Don't overlook the significance of SEO for eateries. Today, investing in SEO is a big “must-do” for companies. Restaurants, in particular. When hungry consumers Google “restaurants near me,” you want your business to pop up as one of the first results.
Define Your Content and SEO Strategy
“Content is king,” as the cliché goes. And SEO is the queen who, when employed to its full capacity, completely crushes the competitors.
The first step is to determine your geographic location. Because most consumers look for local eateries, the majority of your clients will most likely come from this region. You should utilize a few separate keyword phrases to assist you arrange and classify your data effectively.
Use high-level restaurant terms and phrases like “restaurants” and “Chicago” to describe your establishment. Then, to produce variants of those basic phrases, utilize Google Keyword Planner or a third-party keyword tool that allows you to choose a regional focus.
Because clients look for restaurants “near me” or “nearby,” utilize terms that are particular to your specialty or sector. Consider long tail keywords such as “romantic restaurants” or “best Thai fusion restaurant,” for example.
Branded phrases can also help you rank better in search results. However, it's crucial to keep track of the stats and figure out how many people are looking for your business by name. Compare the number of people who search for and find your restaurant using specialty phrases to the number of people who search for and discover your restaurant using its name. This will assist you in determining which keywords are most effective for your restaurant's SEO strategy.
Take Command of Local Search
Visit relevant search properties and directories and claim your restaurant. Make sure your restaurant’s NAP (name, address, and phone number) are entered properly so that customers will be able to find you when they search these directories.
The directories and restaurant rating sites you need to focus your restaurant SEO on include the following:
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Yelp
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Yellow Pages
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Zagat
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OpenTable
Use On-Page SEO Best Practices
Regardless of the size of your restaurant, you cannot afford to neglect on-page SEO best practices. Proper indexing ensures that the search engines know you exist, and on-page SEO helps search engines classify your content.
Search Engine Journal suggests starting with the following best practices:
Indexing – Check your robts.txt and XML sitemap and set up Google Search Console to crawl for errors.
On-page SEO – make sure your web content includes keyword specific page URL, title tags, meta description tags, headings, on-page copy, and image-alt attributes. It may look like a lot to do, but it’s actually quite simple.
Be Mobile-Friendly
Most searches come from mobile browsers and most restaurant visits can be attributed to a high percentage of people viewing restaurant websites on their mobile phones. Also, Google and other search engines now use mobile-first indexing. That means mobile-friendly websites will usually show up in google searches first. Your restaurant’s website needs to be responsive. Otherwise, you can miss out on so much business!
Engage with Customers on Social Media
Having a solid social media strategy is part of creating a great customer experience. Having a strong social presence gives your business a strong organic search presence, making you more relevant and your content an authority in your industry.
Encourage Customer Testimonials and Reviews
One way to engage with your customers via social media is strongly encouraging reviews and testimonials. Consumers click on higher star ratings, so you want to create a strategy to get as many reviews as possible. Most restaurants are on Google Reviews, so you want to make sure that your business isn’t just a Google Review Restaurant, but make sure you’re encouraging your customers to review your restaurant.
Develop Unique Web Content
Again, content is king. If you want to set yourself apart from your competition in the best way, you’ll need to have unique content on your website. Types of content that can help your website and subsequently, your restaurant, stand out is having regular content that customers will value:
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Menu
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Video
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Photography/Graphics
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Blog articles that are informative and engaging
Localize Your Content
Oftentimes, visitors from out of town as well as search engines don’t know unofficial names or nicknames of neighborhoods and various areas throughout the city. Creating content that ties into the community provides added value to your customers.
Use Structured Data
For restaurants to reach more users, they need to implement structured data through Schema.org markup. What is schema markup? Schema is microdata or tags that you can add to your HTML to improve how search engines read and represent your page in SERPs.
If you don’t have the time to implement best SEO practices to boost your restaurant’s SEO, you need to consider hiring an SEO company. Hiring an SEO agency who specializes in local SEO for restaurants can be the catalyst to propel your restaurant ahead of the competition.
