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Take a look at the two websites below.

They're both nice-looking. The top one is for the Green Street Grill, a great restaurant in my neighborhood in Cambridge, MA. The bottom one is for Craigie on Main, another really nice restaurant nearby.

 green street grillcraigie on main 

 

The sites are a similar collection of menus, operating hours, prices and directions. But there's one big difference: The second site, the Craigie on Main site, has a blog.

Why does a restaurant need a blog?

Take a look at the data below, pulled from HubSpot's competitive website tracking tool.

 

 Website Grade Google Indexed Pages Alexa Traffic Rank December Visits 
www.craigieonmain.com
 56 99 1,493,098 4397
www.greenstreetgrill.com
 25 8 3,342,081 329

Because Craigie on Main has a blog, it has more pages for Google to index. Because it has more pages index, it gets found more often, and has higher traffic than Green Street Grill. 

If you want to use the internet to market, you need to be found in search. If you want to be found in search, you need to create content regularly.

It's as simple as that.


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Posted by Rick Burnes on Thu, Jan 29, 2009 @ 07:21 AM

COMMENTS

Rick, 
 
 
 
And I would, once that traffic is on your site, create content based on what people are looking for -- and find a way to convert them to leads and then paying customers.

posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 8:08 AM by Dianna Huff


There was supposed to be an "add" after "would." :-o

posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 8:11 AM by Dianna Huff


hum...what bis a pitty is the very very poor "SEOminded" URL of Craigie : http://www.craigieonmain.com/?page_id=50 !!! 
No URL rewriting at all ! 
By Green, they have minimalistic readable and SEOaware URL ! 
So the two aren't very "customers seeking" on the Internet ! 
And the blog of Craigie is not efficiently written (long texts, and soon : have to learn something about e-copywriting !... 

posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 8:35 AM by Philippe Mochamps


Philippe, this is all true ... but at least Craigie has the blog. That is the first step towards the things you're talking about.

posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 9:03 AM by Rick Burnes


I'm curious...I have a self-hosted blog and it is fed through Feedburner and embedded in my newer website, will it still drive traffic to our website? 
 
I know we need a Craigie-like solution (which displays the full blog functionality -- categories, comments, etc.) but meanwhile...just wondering if we are getting any SEO benefits at all from our current set-up.

posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 9:48 AM by Mary Fletcher Jones


THE AMAZING thing is being that precise in an explanation! Hubspot is great because it gains his ends with few words and graphs! 
 
tks for being alive Hubspot!

posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 11:25 AM by glauco tamega


This is great information, but all things considered, this seems like an over simplified example. Is the blog the only difference between the two restaurants? I'd be interested to know if the extra traffic generated by cragie on main is search traffic that lands on the blog, or direct traffic.

posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 12:22 PM by Chip


I do agree that blogs are important. They gain readers and allow you to dispense ideas, get people to check out your site and to post their own opinions to you. Thanks

posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 1:45 PM by click and inc.


I believe blogs have their part in the business. Take advantage of what blogs can offer!

posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 2:51 PM by Cristian


Great article - one important thing to point out, however, is that not all that traffic will be from prospective customers. It would be interesting to see how many search results were from within the city the restaurant is located in - or if they were simply people searching for recipes. 
 
Either way, the blog is still a great tool since it increases the Search Engine Positioning overall - placing it higher when true leads are searching. 

posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 6:01 PM by Chad


Thanks HubSpot! I'm working towards getting a blog and you make it seem so easy.

posted on Friday, January 30, 2009 at 12:10 PM by Rachel


I never really felt I could do this given I primarily do retail sales but if a restaurant can do it I certainly can. uhg, now comes the work :/

posted on Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 12:11 AM by bill


Here's an interesting FOX NEWS VIDEO about social networking and how to get more leads to your business. 
 
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=3472956&referra

posted on Monday, February 02, 2009 at 9:28 AM by Jay


I run two sites in tough markets. We use 8 separate blogs in total. They contribute enormously to the site experience but also to SEO. 
 
If you have a business you really need a blog! 
 
Arya Marafie 
CEO Lounge Business Network

posted on Monday, February 02, 2009 at 7:32 PM by Arya Marafie


This is such a good example of the revolution that blogging is bringing to the internet and companies involved in the web. Also, it is a great example of how such a simple addition can upgrade your search engine optimization so dramatically.

posted on Monday, February 23, 2009 at 12:12 PM by Kara


Comments have been closed for this article.