Do you own a local restaurant in your city? You have built a beautiful website but somehow it is not reaching your targeted local customers whom you want.
If this is the problem that is hampering your online restaurant business then you must go through this restaurant SEO guide.
In this restaurant SEO guide, you will get to know about tips and tricks that will improve your restaurant SEO strategy along with local link building ideas to make your business a profitable.
1. Improve Your Restaurant’s Local SEO With Reviews
Reviews are very important for any restaurant business. More positive reviews for your restaurant gives a better ranking in Google, more restaurant visits, and improved click through rate.
How will you collect reviews for your restaurant
- Request your happy customers who are frequently visiting your restaurant to leave a review on Google My Business page.
- Ask them to open Google Maps from their smartphone and search your business name.
- When your business listing would appear, ask them to leave their review.
- When your customers will be making the payment for food, do not be shy to take a review from them.
- Build a database email ids of your customers and email them. Also, follow up with them twice a week to leave a review online.
- Use social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and build a relationship with your customer. Once they will follow you back and start showing engagement on your brand page then request them through a direct message to give reviews.
- If someone is highly dissatisfied with your restaurant’s food, then there is a lot of chance he or she might leave a negative review, hence as an owner of the restaurant respond to your restaurant’s bad reviews in a courteous manner.
Note: Do not stop the process of collecting a review and also do not collect tons of review in a week, as it would appear fishy in the eyes of Google.
2. Use Google Places and Local Google+
Google Places allows your restaurant to show up in Google search and you can set up your restaurant profile by log on to Google my business page. Try to enter as much information possible on your Google My Business page to get an appearance like this on Google.
3. Get Started with Content Marketing in your Restaurant SEO Strategy
Content marketing is one of most trending digital marketing method to connect with audiences. There are many ways by which you can do content marketing for a restaurant business. If you are still not sure how will you market the content as per your restaurant SEO strategy then dive in following points as mentioned below.
Here are some restaurant blog post ideas that will show you how to get started with content marketing:
- Write on the recipe.
- Discuss special event that you have recently hosted in your restaurant and also share the videos on social media channels.
- Write on healthy eating tips.
- Publish interview of an influencer in your blog. This guide will show you how to get started with marketing with a local influencer.
- Interview local farmer from whom you are collecting vegetables and published as a video. Share that video on your blog, and also on other social media channels.
- Include your favorite chef tips for food preparation or tips to keep the kitchen clean. Build the content in form of video as well as in written format to publish on the blog and on social media channels.
- If you are a farm to table restaurant then make a video of gardening, and post high quality of images on social media.
- Write articles on food pairing.
- Blog post on gardening tips, planting or harvesting.
- Dedicate a blog post once in a month featuring your employees about their achievements.
- Post behind the scene activities on Facebook, Instagram and on Twitter.
- Pick few popular dishes and make a video out of it how it gets prepared.
- Post latest menu items on the blog as well as on social media channels.
- Share customer stories why they love to eat a particular dish in your restaurant.
- Publish a post that is a complimentary business of your restaurant. Since these complementary businesses have the similar traffic of yours, they are ready to share the blog post if their business gets covered.
You can publish a post like “5 Best things to do in Paris at night” and mention few businesses (except restaurant).Then you notify to those complimentary business owners.
There is a high chance that your post gets shared with their audience, thus resulting inflow of traffic in your restaurant website.
4. Restaurant Keyword Research
Find the potential keywords that customers would use to find your restaurant. You have to brainstorm about all the possibilities how the customer would search to find a restaurant.
- Restaurant near me
- Restaurant in [city name]
- Best place to dine in [locality name]
- [Food category]restaurant in [Locality name] Example: Biryani Restaurants in Kolkata
- [Meal type ] in [city/locality name] Example : lunch in Dublin city centre. After you have gathered the keyword ideas, then use Google keyword planner tool to get more refined terms.
5. Do Onpage SEO for Restaurant
After you are done with keyword research the most important step is to get your restaurant on the first page of Google. The following Onpage SEO tips will finally determine the position of your website on Google SERP
- Avoid choosing exact keyword match domain name.
- Include Title Tag: Main Keyword | Location | Brand Name Example: Italian Restaurant In Dublin – Toscana
- Include the meta description but do not stuff the keyword in exact match.
- Use alt for images, mention the keyword in image URL.
- Make h1 tags with a keyword.
- Practice using long tail and semantic keywords in the website content of home page.
- Keep the menu architecture simple.
- Mark up the local address in a rich snippet and do not forget to embed Google local map and rich snippet in the footer of the home page.
- Use Breadcrumb.
- Make sure no menu pages remain 3 clicks away from the homepage.
- The main pages of your restaurant website should not be blocked by robot.txt
- Keep the amp version of your website.
- Keep the URL structure within 60 characters.
- Mark up the menus with appropriate itemprop and itemscope in HTML. Read this guide to implement structured data for restaurant menus
6. List Your Restaurant Online
By listing your restaurant on a popular restaurant directories you increase the reach of your restaurant website to the potential customer. Given below are some popular restaurant directory listings that give a mileage in your local SEO effort:
- Zomato
- Yelp
- Bing Places
- Citysearch
- Book a Table
- Urban Spoon
- Go Dine
Ensure that the Name, Address and Phone number (NAP) is consistent across all online business directories and citation sites where you have listed your restaurant.
7. Focus on User Experience and Conversions
User experience is a pivotal point in SEO and it is the future. Google is paying more attention to it https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ux-key-future-seo/122961/.
- Hence built your website’s landing page in such a way so that your customers feel safe and have a delightful user experience while browsing your restaurant website.
- Place the essential information on your restaurant’s home page.
- The information hierarchy of your restaurant website should be such that the visitor doesn’t have to take more than 3 clicks to find the food menus or to make a reservation.
- Also, ensure that there are clear call-to-actions on every page.
8. Mobile friendly
Recent research shows that close to 65% smartphone user searches for restaurant location from their phones when they are hungry. http://searchengineland.com/study-64-percent-of-mobile-restaurant-searchers-convert-immediately-or-within-an-hour-135188.
Hence if you have a restaurant website, make sure that it is mobile responsive and load less than 3 secs.
Now with the above mention SEO tips for restaurant website, we hope that we have made you understand how to work on restaurant SEO strategy.So get started and start making your restaurant business more profitable in your locality.
If you still have further queries on restaurant SEO or rather want to know how to optimize restaurant website, then feel free to get connect with us or tweet us @MnMWebSolutions.
You can connect with Mohammad Mohsin on LinkedIn
