Restaurant seo: 10 actions that will improve your online presence and increase your clientele

Having a strong online presence will set your restaurant apart from your competition. Nowadays users use the internet to search for information about local restaurants to ensure a unique experience.

Being at the top of Google translates into more visibility for your potential customers and therefore, more chances for them to visit your facilities and not those of your competitors.

Therefore, SEO is a strategy that you need to apply to strengthen this online presence, gain visibility and receive more customers in your business.

Therefore, we have prepared a list of the 10 actions you should take to gain more visibility for your clientele.

But first let’s start with the basics:

What is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a marketing strategy that allows you to improve the visibility of a website/business on search engines, especially Google.

SEO is the way users can find your restaurant. For example, if you search: “mexican restaurant in tampa” Google will show you a list of Mexican restaurants in Tampa.

The thing is, usually the results that appear higher in the list are the ones that get the most customers. But to reach the top of the search results you need to apply SEO techniques to gain visibility.

To better understand SEO you need to understand these basic concepts:

Keyword: the keyword is the word that the user enters in the search engines to get results. There are different types of keywords according to their search intention and length. The keywords will give us the guidelines of the content we have to create to attract potential customers to the business.
Organic traffic: these are the visits that come to your website through non-paid searches. Organic traffic is the most profitable because, although it requires some initial investment, in the long term it generates stable results that do not depend on an advertising payment.
On Page SEO Optimization: these are the optimizations we make within the web page so that it works the way Google likes it and is positioned in search engines.
Local SEO: these are strategies to position a business at a local level. SEO for restaurants includes this type of strategies to bring customers to the business.
Link building: is a strategy to gain authority by placing the restaurant in local directories.

What is SEO for restaurants?

SEO for restaurants is nothing more than SEO techniques and strategies applied to restaurants. Especially, local SEO strategies are applied to position the restaurant’s website in the locality in which it is located, increase its possibility and thus increase the number of visits to your establishment.

In the case of restaurants, we have to put a lot of emphasis on the optimization of the Google Business Profile listing and the appearance of different local directories and booking pages (such as TripAdvisor or Booking.com). We will go into more detail on this point later on.

Why is SEO important for your restaurant?

Optimizing your restaurant’s SEO incredibly increases its visibility, organic traffic, popularity and the amount of sales you make. But let’s look at it more concretely:

Improved User Experience: SEO refines website aspects like navigation, speed, and mobile-friendliness. Enhanced user experience leads to better engagement and conversion rates. A delay over three seconds in page loading can cause 53% of mobile users to leave.
Increased Online Visibility: A robust SEO strategy elevates a restaurant’s search engine ranking. Greater visibility to potential customers is achieved. The top Google search result garners approximately 33% of traffic, highlighting the value of ranking first.
Higher Organic Traffic: SEO boosts organic traffic, lessening the need for paid ads. Organic searches account for over 50% of web traffic, offering restaurants a chance to draw in more visitors.
Local Search and Mobile Optimization: Local SEO is vital for restaurants to attract neighborhood clientele. “Near me” searches have surged by over 900% in two years. With mobile devices generating more than half of global web traffic, mobile-friendly sites are essential.
Increase your business conversions: a good SEO strategy is based on generating conversions. In other words, doing SEO will allow you to sell more and generate profitability.

10 steps to improve your restaurant’s SEO

We will now present you with a step-by-step guide so you can learn everything you need to do to boost your restaurant’s SEO.

Set clear and realistic objectives

The first thing you have to do is to establish the goals of your project. That is to say, what are your goals? What results do you expect to obtain? Who are you targeting? All these are details of the project that will be very useful when planning the SEO strategy. And it guarantees in a great sense your success:

Identification of Your Audience: You must ascertain the demographics of your intended clientele. It is imperative that you investigate their search behaviors and preferences. Your SEO strategies should be meticulously tailored to engage this audience.
Specification of Your Goals: You should aim to augment the flow of visitors to your website. It is advisable to seek higher placements in search engine rankings. You are encouraged to enhance the frequency of online orders. You ought to employ tangible metrics to gauge your progress.
Promotion of Your Establishment’s Unique Features: You need to identify what sets your restaurant apart from the competition. This may include your culinary specialties, atmosphere, location, or unique promotions. Your SEO should strategically highlight these unique selling points.
Concentration on Your Geographical Area: You must define the geographical scope within which your restaurant operates. Your SEO initiatives should be intensified to dominate local search queries. You should ensure that your establishment appears prominently in local search results.
Establishment of Your Timeline: You must construct a feasible timeline for achieving your SEO objectives. Recognize that SEO is a sustained effort.You should set periodic milestones and deadlines to ensure continuous progress.

Perform keyword research

Long tails Keywords

Long Tail keywords refer to broader keywords. This type of keywords usually have a lower search volume, but are easier to position. A good strategy should start by attacking this type of keywords.

For example, “the best Mexican restaurant dishes in Tampa” is easier to rank for than “Mexican restaurants”, because the search intent is more specific. In addition, this type of keywords usually have an excellent business opportunity.

Transactional and informational keywords

Transactional keywords are those in which the user intends to make a purchase or hire a service, that is why it is called transactional. Informational keywords are those in which the user is looking for information. Other keywords are mixed, because the user is looking for information to make a purchase.

Transactional keywords are the ones you should use in the service pages, in the home and your landings pages. Informational keywords in the blog to attract potential customers and to gain popularity in the eyes of users.

Search volume and keyword difficulty

Search volume refers to the number of monthly searches a keyword has in a month. And keyword difficulty refers to the difficulty to rank for a keyword. The keyword difficulty is categorized from 1 to 100.

Keywords between 1 and 30 are the easiest to rank for. Even if they do not have a high search volume, they will be the ones that bring traffic to our website, improve our visibility and increase our page rank.

Keywords seed

Las palabras clave semilla se refieren a aquellas palabras que utilizaremos como base para obtener otras palabras clave. Por lo general, están relacionadas a los servicios que ofrecemos y a la localidad. Para un restaurante en Tampa, un buen ejemplo de palabra clave semilla sería:

Restaurante en Tampa
Restaurante en Tampa
El nombre de cada uno de los platillos que se ofrecen

The seed keywords are the basis to do the keyword research and analyze the competition.

Analyze the competition

The next step is to analyze the competition. We must know many important aspects of the competition to determine:

Opportunities
Threats
Difficulties and challenges
Ease of positioning

Some important aspects that we must evaluate of the competition are:

Site authority.
Traffic.
Positioned keywords.
Web architecture.
Strengths of the competition.
Weaknesses of the competition.

All this will give us the basis to make an effective strategy that will allow us to take your restaurant to the top of Google.

Create a strategy

From here, we can create an SEO strategy for your restaurant. What we do is to organize all the information we have obtained so far in a document where we specify the opportunities and threats that exist, and the actions we are going to take in the following months to position the website.

This strategy determines the course of action we are going to take. The strategy is usually planned for several months:

3 months

6 months

9 months

One year

It should be noted that through data analysis the strategy should be adjusted to ensure the best results.

Perform a site audit

The audit refers to the analysis of the website internally and externally to know the current state of the website. Depending on each agency or professional, the site audit can be done before or after the development of the strategy.

At this point, we must verify the number of links, the current positioning of the website, the authority of the site and the present errors that we are going to correct over time. We will go a little deeper into this in the SEO On Page.

Configure the analytical tools

The next step is to configure the tools with which we will be able to measure the actions we take. These tools are the best way to know if the impact of the actions taken. And therefore, they will give us the basis for the corresponding adjustment of the strategy.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics es una potente herramienta gratuita que realiza el seguimiento y el análisis del rendimiento de los sitios web. Al configurar una cuenta y una propiedad para su sitio web e instalar un código de seguimiento, proporciona información sobre el comportamiento de los visitantes, las fuentes de tráfico y la participación de los usuarios.

Estos datos ayudan a tomar decisiones informadas para optimizar el rendimiento del sitio y la experiencia del usuario. Es esencial para comprender la eficacia de sus esfuerzos de SEO y mejorar su estrategia en línea.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free service provided by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. You can use it to understand how Google views your site and optimize your performance in search results. Key features include:

Search Analytics: See which queries bring users to your site, analyze your site’s impressions, clicks, and position on Google Search.
Content Submission: Submit sitemaps and individual URLs for crawling to ensure Google has the latest view of your site.
Issue Alerts: Receive email alerts when Google identifies issues on your site, see which URLs are affected, and inform Google when you’ve fixed them.
URL Inspection: Get detailed crawl, index, and serving information about your pages, directly from the Google index.

On Page Optimization

Now it’s time to optimize your website. This part is fundamental to start gaining positioning in Google. There are many things we could optimize a keyword and technical level.

But as a summary, these are the 5 most important ones:

Headings

Verify that all the headers of the website, especially the most important pages such as home and services, are being used correctly.

That the web hierarchy is respected, that is to say, the order in which the headers should be used: h1, h2, h3… without skipping that order.

That there is only one h1 per page and that it contains the main keyword.

Content

The content both at the level of internal pages and landings as well as the blog are essential for positioning. In fact, they are the basis of positioning. Keep in mind the following:

Make sure to attack the main keywords.
Optimize your home page with the main keywords and everything you offer to your potential customers. Remember to link to the main services or dishes.
Create the main pages of your services and give them strength through internal linking from the home page, other internal pages and even blog posts.
Create relevant content on the blog with which you can attract potential customers.
Make sure to make the content at least 500 words long so that Google has more information and is easier to rank for.
Update old content and improve the content that is generating better results so you can outperform the competition.

Metadata

Metadata is the information that appears in Google search results. You have to pay special attention to the metatitle and metadescription, because that information is what will motivate the user to click and go directly to your website.

Include the main keyword. And try to offer relevant information or be persuasive in the description.

Loading speed

Use Google’s official tool, Page Speed, to measure the loading speed of your website. To consider that the loading speed is fine, ideally it should be above 50 on mobile and above 70/80 on desktop.

Correction of any errors

Check the errors of the web and prioritize them to know which are the most important and you can order them in order of priority. And thus correct them progressively. You can use Screaming Frog to evaluate the errors.

Once you have all this ready, you must submit the sitemap of your website to Google Search Console so that Google’s crawlers crawl the links and the URLS start to rank.

Recommendation: first perform all the optimizations and initial content before submitting the sitemap, that way you will have a better chance that Google will index your website faster and some links will rank.

We also recommend you to use Instant Indexing from Rank Math (if you use WordPress) so that the pages, posts and changes you make are automatically crawled by Google. Believe us, it’s faster than doing it link by link.

Create, optimize and manage Google Business Profile

Once your website is ready, the next step is to manage Google Business Profile. Google considers this as a determining factor for local SEO and for you to rank in the Local Pack, the format that Google shows for local searches.

This is because users check the GMB listing to learn more details about the business they want to visit: dishes, specialties, location, contact number, reputation, dishes, promotions, etc.

Therefore, the GMB page of your restaurant must be well optimized to be positioned at a local level. Here are some tips you should follow:

Create and verify Your GMB Listing: Visit the Google My Business website and sign in using your Google account. Follow the prompts to create a new listing for your restaurant. Provide accurate and up-to-date information, including your restaurant’s name, address, phone number, website URL, and business category. Google will typically send you a verification code by mail to the address you provided during listing creation. Once received, enter the verification code in your GMB account to verify and activate your listing. Verification is essential to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of your restaurant’s information.
Complete Your Profile: Take the time to fill out your GMB profile completely. Add high-quality photos of your restaurant’s interior, exterior, dishes, and ambiance to showcase your offerings. Write a compelling and informative business description that highlights your unique selling points, menu specialties, and any special features or services you offer.
Manage Reviews and Ratings: Encourage customers to leave reviews on your GMB listing. Respond to reviews promptly, addressing both positive feedback and any concerns or negative reviews. Engaging with customers demonstrates your commitment to their satisfaction and can positively influence potential customers.
Utilize Google Posts: Take advantage of Google Posts within your GMB account. These are short updates that appear directly in your listing and can be used to promote specials, events, or new menu items. Regularly update your Google Posts to keep your listing fresh and engaging.
Monitor Insights and Analytics: Google My Business provides valuable insights and analytics about how customers find and interact with your listing. Monitor these insights to understand customer behavior, identify popular times, and gain actionable data to optimize your listing and marketing efforts.

Add your restaurant’s website to online directories

One of the main ways to rank higher in the Local Pack is by entering your restaurant’s details in different online directories, mainly at the local level. Google gives priority to those restaurants (and other businesses) that are frequently named on the web and have a good reputation.

You have to do a thorough research to find these directories. Some of them are free to submit to, while others you will have to pay for.

We will always give priority to the free ones. However, keep in mind that appearing in some paid directories could generate better results because of the exclusivity of being in them. So you have to weigh which ones are worth it.

Regular monitoring

What remains is to monitor the impact of the actions taken and make the corresponding adjustments to the strategy to achieve the objectives. Remember that no SEO strategy is absolute.

So we will always have to make corrections or include new actions to the strategy that we had not considered before. GSC and GA data are the key to determine this.

Take your restaurant SEO strategy to another level with QAVAH Studio Digital

If you put into practice all the tips and advice we have given you in this post, you will achieve the profitability and visibility you are looking for your restaurant.

And if you need us to help you with the SEO of your restaurant, contact us. In QAVAH Studio Digital we are a digital marketing agency specialized in Local SEO and SEO for restaurants.