Local & real time SEO with Tik Tok: Or how a tavern by the sea became viral
How effective can local SEO become and how can we use SEO on popular social media, like Tik Tok, to boost traffic to a restaurant business?
This question formed the basis of our strategy and at the same time our curiosity about if and how SEO can help a small business in such a competitive sector.
Our approach for Korali, the tavern by the sea in the Artemis area of Attica, proved that local SEO is more powerful than ever and became the starting point, to build a roadmap for how businesses of this kind can combine SEO with social media for impressive results.
✅ A mixed audience with different needs
As with all businesses, in restaurants it is extremely helpful to know exactly who you target.
Korali, an authentic fish-tavern by the sea, always attracted Greeks from the area, but also foreign tourists who either vacation in the broader region or are in stop-over with the plane due to Artemis’s proximity to the airport.
Therefore, from the start we needed to use several techniques, so that we attract both the Greek and the foreign audience, the residents, the tourists and the passersby.
In a few words, the demanding Greek, the foreigner who cannot easily tell the difference between souvlaki and a good tavern, but also the traveler who must be convinced to leave the airport for a few hours and instead of waiting for his flight in the lounge, to eat traditional Greek cuisine a little further, beside the sea.
✅ The steps to invite the target group for… food
The techniques we followed for the above were as follows:
- Local SEO: We created demand, while at the same time we made Korali known in the local society of Artemis. This was done by writing targeted advertorials, strengthening local SEO and participating in local groups of Artemis, Spata and the wider area.
- Real time SEO: After careful analysis of dates and Greek customs, we used the days that people traditionally eat seafood and meat and built the strategy especially for those days. Based on this, we created a targeted brief for social media, we wrote advertorials and we reinforced the restaurant’s image for each day separately.
- Tik Tok SEO: On the popular platform we made the restaurant and its food known, via targeted research and competition analysis, so that we know precisely what the demanding audience on Tik Tok is searching for. Thus, we gave a specific brief: What content must be created, what wording it must contain and how it should be structured for Tik Tok, so that not only it gets traffic from the For You Page, but at the same time it has evergreen content that will continuously bring people from Tik Tok search.
- Google My Business & Tripadvisor: We went through intensive analysis of the profiles of the restaurant, since it constitutes one of the main elements for success in local SEO. Special emphasis was given to the management of reviews by the client, with advice for improving its services to reduce negative comments.
Besides the above tailor-made actions that specifically responded to the needs of this project, we also proceeded with other tried-and-tested solutions, such as:
- Site optimization
- Addition of English language
- Leveraging branded searches
- TripAdvisor optimization
- Publishing English articles in tourist sites abroad.
Increase of Visitors on Tripadvisor +49%
✅ The Results of Our Strategy
The combination of traditional SEO with social media, local SEO and real time adaptation of each method to the needs of the day proved its effectiveness with the following spectacular results:
- Increase in organic traffic by 100% compared to last year
- Increase in organic rankings in many keywords
- Increase of 100% in visits to the establishment (restaurant)
- Increase of 50% of calls to the restaurant
- Increase of 49% unique visitors on TripAdvisor
- 87% of the traffic on Tik Tok came from search with keywords, proving the value of TikTok SEO.
- Every video exceeded 1000 views with the top one reaching 3000 views with only 50 followers.
And so, the whole team wanted to have lunch at Korali on Pentecost. Unfortunately, however, trying to book a table 5 days prior was not enough, because the owner informed us that for such days now with the vertical increase of demand reservations closed at least 3 weeks in advance…
It doesn’t matter that we didn’t eat fresh calamari at Korali. We kept the fact that through this so interesting project we gained valuable know-how and built a tested methodology that combines all the benefits of SEO with social media.
As for our next visit? Probably we must already book for October 28th…
Increase Impressions 79%
