Tonka Park » food

Getting Sunny Anderson’s Attention

Matt — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:46:51 +0000

The Red Bird Life is one of my most recent projects. The site is the adventure of Vanessa Anderson as she tackles life and cooking. She has been blogging for just over 4 months, with the last month being at The Red Bird Life. Prior to that point she was using a hosted blogger account. When we moved her to WordPress we knew we would sacrifice some of the links she had built up but we were looking to take advantage of her own domain name and a WordPress managed site. Since the move she has improved recipe and picture management afforded by plugins and custom coding in WordPress.

Recently we have been reviewing the Google analytics for The Red Bird Life. We noticed a few key details. Slowly the readership is building. Nothing amazing by seasoned blogger standards but it is a start. However, we have noticed that lots of her search engine traffic is finding her site for one of her recipe reviews in particular. The recipe, Airman Anderson’s Chicken, is by Food Network’s, Sunny Anderson. You can check out the post here.

If you actually went to the post and looked at the comments you will see that Sunny Anderson herself posted a response. She has more recently commented again on Vanessa’s experience with another one of her recipes. It seems Sunny Anderson is one of our regular readers, or at least she monitors blogs posting about her recipes proactively. (And no Vanessa is not related to Sunny.)

Generating More Pageviews

In an effort to turn these search results into repeat readers we have several plans in place. First this was a post originally posted on her blogger blog. On that site she was limited with the picture formatting. When we migrated the picture did not fit perfectly. We did not go back and fix all the posts but we have taken the step to fix this photo as it is one of the most read articles on the site. The photo now fits the width of the blog post.

Additionally, we are using the All in One Seo Pack for WordPress. I have tweaked the settings to take advantage of the keywords that are most used in organic searches finding this post by updating the meta keywords, page title and description for this specific post.

We are looking at the prospect of using a related posts plugin to push readers from one post to the next. We are pleased with the Archive and Tag Cloud and the presentation of the category/tags pages as they do a beautiful job of listing posts with mouth watering photos. See for yourself on the desserts page.

Finally we are thinking of having a new post with variations or side dishes for this Sunny Anderson recipe that Vanessa has used or recommends. This will hopefully keep the search results coming in and we will continue to work at turning visitors into followers.

Finally this post, is also a step in the overall strategy for The Red Bird Life getting more exposure. Hopefully, broadening the audience who might not otherwise look for a food blog.

No related posts.

Beach Burger – Camdenton

Matt — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 05:09:42 +0000

On another one of our many eating out trips we decided upon the burger place by Walmart in Camdenton. Not sure how long they have been open but the place looks rather new and there are pictures from Fall 2008. Beach Burger, is a small cafe-like burger joint in the Walmart plaza. The inside has the surfer motif and you order at the register and the food is carried to you at your seat.

We have eaten at Beach Burger once, but have gotten the food to go at least twice now. The burgers are really good and they even grill onions to put on top. The fries are also very good. For me the burgers in a way remind me of In-N-Out Burger, which we had in Phoenix. The burger is thicker at Beach Burger, but both places have the same toppings and use the same “secret sauce”. My wife enjoyed the chicken salad but didn’t care for the flip flop salad which is the fruit and lettuce salad. The fruit one costs more and wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as the chicken salad. Also they have this quad burger that if you eat it earns you a photo on the wall.

The night we ate there they were hosting an event for the local car club. There was a parking lot full of vintage restored cars and other customs to view. There was music and a big crowd. It looked like a great event and everyone appeared to be enjoying the food and company.

“beach burger camdenton” google search resulted in few relevant results. There seems to be no restaurant website and only a few reviews or mentions of this place. For how good the food is and the events they host it would be nice if they would have a site other than the yellow book or the chamber of commerce listing. A website could help show off the hours, specials, events and even showcase the menu with pictures of the food to entice people to visit that might be in town just for the weekend.

While searching for the image for this post I did find a stock logo, on istockphoto.com, I believe is used by Beach Burger here in Camdenton. I wonder if the owners found the logo on their own or if they paid someone to add the finishing touches to their design.

El Caparol – Camdenton

Matt — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:21:43 +0000

Another local Mexican place, El Caparol. I believe that this is the cattle rancher. I did live in Phoenix but it has been since freshman year in high school that I read or spoke any Spanish. The picture of the taco salad is not from the restaurant but I need a picture to go along.

This place is real close to our house. I almost feel lazy driving there. But walking there with a 20 month old is just not an option. This place has good food. I have enjoyed a chicken chimichanga and 12 oz beer on tap both times we have gone. The salsa tasted different both times we went. I thought the second time it was too much like tomato sauce, but that is why my wife really enjoyed it that time.

A review of the El Caporal internet presence or lack thereof.

A google search of “el caporal camdenton” results in no links to a company website, but many yellow book and directory listings. I am beginning to think that most places around here don’t think it is necessary to put up a website when starting a restaurant. For a small up front cost and an annual fee for hosting it would probably help just as much as they are spending on yellow page ads or other printed advertising around town. I will have to address this more in a separate post as I get a better grasp on the realities of technology usage here in Camdenton Missouri.