Review written for Beaminster Community Website by KatyPotatie
We wander into town looking for a little nook on a Thursday evening that offers us a bite to eat. It’s slightly drizzly outside and the glow of the warm lights from businesses in the square give us a sense of belonging, and welcome.
We notice a new little glow. A glow from a window that we didn’t expect to be open on a Thursday night. One that we hadn’t really noticed before. The glow emanates from The Steak Out, and the open door bids us welcome. We go inside.
The Steak Out, previously known as Vicki’s Sandwich Bar & Tea Rooms, in Hogshill street, has had a makeover. The country green has turned into warm shades of chocolatey browns and new menu boards on the wall indicate that there is so much more on offer. We sit down at one of the tables at the window. We like to watch the world go by. The décor is a combination of hushed leather and industrial metal, with an allure of a cigar bar. The licensed bar is beautifully kitted out with a wide selection of things to drink, and well laid-out tables in this relatively small space provide perfectly private and intimate little dining spaces.
As the candle flickers on our table, we cast our eyes past the local supply of Clipper Teas that are for sale on the shelves beside us, to the Specials Board hanging on the wall. The Steak Out specialises in providing the best quality steaks. Whether you’re partial to some rump (no innuendos intended), or whether it’s a rib-eye that captures your heart – be assured that your tastes will be looked after. If it’s not steak that you’re in the mood for, a variety of other dishes on offer are guaranteed to satisfy too.
We settle on a rib-eye steak (medium rare), and a chicken breast with a bacon & brie cream sauce, a pint of lager and a cider for the lady. We have a chat to Steven Stanners, the owner and chef. We marvel at his culinary experience, having previously run the Greyhound Inn as well as been the chef at Winyards Gap restaurant. He tells us about the challenges of running a restaurant and the paths their lives have taken to develop The Steak Out into the place it is today. He tells us about their popular mid-week roast (£6 for 1-course, £8 for 2-courses), and reassures us that they still continue to provide the same sandwich take-away option as before – making sure that their focus is to attract new clientèle, while at the same time, not alienate their already existing patrons.
The Steak Out offers a range of mouth-watering breakfasts and lunches too. “If it’s merely a drink that you’re after, then come and have a seat at the bar and enjoy some quiet time”, says Steve, looking out of the window as a gent and his Labrador walk by. Walking through the bar, you enter into another little room. “This is the chill-out area”, he says. Whether you want to sit quietly, enjoy a pint, and watch the rugby, or whether you want to hire this area out for stork parties or kitchen teas – this little room, clad with art by local artists, and comfortable welcoming leather sofas, is perfect if you are looking for a private space.
Steven uses only British 21-day matured steak and sources local ingredients for his dishes as far as possible.
Phil Collins lulls us along as we tuck into the meal put before us. The steak, cooked perfectly, is a welcome tummy-warmer to accompany an ice cold cider and we disappear into a food-euphoria for a little while. The chicken is cooked to perfectly and accompanied by fresh seasonal vegetables. Servings are not shy, and the accompaniment of side dishes will more than fill most diners.
The Steak Out is open daily from 8:00am – 5:00pm, but on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, service extends well into the evening for those looking for a place to have dinner.
We walk out into the Beaminster evening air. We feel satisfied. Full. But most of all, we feel that we’ve been with friends. Welcomed and appreciated. We make our way, drunk on good food, back home to catch our latest favourite episode of Mad Dogs.
(KatyPotatie)
We recently had a conversation with a friend who is planning a huge finale to a great festival in our town. The gist of the conversation centered around a few tips to get their website recognised and found on search engines.
These were some of the tips we gave them
1: CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT
How SEO works is that search engines trawl the internet looking at common words that people search for. They capture the search terms, along with the URLs of the websites, of those search terms. The more content that is used from one URL, the more the search engine thinks, “ah! This URL / Site must be important if there is a lot of traffic to and from the website – ie, there are lots of people using it”. So the more it recognises the URL in a search, the more relevance it will apply, and the higher the ranking in the results.
So, to do that, you need to create content. You need to be posting relevant STUFF to the website, using a few key words that pretty much points to your website, on a regular basis and people need to be visiting the website.
There are a number of ways that you can do this:
– blog : A Blog allows you to constantly write info / updates etc onto your website and generate new content as often as you like!
– social media traffic with all references back to your website: Ensure that all your tweets and posts point back to pages within your website.
– effective Search Engine Optimisation application that sits on your website – where you are able to enter key terms that you think people would use to find your website.
2: Piggy Back off others
If you don’t have the time to spend on constantly sitting on the website and updating it with info, then another quick way to generate some traffic to your website is to piggy back off others. Have as many businesses / people as possible, share a link on their website that points back to yours. You can encourage them to put something on their website by writing a little press release or an article for them – that they can simply copy and paste onto theirs. Ensure that you are on all community websites, and blogs, and newspaper sites etc, event calendars etc. It all helps in the trawling process – giving the Search Engines bigger reason to think that your site is important.
3: SEO Search terms
Ensure that your SEO terms are mentioned in your website as often as possible. (Esp in the opening paragraphs of any articles / pages you use). Ensure that whatever web administration you use, eg Joomla! , WordPress etc – all have a plugin installed that allows you to capture the necessary Metadata (keywords, descriptions etc).
4: Social Media
Marketing is largely online – the entire community is moving online – and trends in business certainly reflect that – advertising rates are going down rapidly and advertisers often struggle to meet quota as people believe in online presence much more than printed presence for many services. So, where Social Media helps is to generate additional search hits that point back to your website. Ie: when you tweet, you include a link to your website, when you put something on Facebook, you put a link to your website. The more people clicking on the link and going through to your website, the higher the interest and therefore the higher the rankings.
I used an example of a local community website that we developed recently. Having only launched the website 3 months ago, the struggle to have it discovered by leading Search Engines was number 1 on our priority list. Our vision was to use it as a portal into the village where locals as well as visitors could find news items, business information and more. The only reason why we have moved up the chain so quickly in these 3 months, is because we are CONSTANTLY posting new news articles…. so the content on the website is being renewed on a daily basis. We’re also then telling people via Twitter and Facebook, when there is a new news article, and we post the link to the website.
The number of unique visitors to the website (daily) has gone up from 10 a day, to now an average of 62 NEW and UNIQUE users every day. So word is spreading. And that’s only because we are adding and adding and adding content to the website.
If you are thinking that you may need some help with your SEO, or your website, why not give us a call.
Quick tip of the day:
Are the URLs on your website SEO-friendly?
ie: Do they read as a whole of lot gobble-di-gook, or do they actually make sense?
We are surprised at how often we come across websites where the URLs of each of the pages read something like this:
www.freshbrewmarketing.com/AB?12223-23AC/%455tr/89…. etc etc etc.
Where they could read as simple as:
www.freshbrewmarketing.com/services
Remember, the art of SEO is about making your website ‘findable’. Who’s going to find you, if your address is made up of a bunch of letters and numbers?
Didn’t think so.
Making the change is usually as simple as ticking a simple option in your website back-end system. (Assuming that your website is current, and up to date).
And if you’re still confused, why not get in touch and we’ll help you through it.
Being of “that age”, the imminent arrival, and prospective announcement rates by new expectant mothers (and fathers) seems to happen more and more frequently. So you would understand my amusement at a recent conversation amongst a group of friends where the topic of a recently-discovered pregnancy quickly turned from the usual “ooh’s, aah’s and when’s and how’s…. ” (well.. not exactly the “how’s”.. but you know what I mean), to one which started to brainstorm a few ideas as to HOW the announcement would be made.
It was only after sitting at my desk one day, that I noticed an ever impending phenomenon that is raising its head above the social media horizons… that I had to jump in and take note.
We all know how social media has, “changed our lives”, “made the world smaller”, “reduced our privacy”…. “changed our lives”… but now we take one step in another direction where, instead of being the medium to make an announcement, social media has become so intrinsically involved in our lives that we need to make a decision and almost create a plan, as to how we use that medium, in order to broadcast probably one of the biggest announcements of our lives.
We have adapted to this social media tool in such a way that our lives are becoming dress rehearsals for our Facebook Profiles. Our innermost thoughts (and dinner menus) become our Twitter Voice.
I look at a few individual recent announcements: 
Make no mistake, I encourage innovation, I celebrate excitement and I revel in the unusual. I am a social media fanatic. I know how it works and I recognise its power. But I do wonder: When that day comes, and someone flicks the switch and all Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Vibe, Keek, Instagram servers, and our lunch breaks go back to being 5 minutes on the park bench outside, or a conversation with that person in accounting who just never seems to talk…. when we suddenly discover that the blood that pumps through our veins is haemoglobin and not our Relationship Status – will we be able to cope?
Probably.
It would just hurt for a while.
We are officially 1 year old. 1 whole year.
We are so proud to have hit this milestone and more so, thankful to those who have walked this journey with us. Those of you, who have spent late nights on the phone with us, those who have had to fix things we’ve broken, those who have had to give up their Saturday an urgent Press Release creation… Thank you!
We look forward to a fantastic year 2 and to develop ourselves even more, as we walk this journey with you.