- I want to start off with a great article written by Eric Ward:

4 Tips For Taking Ownership Of Your Local Business’ Online Presence

I find it a bit hard to implement Eric’s technique when working with small businesses that have got a tight budget for their online presence. However, this may only be the case for my niche, hospitality (which is shocking!). If you have big clients willing to invest money in creating great content and linking strategies the concept is brilliant.

- I strongly recommend you to sign up to Eric’s LinkMoses Private email service. If you build links for your business or someone else’s business, it is a MUST have subscription. Eric shares great link opportunities as well as great SEO strategies. I really enjoy the service and I feel comfortable suggesting it to you.

- The third and last link I am sharing with you today is a video on how to do Link Building with OSE & a Host of Other Tools. It is a bit long, 92 minutes of which the last 30 are Q&A. Again if you offer link building services you need to watch this video. Rand Fishkin walks you through each single step.

Link well and Ciao for now
Andrea

There is a big concentrations of restaurants and caffe

It was the first time for Camille to come out to visit businesses and talk to them about the importance of going online. We still need to figure out the best moment to do so. Today we got there at 2.30 pm and a few restaurants were busy for lunch, some others were still closed.

The first restaurant we visited was Tin Roof Cafe. We had a chat with the restaurant owner who was quite friendly and interested in what we were saying. He told us that a local guy a few months ago went door to door selling websites for businesses and once he collected all the money he disappeared! I can’t blame him if he didn’t really trust us at first glance.

The second restaurant we visited was Biagio’s, it did look pretty good inside, the owner however didn’t really care about what we were offering. She said they have got a website and she is happy with that. There is plenty to do even if u have a website! Keep it in mind!!

Chartreuse was next on our list, the owner was nice and we spent a little bit of time talking to him. He seemed to like our business card and cover letter.

As we needed a bit of a walk, we decided to go talk to the owner of Mamma Lina restaurant. Unfortunately, he didn’t even want to hear about our services. He said “No sorry I’ve already got my IT guy”. I hope you’re not investing too much in him! Where is your website? And do you think your online presence is good enough?

We did visit other restaurants and cafes, but as you can imagine, they are not worth mentioning.

Lesson learnt for day 2

• Restaurant owner in this area are a bit old fashion. I would call them Yellow Pages users
•  Visiting restaurants in the afternoon seems to be a better idea
• Working in a team with Camille gives me more confidence and she helps me when I forget to mention key points of the services we offer
• I am starting to understand why restaurants have got such a bad online presence. It is not because no one is focusing on this niche. It is just owners being stubborn, not understanding how important it is to be online! It is not unusual to find tweets like this one I found this morning: “Never again order in Chinese food from a restaurant that only has 3 stars on google place. I’m going to be sick”.

At least if no restaurant owners take action to enhance their online presence then there won’t be threatening competition between them! However, with so much opportunity to dominate, wouldn’t you want to be the one on the front line!

To conclude, I do wish to hear back from one of you restaurant owners. There is so much we can do at Proattiva Internet Consulting, you are missing out on! Call me!

My idea is to help small and medium businesses obtain a comprehensive web presence. The idea is to help restaurants in particular, since I believe that they need a website and they need to be able to attract more clients when searched on google.

You must agree with me that to find a restaurant we most commonly use google. What else? When I feel like having greek food I use a simple yet powerful tool…. I google “Greek restaurant near Pascoe Vale”, read some reviews, and I’m out the door.

DAY 1

Since I am familiar with the Ascot Vale/Moonee Ponds area I decided to go out this morning and try to find some new local clients. I must be honest, it didn’t go really well. I got off the train at 9.30 and went straight to union road where I knew of a few restaurants without any sign of an online presence.

As you can see Stratus 233 NEEDS Online and Offline Marketing

The first restaurant I visited was Stratus 233 on Union Road, the owner was there and he told me that they are working on a website and they will be going online in a week. He didn’t really want to know anything else about what I wanted to say. Never mind, I will find someone else. I am curious to see in the weeks to come if they are truly pulsing a website.

I walked up and down union road a few times and realised that monday morning was not going to be a good time to visit restaurants. Firstly, the majority of places I wanted to visit were closed.

After having spent quite a long time in Union Road I decided to walk to the busy Mt Alexander Road. There are a few new restaurants in the area, and I will definitely be returning to see if they are interested in my services.

While I was there I did however talk to the owner of a new place called White Coffee (530 Mt. Alexander), next to the newly opened Italy 528, whom have told me they are not interested in having an online presence any time soon (they must be crazy!). White Coffee is a nice little cafe, however the owner explained that they are already working on a website and focusing on google optimization. A family friend will be taking care of it in his spare time. I hope he will find time to think about your business. Oh boy I almost had enough of funny excuses, however, he seemed to know what I was on about which is a good start!

White Coffee is doing better than Stratus 233 and Italy 528

I then walked along Mt Alexander Road where I stopped by Smoking Joes, the owner was nice and we had a 5 min chat (it was a record)! Anyway, he said that someone is working on a website (of course). He was however interested in Search Engine Optimization. He didn’t quite understand though, that to implement Search Engine Optimization you need to start with at the least a website (a real website, not one waiting on a “to do” list).

I did learn a lot from these few hours around Ascot Vale:

• Don’t waste your time trying to find restaurants open on Monday morning
• The majority of restaurant owners are working on websites that will go online as soon as the end of the week. It is just a nice way to say, piss off I am not spending a dime for your services.
• Restaurant owners can be good at managing a restaurant but they don’t know anything about the online. The irony is, that if they truly are great managers they would understand how important this all is!

Italy 528 is playing hide and seek! Seriously I could not believe how invisible that restaurant is.

I believe restaurants need an excellent web presence! It was just the first day. I will write one blog post for every day I go out to find restaurants. Hopefully I will be able to report about a restaurant owner that understands the importance and business value of being online.