Starter SEO Tips for Restaurants

So, you have now done all the hard work of setting up your restaurant, hiring the staff and the décor looks fantastic. You have also created a website to showcase your awesome menu. But how do you get people to come on your website and then to your restaurant? How can you get connected to the customers who are looking for you? 

Research shows that 89% of smartphone owners have immediate purchase intent and act within 24 hours of research. This means that most of these customers are looking for eating options for possibly their next meal and using their smartphones to take a decision about where you would eat. 

For a restaurant, it becomes quite important to appear high on the Local Search as this will provide the most relevant content for the user. 

Here are three starter SEO tips to get started and immediately put your restaurant in the user's radar. 

1) Use google places 

The first step is a no brainer. Google controls two-thirds of the search engine market with Bing and Yahoo sharing a substantial amount of the rest. So, to get found on Google the first step would be to register on  Google My Business.  

When registered your Business Profile appears right when people are searching for restaurants like yours. You can update your information regularly to keep your followers informed. You can also post your latest offers and updates which will appear directly on the search page. 

The fun part is Google also provides analytics about how people are interacting with your Business profile, how did people find you and where are they coming from? 

This will inform a great deal about your customers which you can then use to further optimise your website and restaurant as well. 

2) Setup citation on local directories. 

Any online mention of your restaurant’s name, phone number and address are a citation. It can occur on business directories, or on websites. It helps users to discover local restaurants and it can affect the search engine rankings. 

There seems to be a strong correlation between the number of citations a company has and how high it appears on Google search results. The local business that rank in positions 1-3 has an average of 85 citations. 

Your Restuarant will have to have a strategy to create and develop citations. A robust citation on major platforms increase awareness and discovery of your restaurant  

Some of the directories that publish data about all industries are yell, Yelp, Yahoo Business. Make sure your business has a citation on all these platforms. 

In addition, you would also need to build your citations on local restaurant specific data platforms. Examples are, Superpages.com, Zomato, TripAdvisors and FourSquare. 

3) Focus on user experience  

So now you have a steady stream of traffic flowing into your website and then what? You have successfully brought customers on your website and now you would need to think like your customer. What do you think they are looking for? What information do they want? Do they want to book a table? 

Make all relevant information easily accessible so that they do not leave your website as soon as they arrive. It should not take more than a click to discover a menu, contact information or book a table. 

If you have not already done so, it is very useful to have a table booking system installed on your website and social media pages.  This will be easy for users to book a table at your restaurant as quickly as possible after they land on your website. If people just browse your website and leave you are losing potential sales. 

Final Thoughts 

There are a lot of SEO techniques that can be used as you go along and grow as a business. To get started try out tips above. You can use Google Analytics to check how many visitors are landing on your website and how many from that are booking a table. This will inform you how to improve your SEO strategy in the future. 

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