Posted by Craig Maloney | August 30, 2017 | Filed under: SEO
Every industry brings its own particular SEO challenges and opportunities. The restaurant world is no exception. To make your local eatery findable to nearby consumers, there are a few special considerations you’ll want to make.
Below are some of top local SEO tips for restaurants you can use for your eatery so you can rank better in Google and search engines hence earn more business from search engines.
First Tip: Make Sure You’re Listed on Google My Business!
We believe that every business should take advantage of this feature, which provides your company with a quick-and-easy information display on the SERP—making it natural and effortless for consumers to check out your hours of operation, reviews, website, etc.
With that said, Google My Business is especially useful for restaurants, and comes with some uniquely beneficial features:
- Google posts. From your Google My Business account you can submit a post including a picture, link, and up to 300 words; as with Facebook posts, you can also create events. This is a great way to advertise specials and events, and to claim a bit more mobile SERP real estate.
- Quick links. Google My Business makes it easy for you to include a link to your restaurant website in the knowledge graph, but now you can embed a few additional ones, too—so, in addition to linking to the Umami Burger website, you can also link directly to deeper content like the menu page, etc.
Second Tip: Earn Citations.
Again, this is something that’s important for all businesses, but perhaps especially noteworthy for restaurants.
The reason for this is simple. Getting a third-party citation is always good for SEO, but restaurants also see major traffic flow from sites like Yelp, Urban Spoon, or FourSquare.
Make sure you claim listings on these sites and others like them—and also ensure that:
- You keep your contact information and hours of operation totally up to date.
- You provide a high-quality, appealing image whenever given the chance.
- You respond to any and all reviews in a timely and professional manner.
Note than an Orange County SEO firm, like Everything Online, can handle a lot of this citation work on your behalf.
Third Tip: Get Your Menu to Rank.
Since 2014, Google has allowed restaurants to provide their menu data directly in the SERP—a feature that’s still tragically undervalued.
Now, to be fair, some might say that posting menu data directly to Google robs them of some website traffic. There may be merit to that argument, but on the flipside: Providing menu data can drive foot traffic through your front door, and isn’t that ultimately the point?
Crucially, menu data is gathered from third-party sites, so to take advantage of this option, you must keep up to date menu listings on sites like AllMenus and Yelp. This will take some diligence, but can be well worth it!
Fourth Tip: Implement Schema.
For those who don’t know, schema is code that provides information to Google, but is invisible to the end user. Schema can be placed anywhere in your website, though most put it in the head.
By using schema, you can tell Google much about the nature of your restaurant. So, Umami Burger could use schema to tell Google about the kind of food it serves, about its different locations, etc.
This is a little bit more of a technical step, but definitely something to discuss with your SEO provider.
Fifth Tip: Build Local Buzz.
One more thing you need to boost your restaurant’s rankings: Some good, localized PR. And there are a number of ways to get it:
- Send out local press releases.
- Reach out to local blogs and publications, asking them for coverage.
- Attend local/community events to promote your restaurant.
This kind of buzz is what helps you gather momentum in your quest for strong, local results—and of course, those are the results that matter most.
Together, these tips can make a big impact in putting your restaurant on the map. To implement them as part of a seamless, holistic marketing plan, we invite you to reach out to the one of top digital marketing firms orange county. Contact Everything Online today.
