Restaurant · Kuşadası · Three-year engagement
Moving a restaurant that already ranked onto a new domain
We built the site for Kiwi Restaurant and ran its SEO and advertising. When the brand became Cimino, we moved the entire digital presence to a new domain — without losing the search visibility or the Google Business listing.
Every chapter on this page carries its own measurement window. Data from different sources is never merged, and there is no single “before vs. after migration” figure anywhere — because the exports we have do not honestly support one.
01 · The build
The Kiwi Restaurant years
First we built kiwi-restaurant.com and ran its technical SEO, local SEO and Google/Meta advertising in one place. It became a site that ranked at the top for restaurant searches in Kuşadası. That is what makes the migration story below meaningful: what moved was not an empty site, it was a working ranking.
02 · Rebrand and migration
Domain migration and Google Business transfer
When the brand became Cimino the job was not a redesign — it was carrying years of accumulated search authority across to a new domain. We built a page-level permanent redirect architecture: every old URL maps one-to-one to its counterpart on the new domain.
- 01kiwi-restaurant.com/* → ciminorestaurant.com/* · permanent redirect (301)
- 02Separate rules for the www and apex domains
- 03Path-preserving: /menu → /menu, /en → /en
- 04Google Business Profile transfer handled with Google Support · 3–4 working days
For a restaurant, transferring the Google Business listing matters more than the website itself: the reviews, the photos and the directions history all live there. We ran the transfer with Google Support and the listing moved to the new brand within three to four working days, with its review history intact.
What is the old domain doing today?
The old domain still appears in search results, at average position 2.9. That is not a fault — it is what a transfer in progress looks like. When Google shows an old URL, the redirect delivers that visitor straight to Cimino. Those clicks are delivered traffic, not lost traffic, and the visibility hands over to Cimino as the authority consolidates.
To be straight about it: the old domain averages position 2.9 and the new one 7.0. The handover is in progress, not finished. That is the expected picture in a brand migration, and a case study claiming otherwise deserves suspicion.
- 2.9
- Old domain · avg position
- 7.0
- New domain · avg position
In the last 28 days the old domain drew 49 clicks and 8,212 impressions — all delivered to Cimino through the redirect.
Source: Google Search Console · kiwi-restaurant.com · Last 28 days vs. the same period last year
03 · The new domain
ciminorestaurant.com today
Against the previous three months the new domain grew 5.8× in clicks and 7.3× in impressions. Average position stayed flat — which means the growth came from appearing on far more queries, not from ranking higher on the same ones. On a new domain that is the correct order: coverage first, position second.
- 5.8×
- Clicks
- 45 → 260
- 7.3×
- Impressions
- 1,402 → 10,235
- %88
- Mobile share
- of clicks
- 53
- Countries with clicks
- Türkiye-weighted
Bar lengths are on a logarithmic scale — on a linear axis the prior period would be invisible.
| Metric | Previous 3 months | Last 3 months |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks | 45 | 260 |
| Impressions | 1,402 | 10,235 |
| Average position | 7.0 | 7.0 |
Source: Google Search Console · ciminorestaurant.com · Last 3 months vs. the previous 3 months
Almost all of it is mobile
88% of clicks come from mobile. That single number explains the entire WhatsApp decision in the next chapter: someone searching for a restaurant on their phone does not fill in a form, they send a message.
The inbound tourist tail
Most traffic is domestic, but there is a steady tail from the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany. The English section serves that demand.
| Country | Clicks | Impr. |
|---|---|---|
| Türkiye | 209 | 7,069 |
| United Kingdom | 12 | 465 |
| Ireland | 10 | 247 |
| Netherlands | 6 | 281 |
| Germany | 5 | 379 |
Intent-targeted landing pages
We built dedicated landing pages for high-intent searches: breakfast, sunset table, sea view. The honest assessment — these pages are live, indexed and earning impressions, but their clicks are still in single digits. We report them as groundwork laid, not as a result won.
| URL | Clicks | Impr. |
|---|---|---|
| /kadinlar-denizi-kahvalti | 4 | 258 |
| /kusadasi-gun-batimi-restorani | 3 | 313 |
| /en/sunset-restaurant-kusadasi/ | 2 | 136 |
| /en/ladies-beach-sea-view-restaurant/ | 1 | 98 |
| /en/ | 44 | 2,802 |
Source: Google Search Console · ciminorestaurant.com · Last 3 months vs. the previous 3 months
04 · Paid economics
Google Ads: two campaigns that worked and one we shut off
Three campaigns ran. Two worked, one did not — and we are not hiding the one that did not, because what an agency switches off tells you more than what it switches on.
“Conversions” here means call and message actions — taps on the phone number and hand-offs to WhatsApp. It does not mean reservations or covers.
- 276,044
- Impressions
- 6,832
- Clicks
- 1,978
- Call / message actions
- ₺32.45
- Cost per action
Source: Google Ads · 7 July – 25 October 2025 · campaigns paused
| Campaign | Type | Spend | Call / message actions | Cost per action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kadınlar Denizi Lezzet Durağı | Smart · maximise clicks | ₺14,978.75 | 718 | ₺20.86 |
| 2025_ao_performance_search_kiwi_phonecalls #2 | Search (TR) · maximise conversions | ₺34,078.13 | 1,237 | ₺27.55 |
| 2025_ao_performance_search_kiwi_phonecalls_enShut off | Search (EN) · maximise conversions | ₺15,128.94 | 23 | ₺657.78 |
Why we shut off the English campaign
The English search campaign consumed close to a quarter of total spend and produced roughly 1% of the actions. Cost per action was ₺657.78, against ₺20.86 and ₺27.55 on the other two. We measured it, tested it, and stopped it.
Including that experiment, the blended cost per action is ₺32.45; excluding it, ₺25.09. We publish both — showing only the flattering number would make every other figure on this page suspect too.
- ₺32.45
- Including the experiment
- ₺25.09
- Excluding it
The real finding: language mattered more than the keyword
At keyword level the picture is unambiguous. Turkish generic restaurant searches converted cheaply; English tourist searches did not convert at all. In a tourist town that is counter-intuitive, and it shows exactly where an advertising budget should not go.
| Keyword | Language | Spend | Call / message actions | Cost per action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| restoranlar | tr | ₺16,329.63 | 680 | ₺24.01 |
| restoran | tr | ₺11,371.82 | 341 | ₺33.35 |
| kusadasi restaurant | en | ₺6,446.38 | 9.33 | ₺690.93 |
| "good restaurants in kusadasi" | en | ₺2,730.29 | 1 | ₺2,730.29 |
| balık restoranları | tr | ₺2,413.70 | 86 | ₺28.07 |
Two English keywords together spent ₺9,176.67 and produced 10.33 actions. The same budget on the Turkish side would have bought roughly 380.
₺9,176.67 · 10.33 actions
Demand concentrates between 12:00 and 20:00 every day, peaking on weekend evenings. We did not engineer that — it is the natural service rhythm the data revealed. (12:00–20:00)
Source: Google Ads · 7 July – 25 October 2025 · campaigns paused
05 · Conversion optimisation
Reservations over WhatsApp
Because 88% of traffic is mobile, we routed the conversion path to messaging rather than a form. We added a WhatsApp panel that starts the visitor in the right conversation: separate quick replies for reservations, menu questions, the sunset table and group plans.
The difference is subtle but decisive: instead of saying “message us”, the conversation opens already carrying the visitor’s intent. On the restaurant’s side, an incoming message arrives pre-sorted.
WhatsApp Concierge
Quick replyThe fastest channel for reservations, sunset tables and menu questions.
Reservation
Ask about free tables and times
Menu question
Find out today's featured dishes
Sunset table
See the sea-view table options
Cocktails & groups
For small groups and cocktail plans
Start the right conversation in one step — reservations, menu and group plans over WhatsApp.
A faithful reproduction of the live panel on the site.
06 · Awareness
Meta Ads: 536,000 video views
A paid Meta campaign for local awareness drew 536,000 video views. At the scale of Kuşadası that means close to everyone in the area saw the brand, most of them more than once.
Watch the reel on Instagram536,000
Video views · paid local campaign
Let us be precise about what that number is: these are views, not reach and not people. One person can produce several views, and a view counts from three seconds. It is an awareness metric, not a reservations metric.
Source: Meta Ads · paid local awareness campaign
Frequently asked questions
- If we change domain, will we lose our rankings?
- With a correctly built permanent redirect (301) architecture the authority transfers to the new domain, but not instantly. On Cimino the old domain still shows at average position 2.9 after the migration, and those clicks reach the new site through the redirect, while the new domain grows its own coverage at an average of 7.0. A transition period is normal; a reset is not.
- Can a Google Business listing move to a new brand?
- Yes. On Cimino we ran the listing transfer together with Google Support and it moved to the new brand with its review history preserved. For a restaurant this step matters more than the website — map reviews cannot be earned back.
- Which searches actually convert for restaurant advertising?
- In this account, Turkish generic restaurant searches converted at ₺24–₺33 per action. English tourist searches cost ₺690 and up, and we shut that campaign down. Being in a tourist town does not mean English-language search will be profitable.
- Form or WhatsApp on a restaurant website?
- If your traffic is mobile-heavy, messaging. On Cimino 88% of clicks come from mobile, and someone searching for a restaurant on their phone would rather write than complete a form. On the advertising side too, every conversion was a call or message action.
Related pages
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