Digital marketing is taking over every industry these days, including the restaurant business as well. However, social media is not the only factor that makes up for a successful online presence; it has many aspects including Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that contributes to it. If your restaurant SEO is done well, it will drive in-store sales and increase your possibility of getting discovered dramatically. In this article, we will talk about the importance of SEO for restaurants, and how to do it the right way. This article will help you improve restaurant SEO and make your restaurant more visible online.
Why You Need SEO for Restaurants
Nowadays, with smartphones and tablets, SEO has become very critical because people search for restaurants and services through mobile apps and mobile browsers. Google has become our go-to for any question we might have. Hence it’s imperative that Google lists you effectively when your potential customer comes looking for you. But, if you think Google randomly lists the search results, then you are wrong, critical algorithms and proper SEO is what contributes to useful search ranking. Effective Search Engine Optimisation for restaurants also helps in getting your listing displayed in the search results before your competitors. It helps you put your restaurant on the map and improve its ranking in online search results. It has a high return on investment because it puts your restaurant across people who are looking for what you offer at that particular moment and are actively searching.
How to Do the Search Engine Optimisation for Restaurants
Follow these tips while doing the SEO for restaurants and increase the discoverability of your restaurant in Google Search.
1. Posting Fresh Content
We have stressed it quite often that having a website is a must for a restaurant’s online presence. Having an SEO optimized website is even more important as then only would the restaurant website start giving results to you. Fresh and updated content helps improve restaurant SEO.
One of the best ways to boost your ranking on Google is to update fresh content on a regular basis, but it’s essential that the content you put up is unique, but still relevant to your restaurant and your audience. Some ways of creating engaging content are –
Blog: A weekly or bi-monthly blog with the latest whereabouts of your restaurant like events or a new dish that is added to the menu or something about your signature dish. If your content is relevant to your customers or potential customers, it will ensure an increase in website visitors which will result in better SEO ranking and higher footfalls at the restaurant.
Customer Reviews: Ask customers to review or organize tasting sessions for influencers and publish those on your website and social media pages. It will act as a good source of regular content to be updated on your website but will make your customers feel special and part of your success journey. It is a great sales tool to attract more people.
Photos and Videos: Share photos of your dish, of the event that’s taking place or share videos of what happens in the kitchen, pictures, and videos tend to grab a lot of eyeballs and attracts more attention of the audience and are easier to engage with. Hence, it is a great way to attract more visitors to your website and your restaurant while efficiently improving your restaurant SEO ranking.
2. Use of Right Keywords
Most of the visitors to your restaurant are going to be people in your city or in your neighborhood or someone who is looking for a cuisine that you serve. Keywords essentially are words and phrases that Internet user’s type into search engines like Google to find websites for something they are looking for.
Include the keywords on your restaurant website that are geographically targeted and use the words most relatable to the cuisine you serve. This will improve your chances of being seen every time someone uses the relevant keywords. Finding the right keywords that best describe your restaurant is the key to positively enhance your restaurant SEO through keywords. There are many tools available online that assist you in creating a list of keywords. Use Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner to analyze the popular keywords and identify the competition. Pay attention to local SEO for restaurants and make your content more localized, to appear among the top results in your city.
For example, if you serve Mexican Food in Mumbai, some of your basic keywords will be words and phrases like
- Mexican cuisine Mumbai
- Mumbai Mexican food
- Mexican food in Mumbai
However, while doing SEO for restaurants, avoid overstuffing of keywords; the ideal keyword density for a page should be 1-2%. It is also essential that you keep track of the keywords that you are targeting. You can use tools such as SEMrush and ProRank Tracker to monitor which keywords your website is ranking on.
3. Directory and Search Engine Listings
Directory and Search Engine Listings might be the easiest and essential part of starting your restaurant SEO. Search engines like Yahoo, Google, and Bing, allow businesses to become a part of their listing network by adding accurate and extensive information about your restaurant. All the online directories are like an interconnected ecosystem; the smaller directories compile their data from the larger ones. So, make sure you keep your data up to date on one of the larger directories like yellow pages and keep track of the smaller ones to see if the changes have been made. This is again a good source of local SEO for restaurants.
4. Having Descriptive Titles
Use short but descriptive titles describing your business to the fullest. Many of the search engines use titles to display search results. This means that when someone looks up a search term on a search engine like Google, it will try to match the search question with the most relevant title; hence having a concise yet crisp headline is essential. When thinking of titles, consider what you would search for if you were looking up a restaurant. Keep it relevant to your content but crisp enough to drive the audience to your page. For example, a perfect description for the homepage of a Mexican restaurant in Mumbai would be “Serving authentic Mexican cuisine in Mumbai.”
5. Meta Description
Meta descriptions should never be ignored when you are doing the SEO for restaurants. The small description of one or two lines that are displayed under the title in the search results is the Meta description. It’s most important function is to provide enough information about your business and increase the number of clicks on your website.
The meta description needs to be crisp and appealing enough to draw more people to click on the website link. The right use of keywords helps the search engine in easily matching you to the right search query. It needs to include all relevant information that people might want to see when they search for a restaurant like a cuisine, location or availability of a bar because search engines will tend to pick up keywords from here.
6. Getting Rid of Duplicate Listings
There may be some duplicate listings under your restaurant’s name. It is essential to get rid of the fake listings to add authenticity to your restaurant’s online reputation. You can get rid of them by registering and claiming your restaurant. This would help in higher search ranking of your restaurant and the overall SEO.
7. Having a Google Presence
Customers often look up the address of the restaurant they are about to visit. Register your restaurant with Google pages with your complete address and phone number. This result would show up when a customer types in a relevant keyword as well. Since Google gives preference to its content, Google Plus pages play a significant role in the SEO for restaurant websites and online presence.
Find out how to list your restaurant on Google My Business here.
8. Tracking Your Website Performance
After putting so many efforts into search engine optimization of your restaurant, it is essential to measure, analyze and then optimize it. For this, you need to set up Google Analytics to track the number of visitors you are getting on the site from Organic Source, that is, through Google and other search engine sites. Also, you need to track the keyword position on which your site is ranking.
Remember, your ultimate goal is to drive potential customers to visit your restaurant and not just increase visitors to your website. Keep your content exciting and relevant so you can inspire people to visit your restaurant after looking at the website.
Try this SEO for restaurants tips for your food business and watch how the ranking of your restaurant on Google rises!
