestaurantRow.com, the easy and obvious answer is that online restaurant guides such as Zagat.com. In discussions with restaurant owners we quite often get asked why they should list their restaurants on online restaurant guides (ORGs).

So we'll begin with the basics. No wonder restaurateurs have a hard time coming up with them. The answers to these questions are multi-faceted and require knowledge in quite a few areas.

The problem is that SEO is an ongoing endeavor requiring constant observation and change. They hire a company to optimize the site and initially they get results. This is called search engine optimization or SEO. Effort and money on building traffic to their site, realize this and spend time, like many business owners, restaurateurs. It produces nothing and has diminished value. But a website that has no traffic is like a Lotus without an engine. Nearly all restaurants have websites, today. It was rudimentary and didn't attract much traffic, if they did, or. Five years ago many restaurants didn't even have a website.

Most restaurant owners of individual units or a small 2 to 3 unit company cannot afford to hire someone to optimize the site on a constant basis. The same result occurs with many phrases people would use in trying to locate restaurants in New Orleans. The restaurant is nowhere to be found, 'New Orleans Restaurants' is entered into Google, when the phrase, however. This is the pot at the end of the rainbow in SEO isn't it? The restaurant comes up first on left hand side of the page, when the phrase 'New Orleans Italian Restaurants' is put into Google. That's not bad for one restaurant. One restaurant client of ours in New Orleans has a website that gets an average of 150 hits per day.

Individual or small restaurant owners lose the competition with the ORGs for the space on the search engines in most cases. And a whole host of SEO-friendly items, rich media content, banner ads from restaurants, but the ORGs also have Google Ads. This alone propels the ORG in terms of its adherence to the criteria of the latest algorithms used by search engines. And links back from most, has links to every restaurant listed on the site, for instance, Zagat.com. ORG's sometimes have a staff of people whose sole job it is to keep their guide coming up on the first page of Google around the country. They still cannot compete with the ORGs, but even if the restaurant did spend the money to do proper SEO on their site.

Give the consumer power and satisfies their need to express their opinion, especially the ability to write reviews, features like these. Find out what else in going on in the city all make online guides an attractive place to do restaurant research, find information about the metropolitan area, take surveys, features such as the ability to write reviews. ORGs offer consumers interaction with their guide and features that individual restaurant sites cannot, in addition.

The likelihood of a specific restaurant popping up on the first page is slim given the SEO capability of the ORGs, as stated above, and when those 18% do search on search engines. Only 18% use general search engines. Bing or another search engine, yahoo, of the people that look for restaurants online over 80% use online restaurant guides versus doing a search on Google. When asked how consumers do research online we discovered that a restaurant web site is largely ineffective, however. That number is significant but many restaurant owners might conclude that their web site will capture any potential customers looking online. VR National conducted a survey in the 3rd quarter of 2009 and discovered that more than 75% of consumers look for restaurants online.

Today it's about a 50/50 split between consumers booking directly on a hotel website and those that do so on an OTA. Hotels begrudgingly paid this fee. OTA's took approximately 70% of the online bookings away from the hotel web sites only to turn around and charge the hotel a fee for giving them the reservation, as a result. Do you see the similarity? Have the ability to write reviews, and yes. A rental car and learn a lot about the city or area they are visiting, they'll also be able to book airfare. The value proposition to the consumer is that if they book a hotel room through one of these OTA's they'll save money. What we don't necessarily realize is that there are hundreds of OTA's that are not advertised as heavily. Hotels.com and other online travel agencies (OTA's), expedia, priceline, we've all seen the ads for Travelocity. The trend is very similar to what occurred in the hotel industry over the last 10 to 15 years. So really what is happening in marketing of restaurants online?

They are also charging fees to the restaurant for online reservations that come through their guide. Online restaurant guides are giving the consumer more convenience and features than the restaurants can individually, as we've described above. The same thing is occurring in the online marketing of restaurants.

Virtual tours and every other tool available from that guide including a link to make a reservation online, photos, have menus, the smart restaurant owner will embrace the change and develop excellent relationships with every major national and regional ORG and make sure they are featured on that guide if possible. The trend is clear.

Otherwise they'll either find themselves playing catch up or watch their potential business go to a competitor restaurant down the street. Restaurateurs would be wise to embrace this consumer shift and get out in front of it.