Negi & Nori’s Case Study: How We Improved Negi & Nori’s Online Reach

Negi & Nori’s Case Study:

Negi & Nori’s Case Study: How We Improved Negi & Nori’s Online Reach

Negi & Nori is a Japanese Restaurant located in London, UK. They are famous for delivering authentic Japanese food in London. Our collaboration began with building their website and optimizing it for SEO to attract more local customers.

Our goal was to build a custom website that showcased Negi & Nori’s menu and brand identity. We designed it in Figma, developed it in WordPress, and created brand guidelines for consistency.

After developing the website our task was to optimize the website for SEO and bring more local traffic. We also developed a brand guideline to stay consistent on every marketing channel.

Here’s what we delivered during this phase:

Here is the result after 10 months of implementing our SEO strategy:

Website Development for Negi & Nori

Creating a Customized Design

Designing a website for a restaurant is not an easy task. A restaurant website should be visually appealing. Color, font, and all the design elements should reflect the type of food the restaurant offers.

Therefore, we first used Figma to design the UI. We designed multiple home pages so that our clients pick the best one that reflects the food and also Japanese culture.

As most people browse restaurant websites from their mobile devices or tablets, we made sure the mobile version was fully responsive, user-friendly, and optimized for fast loading and smooth navigation.

After multiple revisions, we managed to get the perfect homepage that our client was looking for.

After finishing the home page we started to work on other pages.

Each page was designed to highlight its rich menu, cultural roots, and welcoming atmosphere, ensuring its website left a memorable impression.

Implementing User-Focused Features

To make the website functional and user-friendly, we moved from design to development with WordPress. Our implementation process includes:

Interactive Menu Page: A visually appealing layout where customers can explore their menu items with detailed descriptions and pricing.
Tabbed navigation on the menu page: We implemented tabbed navigation to organize different food and drink categories. This design allows users to stay on the same page while easily browsing through various menu items under each category.
Reservation System: We developed a very simple reservation system that helps visitors book a table easily in under 30 seconds. The reservation system has a built-in calendar.
Blog Section: A dedicated space for regular updates, news, and engaging food-related content to keep visitors connected. The blog section has a search option and a category section so that users can easily find the topic they are looking for.

Mobile Responsiveness: We ensured the users could easily navigate the website on their smartphones and tablets.

Consistent Branding

To ensure consistency in their online presentation, we developed a complete set of brand guidelines. From typography and color schemes to image styles, the guidelines helped bring cohesion to their digital identity.

Challenges Faced

Building a website for a restaurant comes with its own specific challenges. We encountered a few along the way, such as:

Challenge 1: Create a design that looks good and is easy to use for everyone.
Challenge 2: A restaurant website needs to display many images. Our concern was to maintain fast loading speeds despite having large, high-quality images.

Challenge 3: Creating a layout that would allow users to book reservations smoothly.

Solutions Delivered

To balance visuals and usability, we focused on a clean, simple design that removes clutter and makes key features easy to access.
To tackle slow loading, we optimized the images by compressing them without losing quality and incorporated fast-loading hosting solutions.
For easy reservations, we designed a simple, error-free booking form that works seamlessly on any device.

10 Months of SEO Growth: 46K Monthly Visits, 3.5K Keywords, and 7.9K Backlinks

We started doing SEO for Negi & Nori in April 2024. Here is the result that our SEO team brought. Let’s not forget the writing team who wrote the content for this website. Without good-quality content, these results would have been impossible to achieve.

Traffic Growth: Organic visits reached 46K per month.
Organic Search Console Clicks increased by 52.83%
Search Console Impressions grew by 46.03%
Organic Traffic rose by 34.14%
Top Rankings: #1 position for multiple high-intent keywords, driving steady traffic.
Keyword Growth: Over 3.5K keywords now bring visitors to the site.
Backlink Profile: 7.9K backlinks from 256 domains, boosting credibility.
Authority Score: Improved to 13, with a strong traffic-to-backlink ratio.

Keyword Research

Our in-depth keyword research process laid the foundation for Negi & Nori’s SEO success.

We targeted high-intent, location-specific terms to attract diners ready to take action. Using SEO tools and our experience, we identified relevant keywords and grouped them into broad, local, and long-tail groups.

Key Achievements

Ranked for over 3.5K keywords, with several high-intent terms reaching the #1 position.
The website is getting steady traffic from both broad and specific search terms.

Challenges and Solutions

Challenge: Restaurant is a very competitive niche with many established restaurants with a strong domain authority.

Solution: We focused on niche, low-competition keywords initially. We also covered relevant topics to establish topical authority.

Top Ranked Keywords

As of February 2025, Negi & Nori is ranking for over 16,000 keywords. More than 25 keywords are in the Position Zero on Google Search Results. Here are some of the keywords that Negi & Nori is currently (as of February 2, 2025) ranking at the top for:

steamed vs fried dumplings

dumplings steamed vs fried

fried or steamed dumplings

dumplings steamed or fried

fried vs steamed dumplings

is sushi halal

is shin ramen halal

how many calories in bowl of ramen

fried dumplings vs steamed

steamed or fried dumplings

shin ramen halal

sushi halal

is shin ramyun halal

are pickled carrots good for you

Content Creation

We all know content is king when it comes to SEO. After Google published their helpful content update back in 2023 content became more important than all other SEO tactics. Therefore, we focused on creating top-quality content that will beat competitors and earn a higher ranking on search engines.

Fortunately, we have a strong in-house content writing team with over 5 years of industry experience. They provided good quality content following the guidelines of Google.

We did not use any Blackhat technique. A restaurant business is a long-term process. With good content, we made sure that the website never gets penalized or faces any index issues after Google launches any core update.

What We Did: We created and optimized 8 blog posts. We covered topics like Japanese recipes, sushi-making tips, and dining trends. We targeted high-intent keywords and made sure they were relevant to the audience.
Challenge: It was not an easy task to rank content in a highly competitive restaurant market.
Solution: We conducted in-depth research to uncover gaps in existing content. Our writers delivered blog posts that answered unique, unaddressed questions. We also used the inverse pyramid technique in writing so that readers and search engines both find their answers quickly.

On-Page SEO

For on-page SEO we used both optimization tools and our expertise. Depending on one can bring negative results. Therefore we used a combination of skills and on-page optimization tools. Here is what we did:

What We Did

Optimized 20 images and added descriptive alt texts.
Incorporated relevant keywords into meta tags, headings, and page content without overdoing it.
We made sure all pages, including the menu, reservation, and blog sections, had a clear structure.

Challenges and Our Strategy: NLP and LSI keywords placement play a vital role in search rankings. However, relying entirely on tools can create a negative impression by affecting readability. But our experienced and skilled content writers made that process easy.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO plays the most vital role in increasing domain authority. Without a strong DA, it’s not easy to rank higher in this competitive market. However, creating top-quality backlinks is expensive.

Therefore, we developed a strategy of forum posting (which is free) and guest posting (not free for websites with high DA) to go with the budget of our client.

What We Did

Build 5 do-follow backlinks and 5 no-follow backlinks from reputable platforms.
Built 10 bookmarking profiles and completed 5 article submissions to establish credibility across the web
2 Mini Website Posting with map embeddings.
Used Quora to post 10 detailed answers, linking back to our client’s website.
Created 5 comment backlinks from food-related forums. These links bring visitors.

Challenge: Finding backlink opportunities in this crowded market is not easy. It took a while to find good-quality websites and convince them to give us do-follow links.
Solution: We focused heavily on quality backlinks over quantity. We created links from highly appropriate websites such as food blogs, local directories, and travel guides.

Technical SEO

Behind-the-scenes optimizations ensured the website performed effectively for both users and search engines. These efforts were crucial to achieving stability and scalability.

What We Did:

Improved site speed by optimizing scripts and compressing large images.
We made sure the website was mobile-responsive. We made sure clickable elements were not too close. Otpmize design for the mobile version.
Made sure there were no broken links and maintained a clean internal linking structure.
Integrated local SEO by embedding maps.

Challenge: Maintaining fast loading times with so many images and heavy design elements.

Solution: Compressed image files and implemented caching and content delivery network (CDN) solutions to increase instant loading speeds.

Local SEO

Local SEO is the most important part of a Restaurant. Most people search for restaurants on the go. Therefore, our target was to bring Negi & Nori when people are looking for Japanese food in London.

What We Did:

Created 5 local citations, listing Negi & Nori in trusted directories to strengthen their presence in local searches.
Embedded interactive maps across relevant pages, such as the contact and mini websites, to make finding their location hassle-free.
Used keywords with geographic modifiers, like “Halal Japanese restaurant in London,” to improve and be shown on location-based queries.
Optimized Google My Business with up-to-date information, quality images, and clear descriptions of their offerings.

Challenge Faced

Many restaurants had similar types of food and already had a good presence online.

Solution Delivered

We focused on building consistent citations across high-authority directories. It helps Search engines understand the credibility of a business. Google My Business optimization worked alongside website efforts.

Final Results & Impact

When Negi & Nori partnered with us, they had limited online engagement with some social media presence. We developed a visually stunning and highly functional restaurant website for them.

We took care of their SEO strategy and developed a content plan. We also wrote and published posts on their website.

Key Achievements

Website Development: Developed and implemented a custom website with a stylish design that captures users’ interests and provides a great user experience.
Organic Growth: Improved 52.83% for clicks, 46.03% for impressions, 34.14% for organic traffic, and 32.87% for organic users on Search Console.
Traffic Milestone: Surpassed 46K organic monthly visits within 10 months.
24 Top Ranked Keywords (Feb 2025): Secured #1 rankings on multiple high-intent keywords, and currently ranking for over 3.5 keywords in total.
Backlink Strength: A strong authority profile was built with 7.9K backlinks from 256 referring domains.
Local SEO: Increased local presence by managing Google My Business, embedding maps, and local directories.
Trust Factor: Increased the website authority score to 13. This is one area we hope to improve on in 2025.

Negi & Nori management is pleased with our performance and the results that we brought for them in under 1 year. The project is ongoing and we have already created our plan for 2025.

We hope to increase the website traffic by 200% in the first half of 2025. See you later when we update this case study.

Negi & Nori’s Case Study: How We Improved Negi & Nori’s Online Reach

Negi & Nori’s Case Study: How We Improved Negi & Nori’s Online Reach