Piel Canela: what was the starting point?
Piel Canela, a Latin American restaurant in the heart of Montreal, faced fierce competition in the restaurant sector. Despite flavourful food and a warm atmosphere, the restaurant did not appear in local search results.
Montreal's restaurant scene is fiercely competitive, and great food alone does not fill tables if diners cannot find you. Piel Canela had the menu and the atmosphere, but stayed missing from local search results, which kept it invisible to the very customers searching nearby for where to eat.
What did we find?
The observations below describe the issues found at the start of the work.
Missing from local results
Despite good food and a warm atmosphere, Piel Canela was not turning up in local search results. In a Montreal restaurant market this competitive, that gap online meant losing diners to competitors no matter how good the food was.
Google listing without optimization
The restaurant's Google Business listing was not optimized. An incomplete Google listing keeps a restaurant out of Maps and the local pack, which is where diners look first.
No local content
The website had no content built around the searches locals actually use. Without content matching how people search for a nearby restaurant, Piel Canela could not compete for the searches that lead to a booking.
Passive customer review management
Customer reviews were not being actively managed. Unmanaged reviews weaken both diner trust and the signals Google uses to rank local businesses.
Manual reservation reminders
Reservation reminders and post-visit follow-up were handled manually. Without automation, reservations were more likely to slip through and repeat visits were left to chance, which hurt retention.
What work did we do?
The actions below are the work completed for this client.
Social Influence launched a full local SEO strategy including Google listing optimization, optimized content creation, and a review management campaign. Intelligent workflows were deployed to automate reservation reminders and post-visit follow-up.
