A great catering business website and consider

Having a great website, that is promoted effectively on the Internet is extremely important to your catering startup. A great website can help you to manage relationships with existing customers and can also act as a marketing medium for bringing in new clients. Lets take a look at some of the characteristics of a great catering business website and consider some ways of bringing targeted traffic to a website.

Your website home page should immediately let viewers know the business that you are in and what your brand represents. The basics include having your business name and logo at the top, basic details about your company, what kinds of events you cater to and what kind of menus you offer.

The homepage should set out details about how your company is different and what you can do to solve your customer’s problems. Let viewers know the obvious next step that they should take after viewing the page. There should be a contact form visible or a clear link to a separate page with contact details. Customers should be prompted to take action by offering discounts and promotions if they contact you immediately.

Strong images should be placed on the homepage and throughout other pages on the site. Ask clients for permission to show photos of events that you have successfully catered to in the past and show off some of your beautifully presented menu items.

Some customer testimonials should be displayed on your home page and you could even consider a separate page with more references. If you have had any local clients that are extremely well known and trusted in your local area then display these references in prominent positions.

Consider displaying some ‘trust symbols’ on your home page to try to associate your company with some logos of other known and reputable organizations such as business associations or a radio station that you advertised with for example.

Many catering companies take a ‘build it and they will come’ approach to their website. This kind of thinking is flawed, as you need to be very proactive in promoting your website if you want to see a decent amount of targeted traffic.

The key to getting targeted traffic is to be listed highly on the results pages of search engines such as Google when people do a search using keywords such as ‘catering business’ and other keywords related to the area where they live. Somebody in Atlanta may structure their search as ‘catering business Atlanta’ or ‘Atlanta caterers’.

To capture this local search market you have to focus on search engine optimization (SEO) to allow your site to be ranked high. One way is to hire an SEO company to help you to do this but in many locations the local market may not be so competitive and you may be able to rank highly as a result of your own efforts.

Search engine optimization can be divided into two areas, on-site and off-site. On-site optimization involves the use of Meta tags on your website and the right balance of keywords and content throughout your website. Your website should also have fresh content being added frequently on subjects relating to catering and your local area.

Off-site optimization involves getting lots of relevant inbound links pointing to your site from other quality websites. One good way to know what sites would be good places to get links is to do a search on the URL of some of your competitors and see where they are getting their links from. Generally you should look for directories of caterers or general business directories in your area. You can also create your own links by submitting articles to articles directories, posting on relevant forums with your URL in your signature or setting up some blogs on free blogging platforms and having them link to your site. These are a few ideas that you can explore further anyway.

You can also buy targeted traffic through programs such as Google’s AdWords. The AdWords system allows you to bid on specific keyword terms and then have your advertisements displayed alongside the organic search results when somebody does a relevant keyword search. Brainstorming the many keyword combinations that people may use to find a caterer in your city is the key to success here.

You simply cannot afford to ignore the Internet these days if you want to be successful in the catering business. Having a great website, and knowing how to drive targeted traffic to it, will ensure that your marketing efforts are successful. An effective business marketing strategy on the Internet is essential to the success of your catering startup.

Tags: business associations, catering business, customer testimonials, reputable organizations, separate page