[ Case study ]
Each location's online visibility lived on delivery platforms — the group paid commissions on every order while its own profiles ranked below third-party pages for its own brand terms. Menus online were stale PDFs.
CLIENT a restaurant group with 4 neighborhood locations — FOCUS Reclaim the brand terms
Representative examplesEvery case study in this library is an illustrative composite of the kind of engagement we deliver — written to show our method and standards, not to name clients.
Restaurants give away their customers by degrees, and this four-location group had handed over the whole ladder: searching any of its restaurants surfaced delivery-platform pages first, its own profiles ranked below them, and every order found through search paid a commission. Menus online were PDFs from a season ago. The kitchens change specials weekly; the group is run by people who cook and host, not by marketers; and the photography is phone-quality — real dining rooms, real plates, no studio.
Each location's online visibility lived on delivery platforms — the group paid commissions on every order while its own profiles ranked below third-party pages for its own brand terms. Menus online were stale PDFs.
We proposed reclaiming the brand's own searches before chasing new ones. Profiles and location pages would be aligned — hours, menus, ordering links — so the group's properties answer brand and 'near me' queries first. Weekly menus would become structured pages fed by the dish list the kitchens already maintain, ending the PDF ritual. Each location page would lead with its own ordering link and keep platform links beneath it: honest coexistence, because the delivery partnerships carry volume the group has no interest in sabotaging.
Just as important is what we ruled out, and why:
Profiles and location pages were aligned (hours, menus, ordering links) so the group's own properties answer brand searches first.
Weekly menus became structured pages with the dish data the group already maintained, replacing PDFs that search engines and diners both ignored.
Each location page leads with its own ordering link, with delivery-platform links below — honest coexistence, not sabotage.
Delivered by the growth pod — local SEO specialist over 5 weeks, with working increments reviewed with the client every week.
Obstacle
The first two weeks of menu updates stalled — the web routine assumed someone owns menus, and in a kitchen nobody does.
Handled: We rebuilt the step around the sous chef's prep list: specials go live when the prep list is written, entered by the closing front-of-house lead in ten minutes.
Obstacle
A delivery platform's account manager noticed the ordering links placed first and pushed back, questioning the group's commitment to the partnership.
Handled: Platform links stayed on-page and verbatim, fee-comparison wording was removed, and the operations manager restated the partnership's value; the placement itself was never contractually challenged.
Obstacle
One location changed its closing day mid-engagement and the profile kept the old hours until a diner complained publicly.
Handled: Hours joined the same Monday routine as menus, and a monthly check compares every profile's hours to the door sign — drift now gets caught before diners do.
The headline: average position on the group's own brand terms across the four locations (was: delivery platforms first) — 9 → 1, read from Rank tracking on brand + near-me terms. A second check: direct online orders versus the prior quarter at +29%.
The group's own pages answer its own name now, and specials reach the site the same day the kitchen writes them. The delivery relationships continue untouched, but the default that routed every search-driven order through a commission is broken. The managers stopped treating the website as a stranger's problem — the closing lead updates menus without being chased, which is the whole ballgame.
The result was read from Rank tracking on brand + near-me terms against the pre-engagement baseline over the stated window, with a guardrail check on direct online orders versus the prior quarter. Where platform-reported numbers and business outcomes differ, this record says which layer it is quoting.
What we would do differently
We would have set up the menu-update routine with the kitchen's actual workflow — the first two weeks of stale menus were a process problem, not a content one.
[ Related service ]
[ Related builds ]
4 27Weekly prompt-set answers citing or summarizing the brand's content, weeks 1 to 10
14 31Qualified inquiries per month attributed to service pages, over the 8 weeks after rollout versus the 8 before
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