SEO Audit – Taco Bell Vs. Wendy’s –Which appeals to you?

A comparison of Taco Bell and Wendy’s approach on SEO 

Written by: Stephanie Bagnell  

Introduction

To marketers SEO is very important because you want to be able to be easily found, especially before your competition. Using SEO can give your company an edge above the rest by showing up on the first page when consumers are searching terms related to your products/ service.  In this audit we compare Taco Bell and Wendy’s to see which company makes better use of SEO. In the fast food industry, it is important for companies to stand out amongst the rest because of the competitiveness in the industry. Appealing to your consumers and grabbing their interest and attention is important.

SEO Considerations	Wendy’s	Taco Bell
1.     URL:	https://www.wendys.com/en-ca	http://www.tacobell.ca/en
2.     Page Title	Wendy’s Quality Is Our Recipe	Taco Bell Canada | Live Mas
3.     Meta Description	Wendy’s is the real choice in fast food. We deliver quality fresh food with real ingredients that provide the best tasting fast food at wendys.com.	Welcome to the new Taco Bell Canada. Explore our menu and discover new products, find the closest Taco Bell location, view franchise information and more.
4.     Meta Keywords and Monthly search volume:	Not Found	Not Found
5.     Structural elements:  H1, H2, H3	H1 – Wendy’s H2 –Quality is our Recipe	H1 –TACO BELL CANADA | LIVE MAS H2 –New! Quesalupa . Crunchwrap Slider
6.     Strong tags	Not Found	Not Found
7.     Alt Text	Find Your Nearest Wendy's • Cheeseburgers • Chicken and Wraps • Fresh-Made Salads • Everyday Value Menu • Fries & Sides • Beverages • Wendy's Kids' Meal® • Frosty™ • Pair 2 at Wendy's • Meal Builder learn • Kids Meal • Spicy Chicken Sandwich • Power Mediterranean Chicken Salad • Find Your Nearest Wendy's • Chicken Strips Combo • Premium Lemonade • Baconator • Mobile App • Ghost Pepper Fries • Everyday Value Menu Favorites	Not Found
8.     Page Load Time	7.114 seconds	3.426 seconds
9.     Observations Regarding Page layout:	Easy to navigate, lots of links to different pages, easy to use on the computer as well as mobile phone	Straight forward, easy to use, organized, easy to use on mobile
10.  Observations Regarding Visual Content:	Very visually appealing, colorful, easy to read, simple, lots of graphics	Visually appealing, very simple and bold
11.  Call-to-action:	Find your nearest Wendy’s	New! Quesalupa
12.  Anchored Text: (list 3)	Wendy’s quality is our recipe, [no anchor text], dine	Taco bell, website, taco bell Canada
13.  Moz Established Links:  # to Root Domain	4 Root Domains	90 Root Domains
14.  Moz Established Links:  # Total Links	30 Total Links	281 Total Links
15.  Top 3 inbound links.	1.       (302 Redirect) [No Title] https://www.wendys.ca 2.       (302 Redirect) [No Title] www.wendys.ca/food/Menu 3.       (302 Redirect) [No Title]         www.wendys.ca/food/product	1.       Taco Bell Celebrates Fans North of the Border with Exclusive Canadian Creation   www.newswire.ca/news-releases/tacobell 2.       Canadian Freebies, Coupons, Deals, Bargains, Flyers, Contests Canada       Feeds2.feedburner.com/smartcanucks 3.       [No Title] www.bcchildrens.ca/health-info
4.     Mobile Friendly: Yes/No	Yes	Yes
5.     Content is “shareable” (Like, Tweet, Pin, Blog, etc.)	Like on Facebook, Tweet, Pin	Follow on social media links
6.     Social Media: (List all SM icons on the home page.	Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram	Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat
7.     SERP ranking results when using keywords from this table: (placing or page number)	On the first page	On the first page

Google Trends Insights

The topic searched was fast food, and the two brands compared were Wendy’s and Taco Bell. In the past 12 months in Canada, the search term “fast food” was searched the most in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario.  Throughout the year the frequency stays relatively the same, seeing slight changes. Around this time of year the search term sees a dip from June to July. Another decrease in frequency is from October until December. The peak in the search interest is at the end of March, exam season perhaps.

In relation to the search term, Wendy’s is more popular in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. It is the least popular in Quebec. Taco Bell is the most frequently searched for in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta. It is also less frequently searched for in Quebec.

Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords

The LSI keyword that was used by Wendy’s on their home page is “fast food”. Taco Bell did not use any of the LSI generated keywords on their website. The lack of LSI keyword use is surprises, as neither company show little to no use of these keywords.

Summary

Wendy’s strengths are its use of visuals, layout of website and title “quality is our recipe”.  Taco Bell’s strengths are its use of visuals like the colour and images chosen. Taco Bell chose images that appealed to customers with a home page that makes you crave their products.  The keyword sentence “Fast Food” is found on Wendy’s website, however, not found on Taco Bell.  Other observations made are that both companies don’t use keywords on their websites. The two sites are both mobile friendly and provide links to different, descriptive pages. Taco Bell has many more links and root domains than Wendy’s. Taco Bell also has a much faster page load time.

Conclusion

In the Fast Food industry, Taco Bell and Wendy’s both have interactive websites that appeal to consumers looking to grab a quick bite to eat. One of the most important thing to a consumer is location. When using some of the related search words like “fast food” google can rank your search results by closest in location to you. This could be great for companies that are close or have several locations. This also could be a disadvantage to restaurants that aren’t in a close proximity. This means that fast food companies must have strong SEO in order to appear to majority of consumers. They also have to have appealing websites that grab consumer’s interest and help the consumer decide of the place they chose. In my opinion the overall winner of this SEO Search analysis is Wendy’s.

APA Citations

Google. (May 2016). Google trends. [Fast food, Wendy’s, Taco Bell]. Retrieved from https://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=fast%20food%2C%20%2Fm%2F086zn%2C%20%2Fm%2F09cg6%2C%20Fast%20food%20near%20me&geo=CA&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4

LSIGraph. (May 2016). LSIGraph keyword generator [Fast Food]. Retrieved from http://lsigraph.com/

SEOmoz Inc. (May 2016). MozBar. Retrieved from https://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar

Taco Bell. (2016). Taco Bell Canada | Live Mas. Retrieved from http://www.tacobell.ca/en

Wendy’s. (2016). Quality Is Our Recipe. Retrieved from https://www.wendys.com/en-ca