With over 100,000 businesses operating in the restaurant and mobile food service industry, standing out in the digital marketplace has become just as important as crafting the perfect dish. SEO for restaurants goes beyond the realm of traditional marketing and culinary expertise, serving as the essential ingredient to ensure your establishment doesn’t get lost in the vast sea of options available to today’s consumers.
And that’s not all: recent data on consumer behaviour reveals new challenges for restaurant owners. As the cost of living bites, people are becoming more and more cautious about where they spend their money. Pair this with the pandemic-propelled trend towards takeaways and stronger industry competition, and you have a recipe for tricky business.
It’s clear that, in these circumstances, enhancing visibility at the local level is crucial for both in-person dining and online food ordering. This means looking towards the powers of local SEO for your restaurant’s digital prowess.
Skip to:
- The importance of online presence
- Demystifying SEO for restaurants
- 5 core benefits of restaurant SEO
- 14 local SEO tips for restaurants
- Conclusion
Beyond Michelin stars: The importance of elevating your restaurant’s online presence
In an era where information is just a click away, having a mouth-watering menu and exquisite culinary skills aren’t enough. Your potential patrons could be browsing the web right now, craving a culinary experience that matches their tastes, but if your restaurant isn’t easily discoverable online, you risk missing out on valuable customers.
Sure, aiming for Michelin stars is a brilliant pursuit, garnering accolades and PR that money can’t buy. But, what’s the point of such acclaim if hungry customers can’t find you with a simple online search? Your restaurant’s online visibility is the key to attracting the discerning foodies who might become future regulars, and that’s where SEO comes into play.
What is SEO for restaurants?
Ever wondered why certain cafes and restaurants appear higher up in Google searches? Well, this is all thanks to SEO – an unseen digital marketing practice that allows businesses to vie for users’ attention and direct them towards particular websites and web pages. This is all with the intention of turning impressions into clicks and clicks into reservations.
Sounds complicated? Allow us to pull away the curtain.
SEO or search engine optimisation is often shrouded in mystery, but when it comes down to it, the fundamentals are pretty simple. SEO is actually a subtopic within digital marketing that involves optimising content and websites for search engines.
The primary goal in this is to level up a website’s position on the search engine results pages (SERPs) and to drive organic (in other words, unpaid) traffic to a website and attract the right audience. The rest is straightforward: more eyeballs and the right eyeballs on your site will result in more conversions.
This encompasses a variety of tactics from keyword research and implementation, improving the user experience (UX) of your website, creating content and then more techy bits and pieces. The reason SEO works so well without you paying a penny is because Google sorts the SERPs based on a list of key metrics that anyone can optimise for.
In essence, Google dishes up results that it deems the best in terms of quality content, relevance, authority, social signals and brand signals among other factors.
What about local SEO?
Local SEO is all about boosting how frequently local businesses show up on search engines, especially those with brick-and-mortar locations. By sticking to the best practices of local SEO, businesses can up their game in attracting organic traffic from searches made by people in their neighbourhoods.
For restaurants, local SEO is a game-changer, and especially when we consider the findings of this survey conducted by Uberall. Tracking the responses of 1,000 smartphone owners, they found that 82% of them had conducted a “near me” search between July 23 and July 27, 2018. Interestingly, food businesses accounted for a whopping 84% of these “near me” searches.
So, it’s safe to say that SEO is super important for restaurants and other food businesses.
5 core benefits of SEO for restauranteurs
There are many reasons why SEO is a brilliant strategy for restaurants to employ, but if we were to list them all we’d be here all day. So here are our top 5 that really hit home.
1. It’s a more sustainable and profitable way to draw in customers
Here’s a common scenario that restauranteurs find themselves in: you’re getting a lot of business, but it’s not the type of business you’d like.
When companies get loads of customers via middlemen such as Just Eat or Deliveroo, they’re faced with a double-edged sword. While the influx of orders might seem positive, the reality is that these platforms take a substantial cut, eroding profit margins. And when profit margins fall between 3-5% on average, every order counts.
With SEO, you have the power to attract customers directly to your website, cutting out the middleman and ensuring that every order contributes to your bottom line.
2. You can reach more specialised audiences with granular targeting
One of the key benefits of local SEO is that it offers the ability to tailor your online presence, allowing you to attract a specific audience that aligns with your restaurant’s particular USP.
Whether you cater to fine dining connoisseurs, pub grub enthusiasts, or those seeking a quick-service experience, airbrushing your online presence and optimising your website for relevant keywords ensures visibility to those actively searching for what your establishment provides. This targeted approach not only increases the likelihood of attracting genuinely interested customers but also cultivates a loyal customer base.
3. Get an edge over local competitors and increase foot traffic
In the era of “near me” searches, local SEO has become pivotal for restaurants. By exploiting local search terms, your establishment becomes prominently featured when hungry patrons are on the lookout for nearby dining options. This not only elevates your visibility in search engines but also translates into increased foot traffic, establishing your restaurant as the preferred choice for those in your vicinity.
4. Experience an accelerated growth in orders and reservations
You probably already guessed this, right? SEO acts as a catalyst for expanding your reach and, in turn, growing the number of orders and reservations. By improving your local SEO rankings, you tap into a broader customer base actively searching for dining options. This heightened visibility not only attracts new customers but also encourages repeat business, contributing to a steady increase in both orders and reservations.
5. It’s a great way of building trust and local credibility
Nowadays, consumers rely heavily on online reviews and ratings when making dining decisions. SEO not only improves your discoverability but also helps in managing and enhancing your online reputation. Appearing at the top of search results conveys credibility and trustworthiness to potential customers, encouraging them to choose your restaurant over competitors’.
Get this right and they’ll leave their own reviews, contributing to your SEO status. Then even more customers will stumble across your website. See, it’s a feedback loop of success!
14 local SEO tips for restaurants that you can get started on today
Now we’ve covered a bit of the context and fundamental principles of SEO for restaurants, it’s time for the main course: turning that knowledge into actionable steps. Here’s how to SEO optimise your restaurant online, so it shows up in the top of Google without paying a dime for ads. Bon appetit!
1. Figure out what phrases to rank for
The best SEO strategies always start with high-quality keyword research. In a nutshell, this involves figuring out which phrases or words users type into Google to find answers to their queries, and which ones fall within your niche. Like “York Korean BBQ” or “best pizza York”.
If your website isn’t ranking it might be due to a discrepancy between the keywords you use across your website content and the keywords your current and potential audiences are actually using.
It’s easy to get bogged down in industry terminology, but you have to remember that your aim is to speak your audience’s language. To speed up the process you can jump-start your keyword research with SEO tools that provide amazing keyword suggestions – our fave is KWFinder – or you could start looking for an on-brand term you think your audience would type into the search bar and check out Google’s Related Searches for similar queries.
2. Optimise your Google My Business profile
One of the best things you can do in your local digital marketing quest is to optimise your Google My Business profile. Now one of the mainstays of small business, it’s become a crucial instrument for aligning your business with the demands of the search giant itself. We gotta get those Google brownie points, after all.
The path to effective Google My Business optimisation involves several steps:
- First and foremost, establish and authenticate your presence by creating a Google My Business page.
- Fill out your profile fully and sprinkle in those all-important keywords.
- Harness the power of Google Posts within your account – share engaging content, promotions, or updates to captivate your audience and signal to Google that your business is dynamic and relevant.
- Reviews are the lifeblood of online reputation – encourage your audience to actively share their experiences online, especially when they have pictures of the delicious food they ate!
- Don’t leave those reviews untouched – it pays dividends to respond in a personalised manner, so don’t forget to reply to them all when you have the chance.
If you’ve followed each of these pointers, Google will be able to verify your business as authentic, which could potentially give you the payoff of a coveted sidebar space in Google’s local search.
3. Link up your website and social media
You might not be aware, but social media signals do have an impact on how Google decides to rank your website. While indirect, this influence can affect the many factors that search engines use to determine whether your business is relevant, authentic, authoritative and trustworthy.
As Google views content shared on social media all the more important in recent years, get out there and align your socials with search. By sharing your GMB page, for example, you can reap the rewards of increased traffic and customer loyalty as you gain more backlinks to your restaurant’s website.
4. Get sharp with online directories and citations
One tool that often proves to be a hidden gem is leveraging business directories. Kind of like your GMB page, these digital repositories of business information act as virtual beacons, guiding potential customers to local establishments. By increasing the number of backlinks to your site from trusted directories, you’ll find that organic traffic will improve on the local level.
Don’t forget to optimise your Facebook Business Page or LinkedIn account either!
5. Keep your details consistent across the web
While you start to build up a professional presence across the internet with business directory profiles, social media and more, make sure all of the details are consistent.
This means ensuring your name, address, phone number and opening hours are all up to date – you don’t want to have to turn away disappointed customers as you’re closing shop!
As well as your diners, you need to think about search engines; the easier it is for search engine bots to crawl this information, the easier it will be for your content to ‘bee’ found online. So always fill out these details on business profiles and make sure on your website they’re included on the footer/header in addition to your “Contact Us” page.
6. Perform a website audit
A website audit is like a thorough check-up for your website that covers numerous aspects from your site’s health, page speed and performance to a whole load of technical stuff like broken links, site maps and coding.
So, what’s the grand purpose behind this digital check-up? It’s all about gaining insights, identifying areas of improvement, and setting the stage for a journey toward enhanced website performance and increased traffic. With these insights, you can pinpoint exactly where you need to improve and patch up those weaknesses.
Is your curiosity piqued? Then check out our website audit and SEO checklist for more detailed insights!
7. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly
This one is a no-brainer. Having a mobile friendly website is so important, and especially in a world where 72% of all searches to a food and beverage website globally were done using a mobile device. That’s jaw-dropping.
To improve your website’s traffic, you need to think mobile first. This means investing in a site that is both responsive and sustainable with good page speeds, proper pagination, rending and layouts that will make navigation a breeze.
If this has completely gone over your head, maybe it’s time to call in a web design expert.
8. Clean up your internal linking structure
Another crucial aspect of local SEO for restaurants is how your web pages all link up. Generally speaking, your website should have a hierarchical linking structure so make sure to include internal links in your content.
The way your web pages connect with each other plays a crucial role in how search engines interpret and index your site. Instead of a haphazard linking approach, consider implementing a structured hierarchy that takes the user from the earlier brand awareness stages of their purchase to the decision-making part of the process.
This means organising your pages in a logical manner, with clear pathways from the homepage to deeper levels of content. And to do that, you’ll have to incorporate careful planning into your content creation methods.
9. Polish your keyword usage across URLs, metadata, headers and content
Having specialised and well-researched keywords is awesome for small businesses, but if you don’t know where to use them that’s wasted time and energy.
When including keywords, place them in the following:
- URLs
- Metadata: meta title and meta descriptions.
- Headers: H1s and sparingly in H2-H6s.
- Content: in the opening and closing paragraphs and then sporadically through the text.
10. Add location pages to your website
If you have more than one physical location for your business, it’s crucial to add location pages to your site. These will contain the business details we mentioned in step 5 and allow for customers in the vicinity of each area to find their local branch.
11. Create localised, high-quality content
If you want your content to perform well on a local level, the best thing you can do is to write content that resonates with this audience. Discuss local topics, get granular with your keywords and provide content that ties into your community, authentically.
12. Seek out inbound links from high-quality sources
Inbound links are links that come into your website from external sources. You’ll want to create a portfolio of high-quality links to signal to search engines that other authoritative sites value your content. This, in turn, will increase your website’s ranking.
13. Get stuck in with your local community
You’re probably already doing this, but it can’t hurt to recap.
Engaging with the local community is not just a feel-good practice; it’s a strategic move that can significantly boost the local SEO for restaurants. The symbiotic relationship between community engagement and digital presence is profound as it helps you appear in local media and build up brand awareness and admiration in your community.
14. Measure the results, rinse and repeat
Before we get too carried away, it’s important to note that SEO is a long-term strategy that doesn’t work overnight. It’s all about patience, retargeting and reacting nimbly to consumer trends. For example, it’s just as important to recognise when demand wanes, not just the surges. This is when we need to go back to the drawing board and find new and relevant content informed by topical data, keywords and consumer trends.
While this all sounds tricky, don’t panic. Fluctuating trends present opportunities as well as challenges, so as long as you remain reactive there’s a strong chance that you can outcompete a whole bunch of the players in your field.
Let the experts take local SEO off your plate
For those feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of diving into the intricacies of local SEO, we at WebHummel are here to lend a helping hand.
Navigating the complexities of SEO may seem like a daunting task, but with our local SEO services, restaurant owners can shift their focus back to what they do best – delivering delicious and unforgettable food experiences to their patrons.
Whether you’re a fine dining restaurant, a cosy cafe, or a bustling food hall, we’ll help you build a glowing online presence worthy of your growing establishment. Give us a ‘buzz’.
