Welcome to ChefCallahan.com

Driving Food Website Traffic — SEO Versus User Experience

Successful food website owners need to understand the importance of both search engine optimization and an effective user experience. In striving for successes in running website we are at some point  faced with the dilemma of which is more important — search engine optimization (SEO) or user experience?

Where should our focus lie? Oftentimes fancy widgets and display techniques (such as Adobe Flash or frames) that are a benefit to the user’s experience actually limit a Food websites SEO ranking ability.

Effectively managing SEO is becoming both an art and a science – an art, because it takes a bit of finesse and creativity, and a science because if you follow certain rules of the SEO game you should experience repeatable results.

What level of search engine ranking would you like to see for your website; worldwide, regional, or local? Or are search engine rankings even important at all?

Contrary to popular opinion, we do live in a black and white world – something either works or it does not. That is just the way it is. From the onset of your idea to publish a food related website you need to decide how important page rankings are to your overall marketing plan and design your website accordingly.

Back in the early 90’s SEO seemed a bunch simpler; include some key words and Meta tags and you were on your way. With the advent of social networking and the increasing development of web-based widgets and gadgets the business of website optimization is more involved, but it is still possible to work within the system and achieve respectable results.

As a web user yourself you understand that a website needs to present an image that is inviting and allows you to easily access the information you are looking for at the moment. As an entrepreneur you have certain goals you want your website to achieve. So, from the get go, your food website needs to find a balance between SEO, customer experience and your marketing agenda.

If your focus was just about search engine rankings and rankings life on the web would be a piece of cake. Possibly a more important consideration for your internet presence would be branding. Corporate or business identities should be an integrated aspect of food website’s internet presence and traditional marketing plan. Many brick and mortar businesses miss a valuable opportunity by not incorporating their website links and even special offers in their printed material.

Traditional printed advertising literature is exponentially more expensive than the space of a single web page! Why not dual purpose your printed materials as a means to drive website traffic to your restaurant, chef, or culinary website?

The bottom line for website traffic is making your website an enjoyable experience. You can quantify that user experience by having an effective internet stats tool that not only tells you how many visitors and page hits you get, but tells you what your “bounce rate” is. The bounce rate percentage is based upon how long your website visitors are actually staying on your site. Do they pop in, get frustrated and leave after just a few seconds, or do they find what they are looking for and spend some time browsing? The lower the bounce rate percentage the better you are doing at meeting your website visitor needs!

Don’t spend so much time and energy driving traffic to your food website that you neglect your user experience. Keeping your website fresh with updated images and information will help insure that your visitors enjoy their experience on your website and even encourage them to come back to see what is new.

Know your target audience and take time to research what your visitors are looking for on your website. Stat tools will help with this also! Viewing your stat reports you will be able to determine what is working and what should be left by the way side. What pages are most popular; can you duplicate a style, information type of graphic appearance on other pages to achieve the same level of popularity?

If something is not working, or not popular, switch it up and try something else! By understanding your user trends and statistics you should be able to tell what is effective on your site. Take advantage of this information to streamline your website’s user experience, making it clean and efficient. If through your statistical analysis you find elements your users don’t’ use, take them off of your website.

As an educated food website owner you will have the ability to funnel your website traffic exactly where you want them to go.  Keep your approach interesting yet technically appropriate and you should not negatively affect your search engine ranking. Successful websites need many elements and ingredients working in concert. Keep your design and technical elements clean and efficient.

FoodSiteDesign is here to help you at any stage of your new web development or on going website needs. Our specialty is creating food focused websites that get noticed. We can be contracted for an individual food website project or we can be your Internet IT department without the expense of a full-time staff.

Michael
Senior Food Website Developer
http://FoodsiteDesign.com

Here is a great brownie recipe to go along with my French Vanilla Ice Cream recipe that I posted last week. It also is excellent served as a trio with the ice cream and topped with Chef Callahan’s hot fudge sauce.

Try it and let me know what you think!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoons butter, softened
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar

All websites have something in common; just because you build it does not mean that they will come! Restaurants, chefs and online food gourmet shops who wish to make a profit from their online presence need to understand the basics on website marketing.

As a website developer focusing on the food industry my BLOG here will be dedicated to helping the professional culinarians, restaurateurs, and other food professionals achieve their online goals and objectives!

There are thousands of food related websites out there. How are you going to garner your share of the web traffic? ChefCallahan.com is just one example of how implementing a focused internet marketing plan can increase your website traffic. FoodSiteDesign started working with Chef Callahan about a year ago and this website visitors have risen form 10 -20 per day to nearly 20,000 visits per month and an average of almost four page views per visit.

Over the next weeks and months I’ll be sharing some tips with you on how to increase your food site traffic and increase your profit potential.  This is not a “silver bullet” quick fix, but an integrated comprehensive approach that should be part of your overall business plan.

Thanks for reading,

Mitchell,
Website Designer
http://FoodSiteDesign.com

Everyone has to find their inspiration somewhere. When it comes to being on the leading edge of the culinary arts you would be hard pressed to find a better source of inspiration than Chef Thomas Keller. Like most chefs who keep up with culinary trends I’ve been familiar with Chef Keller’s stellar reputation over the years. However, it was not until my children gave me one of his cook books for my birthday, ad hoc at home, that I actually started exploring his recipes and techniques.

Ad Hoc at Home

In Ad Hoc at Home—a cookbook inspired by the menu of his casual restaurant Ad Hoc in Yountville—he showcases more than 200 recipes for family-style meals. This is Keller at his most playful, serving up such truck-stop classics as Potato Hash with Bacon and Melted Onions and grilled-cheese sandwiches, and heartier fare including beef Stroganoff and roasted spring leg of lamb. In fun, full-color photographs, the great chef gives step-by-step lessons in kitchen basics— here is Keller teaching how to perfectly shape a basic hamburger, truss a chicken, or dress a salad. Best of all, where Keller’s previous best-selling cookbooks were for the ambitious advanced cook, Ad Hoc at Home is filled with quicker and easier recipes that will be embraced by both kitchen novices and more experienced cooks who want the ultimate recipes for American comfort-food classics.

Thomas Keller is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. Keller is probably best known for his landmark Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California. He has won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997. The French Laundry is a perennial winner in the annual Restaurant Magazine list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World.

In 2005, he was awarded the three star rating in the inaugural Michelin Guide for New York for his restaurant Per Se, and in 2006, he was awarded three stars in the inaugural Michelin Guide to the Bay Area for The French Laundry. He is the only American chef to have been awarded simultaneous three stars.

Just got back from spending a few days at the Disney Resort in SoCal. Wow, who knew they were so into food there. Really, the food was much better than many of the rides! Think I’m kidding? Check out the entry below from the Disney Food Blog Site: Read the rest of this entry»

You can now share your culinary skills with the world here on ChefCallahan.com. Thousands of people per month visit ChefCallahan to find recipes and other useful culinary information.

When you join as a member here you get FREE instant access to ChefCallahan forums, blogs, and updates.

Sign up today for your FREE membership!

Our Members  Food BLOGs are now fully functional! you can start blogging today!

I think I mentioned in my last post that I had been trying Chef Callahan’s Sorbet Recipes. He has such a wide variety that it took me several weeks just to get through the fruit sorbets! Wow, making your own sorbet with fresh, seasonal fruit is unbelievably awsome!

Next on my agenda will be to get a bit more adventureous and try some of the savory sorbet recipes in Chef’s collection. I’ve had ”intermezzos or palate cleansers between courses” served at higher end restaurants, so possibly it is thust the name “Sorbet” that is throwing me and my thought process. I am reluctantly anticipating the savory instead of sweet chilling sensations.

First on my savory sorbet list will be Chef’s Roasted red Pepper Sorbet. Chef Callahan suggested that I try serving this recipe with shrimp or scallops. I’ll let you know how it worked out in a few days!

Roasted Red Pepper Sorbet
Ingredients:

1 pound red bell peppers
4 shallots, roughly chopped
1 cup chilled simple syrup
2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce, or to taste
1/2 cup lemon juice

Method:

• Coat red bell pepper skins with a small amount of vegetable oil. 
• Broil on a foil lined baking sheet skin side up for 10 minutes or until charred or roasted
• Enclose the red pepper completely in the foil for 10 minutes
• Peel and discard the roasted skin, seeds and membranes.
• Place all ingredients in a food processor or blender, and puree.
• Pour into an ice cream maker, and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions
• Freeze thoroughly
• Spin again in your ice cream maker then freeze again.

Bethel, Alaska like many other rural areas in the U.S. doesn’t have a large gluten-free population and therefore, we don’t have much available in terms of gluten-free foods in our grocery stores. Things like bagels, pretzels and even pasta are hard – and even impossible – to find at stores in some areas. Celiac disease and gluten intolerance do not discriminate – both conditions affect people in cities or rural areas – basically anywhere you go there are people who should avoid gluten.

There are good and bad things about shopping online. The most negative thing for me is paying to ship food. I was pleasantly surprised recently to find Gluten Free Products available on Chef Callahan’s   Online Gourmet Shop. The service is excellent as long as you know what you like and shipping is often FREE on orders over $25. I don’t ever order under $25, so I usually avoid paying any shipping charges.

Thank goodness for the internet! I’m not sure what people did before online shopping was available but my guess is that many of them went without gluten-free replacement foods. Of course, I’ve heard that some of the best products on the market have only been around for 10 years or less anyway, so they might not have been missing too much. In Europe some companies have been producing gluten-free “replacement” foods for over 50 years but that is not the case in this country.

In large metro areas like NYC, Denver, San Francisco, Seattle, DC, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Boston and Atlanta, gluten-free food choices in stores abound. In fact, most people find it overwhelming when faced with six gluten-free pastas to choose from. It’s kind of odd that these areas have almost as many choices as gluten eaters do, in many food categories. In some cases we seem to have even more.

Sharon
AKA GlutenFreeGal

I’m always on the lookout for news and information regarding Celiac Disease and “Gluten related topics. Here is one of my favorite links: http://celiac-disease.com/

Hi Friends;

Member Food BLOGS are not fully functional yet!

I am in the process of working through some installation issues with my Wordpress installation. I am hoping to have the Member’s Food BLOG section fully operational in a few days.

At this time you are able to open an account, but you won’t have access to your control panel.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for your patients!

Michael Callahan
Executive Chef
Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation