When Ker Communications began working with Chef Dato, our duties were to be simple – some website management and IT services. And maybe a little website redesign. During our first meeting, the chef mentioned an opportunity to be considered for a new Food Network show had come up, and the deadline for a short video about the plans for his new restaurant was just a few days away and he was unable to find any videographers willing and able to meet the challenge.
“We can do that”
The next morning I showed up and started shooting and editing the demo, and submitted it to the network the next day (results still pending).
During the video production process, we came up with the idea that a weekly cooking show – shot fast and loose like a reality show – could feature special menu items that would be served in the restaurant that same day! The specials are often unknown until the last minute due to ingredient availability. We quickly developed a strategy to shoot, edit, upload and publicize the show within a couple of hours. The idea was that it would not only encourage potential customers to come try what they saw in the video, it would also get people to come back to see more entertaining and hopefully informative videos. If we used the chef’s own branded sauces in the videos, it was also a commercial. It also had the very beneficial effect of creating dozens of quality backlinks to the restaurant’s website – and lots of videos which show up at the top of Google searches. The SEO benefits for this client were very impressive – locally competitive keywords such as “fine dining in Latrobe” now show on the first Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and many are #1 – even ranking above well established competitors.
All of this greatly increased traffic to the website, boosted name recognition, and brought lots of new customers to the restaurant – and reminds people to come back.
What started as a website remodel and SEO tweak turned into a complete web presence and brand recognition blitz.
This is the kind of on-the-fly innovation that drives Ker Communications. What can we do together?
- This is a screen shot of a Google Analytics page for chefdato.com, showing the non-paid organic search traffic gain which came shortly after we started working together. We started shooting videos in late May. SEO work and the website tune-up did not really get underway until late June. That is an improvement of about 400% in a very short time. Referred traffic (links) had similar growth (facebook and video driven, mostly).
This is what happens when we bring it all together – content, innovation, strategy and technique.
Let’s talk about what we can do for you.
