Do you own or manage a restaurant, and are looking to make your online presence more than just… palatable? 

Then, the trick is in mastering restaurant SEO.

If you aren’t quite sure what this is, or if you would like to delve deeper into search engine optimization for restaurants, then our comprehensive guide can help.

We will discuss:

2. Sprinkle Some Local SEO

Time to move from the starters to the main course: local SEO. 

If you want to rank higher in local searches, you’ll need to optimize your restaurant listings across:

• Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo.
• Industry-specific or subject directories, such as Google My Business, Foursquare, CitySearch, and so on.
• Social media channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more.

To achieve this, you’ll need to ensure the full consistency of your restaurant details (name, address, phone) across all these platforms.

Then, you can get a bit more specific by adding information such as your business description and other important categories that define your restaurant and include keywords that customers are likely to search for.

3. Add a Good Dose of On-Page SEO

Indexing is another important aspect to consider when optimizing your restaurant’s online presence. 

This is because indexing helps you to make yourself visible to search engines, and ensures that your content is classified properly.

To begin with, you’ll want to use Google Search Console to check your XML sitemap and your robots.txt, and look for errors. 

Spotting and fixing any mistakes will ensure that your website is indexed both now and in the future.

Then, you’ll need to move on to checking all your meta content: URLs, page titles, meta descriptions, headings, image alt descriptions, and copy content.

All these on-page SEO elements need to feature your unique, hyper-relevant keywords. Also have in mind the good practices about off-page SEO for restaurants.

The most important website pages that you’ll want to focus on at the beginning are your homepage, about page, restaurant menu page, and contact page.

Start from those and build up to the rest of your website.

It’s pretty common for restaurants to overlook the basics, by the way. I can’t count how many times I’ve tried to check a menu on my phone and run straight into a broken link or a missing photo—drives me up the wall, honestly. Don’t underestimate details like this. Even little slip-ups give people a reason to bounce right back to Google, and nobody wants to be “the place with the busted menu page.” Minor housekeeping has a weirdly big impact on the first impression you make online.

And speaking of first impressions—there’s no shame in actually checking what competitors are up to. Just search some nearby places and see what they get right (or totally mess up). If their ordering system is clunky, make yours sleeker. If their opening hours are listed three different ways, keep yours stupidly clear and consistent. Borrow what works, avoid what screams amateur hour. At the end of the day, customers care less about how you learned your SEO tricks and more about how easy you make their lives.

4. Make Social Media Your Cup of Tea

You might not be fully on board with using social media to fuel your restaurant SEO strategy, but bear with us — there is a lot of potential in platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

If you create the right type of content, incorporate relevant and trending hashtags, and engage with your followers in a consistent and authentic fashion, social media can have a positive impact on your SEO strategy.

The more followers you engage with, the more people will take an interest in your restaurant, and the more online viewers your website will get.

Bottom line? 

Having a solid, reputable social media presence goes hand in hand with a sound organic search presence, which in turn helps funnel more unique visitors to your website (and, ultimately, to your restaurant).

5. Make Customers Go Bananas Over You

Well, the best way to achieve this is, of course, by serving up a truly fantastic dining experience — from food to service.

But once you have achieved this, go the extra mile by inviting your customers to tell everyone how great your restaurant is through an online review.

Restaurant online reviews are so vital that they have the power to make or break your reputation.

Most of the time, online reviews for restaurants use symbols such as stars to categorize how good (or bad) a business is.

If you are happy with your current star ratings, you can leverage structured data markup to ensure that those ratings appear in users’ search results.

Not quite so satisfied with your current number of stars? 

It’s time to focus all your efforts on offering a stellar experience — and then asking your happy customers to rave about you.

6. Spice up Your Content (and Make It Local)

Content was, is, and will continue to be king. 

What Bill Gates famously wrote in his 1996 essay still holds true to this day: “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.”

And when you are in the process of developing some content for your restaurant business, keep the three C’s in mind:

• Creative: you’ll want to stand out from the crowd with content that is unique and that truly defines the essence of your brand identity.
• Concise: remember to provide enough information to entice your audience, but not so much that it ends up being overwhelming and distracting.
• Convincing: ultimately, you should aim for your content to persuade your audience that your restaurant serves great food and delivers fantastic service.

Do you think that content exclusively means written copy? Then, you should think again.

One of the (many) beauties of content is that it spans a vast array of deliverables, which include videos, photos, infographics, and more.

So unleash your imagination!

Produce original, interesting, and persuasive content that offers information about your restaurant — including food, history, founders, culture, and more.

And remember to always include all the relevant keywords that will help potential customers to find you on search engines.

7. A Mobile-Friendly Website? Piece of Cake!

Did you know that there currently are a whopping 4.3 billion unique mobile internet users?

With a hand-held device, people can search for anything, including your restaurant.

So, if you want them to find your website, get to know more about your business, and eventually book a table or order a take-away from you, then you need to make sure that your website is optimized for mobile.

This means that your website content should be easily accessible and visible on a smaller screen, and that its load times should be as fast as those that a desktop internet user would experience.

But there’s even more to mobile-friendliness than pleasing customers — though that is, of course, a priority.

Mobile-ready websites are also preferred by Google, as the system uses the mobile version of a website to better understand its content.

So, ensuring that your restaurant website is optimized for mobile should really be a no-brainer.

Wrap Up: Become the Cream of the Crop with Restaurant SEO

When it comes to creating a winning SEO strategy for your restaurant, it’s important not to keep all your eggs in one basket.

Variety is key. You’ll need to combine elements of local SEO with great content, as well as engage with social media and prioritize mobile-friendliness.

Would you like to unlock even more insights into SEO? 

Then check out our complete Search Engine Optimization guide! It’s packed with good information and it will help you reach top Google results.

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