Project
NW Salmon Smokehouse
Family-owned cafe and artisan market, Chehalis WA
Type
Refresh of a live site
When
August to September 2026
Scope
Every page rebuilt
73 to 87
mobile page speed on the homepage, before and after.
0
accessibility violations on every live page the day after launch.
130
professional photos placed site-wide.
2,000
images converted to WebP in the performance pass.
Where it started
The food deserved a better site.
The Smokehouse already ranked first for smoked salmon in Chehalis, through its menu page. The site around that ranking was thin: most pages had no main heading, descriptions were automatic, ten leftover demo products pointed at a store that did not exist, and the phone number was not tappable everywhere.
Frank and Danielle wanted a site that looked like the awards on their wall and the food on their plates, without losing the ranking that brings people in.
Inside the site
Four of the pages.
The menu.
The page that already ranked first for smoked salmon in Chehalis. Its title carried over word for word.
Photo galleries
The photos are keyed, so any one can be swapped in a single step.
Press
A new page for the awards on the wall.
Contact
Hours, address, and a phone number that is tappable everywhere.
What went into it
The work, item by item.
Eight things we would point to if you asked what the money bought.
01
A gated staging copy with a private link the owners could open on their phones, and a full baseline of rankings and pages captured first.
02
A switch to SEOPress with every existing title carried over word for word, plus restaurant structured data with hours and rating.
03
A new editorial design system, and every page rebuilt in it, with a new Press page and the first original blog post.
04
Sixty-nine Facebook reels reviewed, the best re-encoded and hosted on the site as native video, so nothing depends on a social network.
05
A hundred and thirty professional photos received and placed site-wide, keyed so any one can be swapped in a single step.
06
A scripted launch with a tested rollback, old sitemap addresses redirected, and the site submitted to Google.
07
Hardening after launch, weekly file backups, and analytics moved into the SEO plugin so one less plugin runs.
08
A performance pass: two thousand images converted to WebP, the hero preloaded, caching tuned, and a gentle hero crossfade that respects reduced-motion settings.
Google AI search
Built to be read by Google’s AI, not just people.
Google’s AI Mode answers questions on the results page, and its new ad agents answer from the business’s own website and Business Profile. A thin site gives those agents nothing to say. Every site here ships with structured data and service pages that answer real customer questions, the raw material for the knowledge catalog Google’s AI reads. The SyncShepherd team keeps that catalog current as new questions come in.
Restaurant structured data with hours and rating, and a menu Google can read.
The result
Cleaner, faster, still first.
Zero accessibility violations on every live page the day after launch, and every title matched the old site at cutover.
Mobile page speed on the homepage went from 73 to 87, with the main image loading in half the time.
The sitemap was ingested by Google with no errors. The ranking comparison is due in late September.
Runs on
Native Kadence with a child theme SEOPress Restaurant structured data LiteSpeed caching Self-hosted video
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