Searching for Traverse City Restaurants

Warmer weather and the peak tourist season are fast approaching.

How are area restaurants tapping into tourists searching for a bite to eat?

The short answer: They aren’t.

A search for Traverse City Restaurants brings up two paid ads, a michigan.org ad and a mynorth.com ad.

The top 3 natural positions are from tripadvisor, yelp, and traversecity.com. I don’t know about you, but I hate going to a 3rd party website to find info on a local business or restaurant.

Kudos to: Firefly, Poppycocks, Hanna, Amical, North Peak, Stella and Mackinaw Brewing Company for breaking through all the clunky directories, listings and basic junk to make it to the first page.

Now, back to the two PPC ads….sorry Pure Michigan and MyNorth, but your PPC ads need work.

Let’s look at the Pure Michigan Ad:

The ad itself is fine (see screen shot). However, it is the landing page that is lacking. It takes me to a generic page about Traverse City being a four-season playground.

Remember, I Searched for Traverse City Restaurants. If I am a tourist searching on my iPhone or any other mobile device while looking for a place to eat, I don’t want to read about the beauty of the area, the championship golf courses, lighthouses, boutiques or galleries. I want to read (quickly) about restaurants!

On the landing page there is a link http://www.michigan.org/Things-to-Do/Dining/Default.aspx?city=G3602 buried in the text that will take the user to a list of restaurants tin the TC area. It is an alphabetical list that a user has to scroll through and then if interested, click on the name of the restaurant for info. Having to scroll long lists, click on links and use the back arrow to return to the original list are all aspects of a poor user experience.

The MyNorth landing page was just as bad, and hopefully I have made my point without going through the laundry list of items that contribute to a landing page that is lacking on the MyNorth directory.

Take aways: Local restaurants should rely on their own PPC marketing efforts and not a Michigan.org or a MyNorth.com ad which leads to a poor user experience.