When I was younger, I dreamed about opening my own cafe one day. (and still do, to be honest…imagine being able to entirely design your own brand!)
It would be more than just a coffee shop, offering a concept and experience that is not easily replicated. However, local cafes in my area are either places to work or places that you stop in to grab a quick drink before heading back out into the real world.
If I were to open a cafe one day, I would need to gather a list of keywords based on the theme or concept of my business. It would be more social, rather than a place to flit in and out of.
SEO Without a Website
For example, there’s this cafe in Seoul, South Korea called Rain Report. They are one of the most popular cafes and what’s really crazy is that they don’t even have a website. It’s popular on social media for its unique ambiance. Every 15 minutes, it “rains.” Most of the pastries and drinks are themed around the rain concept. There’s a lot of space and almost every seat is aesthetic, appealing to the social media natives. The interior is almost entirely black and very modern. There are even screens that show various weather reports around the world (much cooler than you’d originally think).
As you can imagine, there’s a TON of earned media from it. Countless influencers and non-influencers flock to the cafe to take photos and then post about it, using the hashtags #rainreportcafeseoul and #rainyday. Influencers tend to use the hashtag #travel, meaning the cafe reaches international audiences more easily.
Blogs frequently feature Rain Report in their top 10 cafes in the country of South Korea. That’s how I found them, but I feel that most people my age don’t take their inspiration from blogs, but rather TikTok and Instagram, which are the only social media platforms that Rain Report bothers with.
Again, so many factors contribute to their high ranking on the SERP and on Naver. Like I mentioned above, many people do their marketing for them. They never would have gotten to that place if they hadn’t focused on the interior and exterior design of the place, the location, the branding, and overall concept.
If I Were To Create A Website For Them
If I were to create a website for Rain Report, I would focus on the following keywords/phrases, just to name a few, based on my research.
- aesthetic work cafe
- rainy day cafe
- best cafe for photos in seoul
- best cafe in seoul
- rain cafe cake seoul
What The Cafe Looks Like
I wanted to show the appeal of the cafe through their photos, so here are a couple! All photos are from Grey Suitcase.
https://www.greysuitcase.net/blog/2023/9/22/rain-report
https://www.letseoul.com/en/articles/seoul-spring-cafe-trends-2026-beyond
4 Responses
This is such a cool and interesting post! I really like how you picked this trending location and dove into the different search engine optimization aspects of it. I think it is so interesting that they are so successful and don’t even have a website, that is very telling to how important social media can be.
This is such a cool post Mara! I love how you connected your dream of designing a cafe to the Rain Report cafe, and included a plan of how you would design their website. Thank you for including picture of the cafe at the end! That was such a nice touch!
Great post Mara! I love all the pictures that you included, it really made it more memorable. Your desire to design a cafe is awesome too and I like how you are already thinking of what angles you would want to approach!
Pretty interesting post! It is wild that they are so popular WITHOUT A WEBSITE. That’s crazy. It would be interesting to see what would happen to their brand since they are already so authoritative thanks to the influencers.