Your Guide on Restaurant SEO to Increase Website Ranking

Introduction to Restaurant SEO

“Restaurant SEO.” What does it mean? Is it just a buzzword? How does it affect my restaurant? Can I get more customers or have increased visibility on search engines? How do I optimize or implement SEO for my restaurant? You might have asked these questions already and learned more about Restaurant SEO or still need some insight. This is a complex topic for anyone, whether you’re a restaurant marketer or someone who isn’t highly tech-savvy. Restaurant SEO refers to optimizing a restaurant's website and online presence to improve its visibility in search engine results. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it involves various strategies and techniques aimed at increasing organic (non-paid) traffic to a website.

Importance of Google Search and SEO

Google Search has been evolving since its creation. Google’s algorithm, a complex system that allows Google to find, rank, and return the most relevant pages for a certain search, continually gets built upon and changed but the fundamentals have stayed the same. There are many Google updates like the knowledge panel (introduced in 2012) and featured snippets (2014), that you can use to your benefit to enhance your restaurant’s visibility and traffic. Gone are the days of optimizing for the “10 Blue Links” (hello, endless scroll)! Now, there are four main best practices to rank higher on Google.

Rich Results: Enhanced organic search results that add information to a plain text search and expand on the answer with images, videos, steps, or more.

Featured Snippets: Also known as “position zero,” they are concise summaries of information shown at the top of Google's search results and are designed to present a direct answer or solution.

Knowledge Panels: Information boxes that appear on the right side of Google's search results and provide concise and structured information about a specific entity, such as a person, organization, place, or thing.

Google Business Profile/Local Business Results (Local SEO): Formally known as “Google My Business,” Google Business Profile or GBP allows local businesses to manage their online presence whenever someone searches for their business, product, or service.

Utilizing Restaurant Information for Local SEO

Adding your restaurant’s information to multiple channels that Google is actively pulling information from is key to increasing your visibility. If you want your restaurant to be seen online, then head over to restaurant review sites, directories, and social media platforms.

Google Business Profile (GBP): Google Business Profile makes up roughly 30% of all Google Traffic. That’s very powerful for restaurant brands and it’s completely free. This is where you can easily turn people who find you on Google Search and Maps into new customers. Simply add your restaurant information like location, business hours, contact information, photos, and menu to get started. Spend some time getting all of the details in and making the listing as complete and accurate as possible so you get the best ranking results.

Social Media: You can also find new customers through social media channels that offer brand visibility and awareness in your local community. UGC (User-Generated Content) is content shared by everyday users about a place, product, or thing. This increases the number of people viewing what you have to offer because if they share a dish from your restaurant and rate it highly, you’ll attract more potential customers– after all people trust those who look and act like them over paid content that seems fake.

Restaurant Review Sites: Follow this by adding your restaurant information on restaurant review sites such as Yelp, OpenTable, and TripAdvisor and encourage reviews! Reviews are an indicator for Google when ranking local search results. Google shows the highest-rated restaurants and can show your rating right on the search results page, helping you attract more customers.

Understanding Schema and its Role in SEO

Google uses schema to generate and update the Knowledge Panels. Schema is structured data that makes your website's content more easily understood by Google. So basically, it's providing search engines with specific information about your restaurant's website content. As a matter of fact, search engines are always trying to learn more about your business. So posting information such as the type of food you serve, your hours of operation, your contact information, and more is crucial to helping search engines learn more about your restaurant.

Keyword Strategy for Restaurants

Keywords are specific words or phrases that help search engines understand the content of a web page. So if you own a pizza brand, you should probably have a lot of keywords around “pizza.” By optimizing a website for relevant keywords, you can increase your visibility in search results. With strategizing keywords to use, you should target search terms that you want your restaurant’s website to rank for. As just mentioned, if you own a pizza brand, a search term can be “pizza.” Keep in mind that while keywords can be single words (pizza) they should often have two to three more search terms. So, keeping with the pizza brand, and if you’re located in Austin, a keyword on your website could look like this “best pizza in Austin.” Here’s a quick breakdown of the types of keywords commonly used in SEO:

Broad keywords: General terms that relate to a broad topic. For example, "pizza." Broad keywords tend to have high search volumes but can also be highly competitive. That’s why you should use three more keywords for “pizza.”

Long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are more specific and longer phrases that target a narrower audience. For example, "best thin crust cheese pizza.” Long-tail keywords often have lower search volumes (because it is more specific) but can result in higher potential customer rates.

Local keywords: These keywords target a specific geographic location and are essential for businesses targeting a local audience. For example, "best pizza in Austin" or "pizza delivery in Austin." Including location-specific keywords helps search engines understand the geographical relevance of your content.

SEO Strategy for Restaurants

After learning about restaurant SEO and Google Search why it’s important, how it impacts your restaurant website’s visibility, and what you can do to increase online traffic, we hope you now have a foundation to build out your restaurant SEO services. Continue to monitor your traffic with the free tools because remember SEO and Google Search, along with other search engines, are always changing. Once you start seeing that traffic, you’ll be serving more and more customers!

Conclusion

In conclusion, Restaurant SEO is a crucial aspect of your marketing strategy that can help you increase visibility, attract more customers, and ultimately grow your business. By implementing the strategies outlined in this guide, including optimizing your website for local SEO, implementing schema, and strategizing your keyword usage, you can effectively optimize your website and improve your search engine rankings. Keep in mind that SEO is an ongoing process, so continue to monitor and update your strategies to stay ahead of the competition.