Are you looking for effective ways to do SEO for restaurants to increase the online visibility of your restaurant? If yes, then this article is for you.
Establishing a strong online presence has become imperative for every restaurant business to stay ahead of competitors. When it comes to enhancing online visibility, improving SEO strategies is the first thing that comes to our mind.
Restaurants with online ordering and delivery services have a huge potential to double up their revenue by simply polishing their online presence. This is the reason why most restaurant owners are trying to improve their Restaurant SEO strategies.
According to the new restaurant trends, more than 60% of customers regularly order food online whereas 50% of diners check restaurant websites before stepping into them.
In this article, you will learn about Restaurant SEO, its importance and some tips to improve your Restaurant SEO strategies.
What is SEO for Restaurants?
SEO or Search engine optimization for restaurants refers to the system of optimizing your restaurant website to be visible in the search results of popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, or others for the terms relevant to your restaurant business.
The main objective of optimizing search engines for restaurants is to gain organic traffic to your restaurant website. After all, more traffic signifies an increase in potential customers.
Importance of Doing SEO for Restaurants
Achieving the desired results from your restaurant SEO might take long but it is worth investing the time. Here are some of the reasons that show the importance of doing SEO for restaurants.
It helps:
Increase
- Organic traffic to your restaurant website.
- Boost the number of new customers.
- Improve the online visibility of your restaurant.
- Spread brand awareness.
- Boost your restaurant revenue.
- Increase online orders and more.
In this era of digitization, strengthening your restaurant’s online visibility is no longer an option, it is a necessity.
From Where to Begin Building a Restaurant SEO Strategy?
It is essential to think of a plan before gearing up to improve SEO for your restaurant website.
You can simply begin with detailed competitors’ research. Try a few local searches on Google to see which restaurants appear on the first page in your search inquiry. Then, go through the reviews they receive and scrutinize their GMB (Google Business Profile) profiles.
There are various tools available to help you in this regard, such as the SE Ranking Local Rank Tracker. It allows you to look up the local SERPs for your location to let you know your competitors’ rank on Google search results.
The software also includes a variety of additional instruments that help you to identify the keywords on which your competition ranks.
How to do SEO for Restaurants to Boost Online Visibility?
If you are a first-timer in this field, you probably need to research and experiment a lot to find the best Restaurant SEO strategy to increase the visibility of your online restaurant.
To save your time and help you in this process we have listed down some of the most effective tips to strengthen your restaurant SEO strategies.
1. Build a Keyword Planning Roadmap
Keywords are an inseparable part of SEO for restaurants. They help Google find out the main subject of your business website. You need to use the keywords relevant to your business strategically throughout your website.
For example: if the restaurant word is missing in the entire content of your website, then Google may get confused about the type of product you are selling online.
There are mainly three types of keywords that you need to track for your restaurant SEO
- Local keywords: These are location-based keywords like “Indian restaurants in Berlin”
- Niche keywords: Such keywords describe the type of food you sell in your restaurant. For example: Mexican, Indian or Italian.
- Brand keywords: These are the keywords that people typically use to find your brand.
Conduct thorough keyword research manually and with tools to cover all types of keywords that might be suitable for your business.
2. Focus on Local SEO
Local SEO is all about optimizing your website with location based keywords. Consider the following things-
- Use local keywords to different pages on your website.
- Make sure that the details you have added including your contact information are correct and updated.
- Make a secure Google Business Profile and listing on reliable local directories.
3. Utilize Technical SEO
As the name suggests, the technical SEO of your site deals with the technical part. However, it is equally for the visibility of your restaurant. .
You can begin with a detailed website audit to identify the areas that you can improve. Besides this, an audit also helps you find the crawlability and speed of your website which are essential parts of technical SEO.
4. Off-Page SEO
When you are working on your Restaurant SEO, you need to take care of its Off-page SEO as well. The off-page SEO covers backlinks and your brand mentions to examine your brand authority.
Consider the following points for your off-page SEO
- Create links and NAP( Name, address, phone no) mentions on various business directories.
- Identify the areas on business directories where your business is Mentioned with inaccurate details or without links.
- Build your identity on popular restaurant review platforms like Yelp, Trip Advisor etc. Don’t forget to add your business profile on such platforms with NAP.
- Make your place in the news by doing something newsworthy or being a part of a trending story.
Utilize these ideas to experience the difference.
5. Optimize your Restaurant Images
Images also play a great role in improving your restaurant SEO. That is why to improve your SEO for restaurants you need to optimize your website images as well.
Consider the following tips to optimize website images:
- Compress your restaurant images to avoid longer loading time.
- Use ALT tags keeping the keywords in mind.
- Add a descriptive title to your website images.
6. Make your Place on Restaurant Review Sites
Appearing on popular restaurant review platforms help you increase your restaurant exposure to a great extent. It also brings a great advertising opportunity for your restaurant.
You can directly get in touch with these platforms to know the process of getting listed.
7. Make Google Business Listing
Another important thing to do is ensure that your Google Business listing is filled with all the required information to allow guests. Off-site aspects of SEO for restaurants include creating citations for your business name, address, and telephone number (known as NAP), so having them correct in Google is vital.
The information you fill in on the restaurant’s Google page is crucial as it allows customers to call your restaurant or make reservations right from the SERP when it’s shown in a Google result.
Customers can post pictures of your restaurant’s exterior and interior, as well as your food items. However, it is important to upload quality photos of your own.
It is also possible to incorporate augmented reality components on your GMB site to offer users an insider’s view of your restaurant’s inside. Make a 360-degree photo of your restaurant or even the ability to walk around.
8. Use SEO-Friendly Plugins and Themes
This is one of the most significant areas of your restaurant SEO. If you are having a dedicated WordPress website for your restaurant, you are most likely to use WordPress plugins to enhance its features like online ordering and more. In that case, you need to ensure that the plugins and themes you use on your website are SEO-friendly, responsive and mobile-friendly.
We recommend a feature-rich, light-weight and SEO-friendly WordPress plugin like WP Food Manager that offers amazing WordPress restaurant management add ons and themes for your online restaurant operations.
Wrapping up,
The Restaurant SEO tips mentioned here are relatively easy to apply and could boost your restaurant’s performance by nearly one-third. Start working on your Restaurant SEO now to experience its benefits in the next few months.
Ensure you focus on three main areas: SEO for websites, Google Business profile optimization, and off-site optimization. These three areas may require periodic adjustments. Of the three categories of Off-site optimization, the last one requires Consistent work.
The sooner you begin the better results you will get.