SEO Value review for a web-based application for tracking restaurants
A structured, 4 to 6-week, value-proposition-anchored rapid assessment of a SEO performance potential for social restaurant list app (GTM stage):
01
Analysis of the strength of the business model & value proposition vis a vis the organic search findability requirements
02
Assessment of SEO-relevant value delivery flow
- publishing docs,
- accessing docs,
- crawling / retrieving content,
- indexation, ranking & serving in SERP,
- clicks, conversion, sales.
03
Diagnostics of main types of wastes, including
- high-value characteristics of SEO process-related activity,
- client positioning vs the content.
04
Assessment of product-market fit to identify SEO quick wins and long-term improvement opportunities.
- Bohdan Lytvyn
- July 28, 2025
- 02:26 pm
Legend
Client has approached to conduct an independent review of SEO strategy by another agency, including reviewing Gen-AI generated / LLM generated SEO strategy and plans.
Core service / program: SEO value review by the Wasteless SEO™ methodology.
Scope of work:
- feasibility study,
- assessment of business model vs organic search channel fit (findability requirements),
- SEO strategy audit.
Deliverables: SEO value report, corrected GTM plan.
Industry: B2C apps
Sub-Industry: restaurant tracking, restaurant lists, social restaurants discovery.
Customer product is an ios mobile app
that allows users - foodies and food critics - to:
Problem, in simple words
The main problem is a connection between the product value and the proposed SEO strategy and overall user acquisition strategy.
Primary keywords would include pairs made of cuisine type / dish + location, e.g. “Italian food hanoi”.
The focus of Value Delivery Stream Mapping in the SEO value review was show the means (SEO strategy) does not respond to ends (Conversion).
If an app enables creating restaurants lists, then, what percentage of customers who search for "Best pasta in London" can potentially convert to an active user and create their shareable lists?
BOHDAN LYTVYN
Founder, Nertis Agency
Solution
Stick to 3 building blocks of documents: a list, restaurant profile & customer profile.
Create indicative lists or templates.
Invest in building media coverage (PR) at the early stage.
To jumpstart the content production I suggested creating indicative lists or templates, on the basis of which customers may create their own spin-off.
Example: “Top 15 affordable seafood restaurants in Nice {for yacht lovers}" or "Best roof restaurants in Paris {for a girl party}".
Such lists have a high potential to create discussion and comments around them.
BOHDAN LYTVYN
Founder, Nertis Agency
Deliverables
Through a SEO value review report and product - client fit we've helped a client save at least €100k planned at the first stage of GTM strategy
€100k
saved as a result of corrected GTM strategy
SEO vs Value Proposition Findings
The Poor connection between the Product Value and SEO strategy.
Conversion Funnel, i.e. what we want customer to do on site, does not fit intent of customers from organic search
The two problems for customers
If we define Conversion (or a passage from user to a customer role) as reviewing or commenting, then we might potentially have two problems here:
- Poor match between expectations of search engine users coming to a landing page using a broad keywords and the value of the product,
- A pressure to post photos, write reviews on a user.
Matching SEO and Customer expectations
SOLUTION
Rethink all broad target keywords, i.e. the foundations of keywords plan, to drive away the potentially low converting ones, e.g. "Italian food Hanoi", "authentic Italian food London", etc.
Why it is important?
Immediate SEO implications of an inconsistency in a Value Stream, which manifests itself as a mismatch between search intent of target keywords and the motivations of the user, is a Low conversion rate, High number of bounced clicks (returning back to search) as well as "Short" clicks (staying on a page for several moments only) -- al the important data that would translate into ranking signals.
General findings
The value proposition is not clear and, therefore, is not verbalized well enough.
Website text is not optimized for potential keywords that resonate with the target customers.
Value proposition is not clear
It might be difficult to grasp at once what value the site (app) brings. For example, the CTA (call to action) button saying "Build my taste database" is quite vague: it does not tell what the outcome of the signing up.
Immediate SEO implication of this: search engines might not easily evaluate the purpose of the page, let alone decide if the purpose of the page is achieved. This will result in delays in indexation etc.
On the level of SEO strategy and all SEO-related processes, the poorly defined value proposition results in ineffective design of the system of value delivery, low customer satisfaction and numerous resulting waste along the value stream.
Example: It is a social network for sharing your taste in food. Use it as a diary to record your opinion about restaurants as you visit them (to be continued).
Website text is not optimized for potential keywords
“Voice of the customer” is largely unrecognized as the vocabulary the product uses stands away from that of potential customers. For example, keywords referenced in the site’s <heading> as well as in website copy are:
- Inconsistent and
- Appeal to potentially different audiences (and products).
Recommendation: keyword research to find the relevant search terms.
Website copy is written by AI
It is likely to impact indexation by search engines. Recommendation: create and add human-generated content for most important URLs.
Programmatic SEO Strategy Review
Little or no linkage between a programmatically created URLs and conversion
Potentially, very high crawl waste, i.e. losses in productivity on the stage of consumption of docs by bots
How to create a linkage between a programmatically created URLs and conversion?
Building URLs from external API data is generally a plausible solution, the main question is the value added. If it's users who add the value to pages with their reviews and comments, then the question is as follows:
- Why would users comment? or
- What needs to be done for them to start spinning the content flywheel?
At this point, the apprehension of the problem and its possible solution is missing.
Make a customer spin the wheel
SOLUTION
Feature user profiles (who mention the restaurant, etc) and lists already created by users.
Waste, Productivity and SEO-related metrics discussion
Overall, the projections of the number of pages to be produced and the objectives within the first 30 days are not realistic.
For a newly registered site with a low PageRank (low authority and quality signals), the key problem lies in the “transmission” stage of the SEO Value flow. This is what stands between a production of content and its consumption. This includes such sub-stages as:
- Crawling,
- Retrieving
- Indexation and
- Ranking and Serving of documents in the search engine results page.
Solution
To mitigate crawling and indexation waste attributable to the quality ranking signals it's recommended making a dedicated risk management
- employ Public Relations (PR) and attract quality backlinks from authority sites to the app,
- ensure more human-generated, “value added” content,
- carefully design the conversion path for the main types of pages.
Search engines may predict the probability of ranking a document as well as number of potential clicks to it, so a URL that won't potentially succeed will not be indexed at all. This creates a waste attributable to the transmission stage, which negatively impacts the whole user acquisition strategy.
BOHDAN LYTVYN
Founder, Nertis Agency
WHAT WE'VE SEEN
Risk Assessment
The Phase 2 of the current SEO strategy, which refers to a real-time and active generation of page content from
- user reviews,
- ratings and
- curated lists
presents a rather simplistic view of how the actual interaction of the customer and product value may work out SEO-wise.
The idea of the site is creating a social restaurant discovery. You don't need another ranking or reviews that are easily available via API.
This model of indexable and Google-friendly Truffle App
What you may need is for the customers to jumpstart creating lists and discussing them with each other, the content of which will be made indexable to search engines.
BOHDAN LYTVYN
Founder, Nertis
The main risks of the proposed SEO strategy
Quality signals
Lack of E-E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) and Quality signals in general
Info uniqueness
Potentially poor content: potential high % of duplication with an already existent "list" featured on other sites
Need of CPV
Need for a solid and deep CPV-based taxonomy (Category - Product - Value), e.g. Cuisine - Dish, etc. that is flexible enough to integrate all the data sources.
Value curve
Content value curve: value will be added only in time, but you need to have the documents indexed and ranked in the first place.
Site Architecture
Page design and the internal linking structure (also known of site architecture): for example, as per a restaurant profile, this relates inclusion of
- user profiles,
- similar restaurants,
- lists (where it is featured) and
- similar lists, etc.
Solution proposed is a hybrid one that mixes together into one:
Yet, it does not create restaurant list as it:
We’re not theorists — we fix, implement, and scale what matters.
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