How to Rank Restaurant Websites on Google
Here are our top SEO recommendations for restaurants looking to improve their online visibility, attract more customers, and increase their revenue.
These SEO strategies apply to fine dining restaurants, casual dining restaurants, fast food restaurants, family-style restaurants, ethnic restaurants, seafood restaurants, steakhouse restaurants, vegetarian restaurants, pizzerias, food trucks, and other restaurants.
1.) Technical SEO Tips for Restaurants
Technical SEO refers to optimizing your restaurant website's infrastructure so it can be properly crawled and indexed by search engines, which includes aspects like site speed, mobile optimization, XML sitemaps, and structured data markup. This ensures search engines can easily access, understand, and rank the website's content.
We can help out with all of these items and more, or you can handle them on your own:
- Ensure your restaurant website has a responsive design that works well desktop, small laptop, tablet, and mobile devices. There are a lot of screen sizes out there to accomodate. On a desktop computer, you can resize your browser window from large to small to see how different layout elements adjust for smaller screen sizes.
- Analyze your website loading speed with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. Don't get caught up trying to pass Core Web Vitals. It isn't always possible on complex websites and might not be worth the investment. Instead, try to fix simple things to get a score of 60+.
- Secure your website with HTTPS encryption to provide a safe browsing experience and increase user trust in your restaurant.
- Create and submit a sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to help search engines crawl and index your website more efficiently.
- Implement local business schema markup to provide search engines with more detailed information about your restaurant, such as your menu and hours of operation, and improve your website's visibility in search results.
- Use canonical tags to avoid any duplicate content issues that may arise from having similar content on multiple pages.
- Regularly monitor your website for crawl errors and promptly address them to prevent any negative impact on your search engine ranking. You can find such errors in Google Search Console.
2.) On-Page SEO Tips for Restaurants
On-page SEO involves optimizing each page of your restaurant website to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. This often focuses on elements like keyword presence, meta tags, quality of content, user experience, page organization, and internal linking.
We can help out with all of these items and more, or you can handle them on your own:
- Create high-quality, original content that aligns with the search intent of your target audience and incorporates related keywords, such as blog posts about your signature dishes or the history of your restaurant. While ChatGTP is a popular content writing tool, don't rely solely on AI content. It is often generic, repetitive, and/or inaccurate. Be sure to proofread content before you post it.
- Include relevant restaurant-related keywords in your website's page titles and meta descriptions to improve their visibility in search engine results.
- Optimize your website's headings and subheadings with target keywords to improve your search engine ranking and provide a better user experience.
- Incorporate restaurant-related keywords in image alt tags to provide context to search engines and enhance the accessibility of your images.
- Use internal linking to connect related content on your website, improving search engine understanding of your website's structure and hierarchy.
- Use descriptive URLs that include relevant restaurant-related keywords to enhance your website's discoverability.
- Display your menu and prices prominently on your website to improve user engagement and make it easier for potential customers to find what they're looking for.
- Regularly scan your website for broken links and fix them immediately to improve your website's user experience. You can use this free tool from Ahrefs to scan for broken links.
3.) Off-Page SEO Tips for Restaurants
Off-page SEO involves all the actions taken outside of your restaurant website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs). This includes strategies like link building, social media marketing, and reputation management. Such efforts help increase your website's reputation, authority, and visibility online.
We can help out with all of these items and more, or you can handle them on your own:
- Build high-quality backlinks from relevant websites, such as local food blogs or review sites, to increase your website's authority and improve your search engine ranking.
- Maintain a strong social media presence to engage with customers and potential customers, establish your restaurant's brand, and build relationships with influencers and partners in the food and hospitality industry.
- Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on popular online review sites, such as Yelp or TripAdvisor, to improve your online reputation and attract new customers.
- Collaborate with other local businesses, such as nearby hotels or attractions, to cross-promote services and build backlinks to your website.
- Create listings in local business directories and citation sites to improve your local SEO and increase your visibility in relevant search results.
- Create informative and shareable content related to the food and hospitality industry, such as recipes or foodie guides, to increase engagement and attract new website visitors.
- Make videos to showcase your restaurant and dishes, and to provide behind-the-scenes glimpses into your kitchen and cooking process.
- Monitor your online reputation and respond promptly to any feedback or reviews, whether positive or negative, to demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction and maintain your positive image. Be sure to respond to all reviews, even negative feedback.
We can review your website and rankings, then provide a recommendation on which areas of technical, on-page, and off-page search engine optimization need the most attention. This will help establish a budget and scope for ranking you higher in search results!
Alternatively, if you don't need help improving your rankings, check out this guide on DIY SEO!
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Top Keywords for Restaurant SEO
Looking for suggested keywords to target within the SEO campaign for your restaurant? Whether you plan to hire us, or optimize the site yourself, we've got you covered!
Before starting an SEO service for a restaurant, we like to scan the website and see what you've got to work with for content and link authority.
From there, we'll check to see what types of cuisine or dishes you'd like to promote in your area. Maybe you just launched a new menu and want to attract more diners. Perhaps you just don't feel like you are getting enough traffic to your website or social media channels.
Having this information helps us determine what types of keywords to focus on for content writing and link building.
Focus Keywords for Restaurants
- Restaurant [city/area]
- Fine dining [city/area]
- Casual dining [city/area]
- Family dining [city/area]
- Brunch [city/area]
- Lunch [city/area]
- Dinner [city/area]
- Takeout [city/area]
- Delivery [city/area]
- Outdoor seating [city/area]
- Bar [city/area]
- Wine list [city/area]
- Craft beer [city/area]
- Happy hour [city/area]
- Seafood restaurant [city/area]
- Steakhouse [city/area]
Keyword Tip #1: Restaurants often target keywords related to their cuisine, menu, and location. This helps you attract diners who are searching for a specific type of cuisine or restaurant nearby.
Keyword Tip #2: You should consider targeting long-tail keywords, which are more specific and less competitive. For example, "vegan brunch options in Portland" may be easier to rank for than just "brunch".
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