A robust online presence to your eating place isn’t optional anymore, customers want to discover you quickly, and easily across several platforms; that is why, online ordering and meal delivery are disrupting the conventional diner model - restaurants that have online ordering are bringing in 130% extra sales, over 60% of people are searching for menus online, and 50% are checking restaurants’ websites.
Thus, restaurant owners have begun to invest in search engine optimization (SEO) in order to make sure their outlet is present on Google and other search engines.
Search engine optimization might seem like a difficult challenge; however, it isn’t! There are a few easy practices you could put in place to increase your online presence and put your restaurant on the map!
In this article, we’ll cross over:
● What is search engine optimization?
● The advantages of search engine optimization
● Seven guidelines to help your restaurant achieve top results online
What Is Search Engine optimization?
Search engine optimization is the procedure of optimizing an internet site in order to achieve high placement on Google, Yahoo, and different search engines through specific keywords and phrases that users use to look for a specific topic online.
The purpose of this procedure is to get more visitors to your web page, and we all know that more visitors mean more sales!
The Benefits of search engine optimization for Restauranteurs
Restaurant search engine optimization may be a long-term strategy that yields several benefits such as:
● Increasing the number of visitors coming to your internet site thus, increasing online orders and reservations
● Increasing brand awareness
● Increasing customer interactions
● Increasing sales and brand loyalty
7 Restaurant search engine optimization tips to help you be on top!
There are tons of guidelines that people use to help their website rank better. We will look at some of the most successful techniques and recommendations that professionals use to optimize websites.
1. Create a Keyword Planning Roadmap
The first step is devising a search engine optimization roadmap with keyword strategic planning.
Keyword making plans is basically laying out the goal-oriented phrases/sentences you need your F&B business to rank for. These can be random words (i.e., “shrimps”), or words that are more likely to consist of two, 3, or extra words that construct relevant phrases (“sweet and sour shrimps near me”).
Here are a few keyword tools that are very helpful in searching for the trendiest or most used keywords as well as the search volume or bidding price competitors may be paying to advertise and rank!
1. Google Keyword Planner
2. Moz
3. SEMrush
When studying key phrases, you’ll need to look into 3 different types of keywords.
High-purpose broad eating-place phrases, area of interest key phrases, and branded key phrases.
● Broad: These are very broad but end up making sense when you look into the users’ search purpose: “eating places in Kansas City,” “sweet and sour shrimps near me,” etc.
● Targeted: Niche, precise and closely related to what your restaurant provides. “Open wings night”, “Open beer” …
● Brand Oriented: “Roadster’s Review”, “can eighty6 help my business?”.
2. Optimize for Local search engine optimization
Build your brand’s presence and identity by submitting your restaurant website to all directories, review sites, and digital media platforms in order to optimize your SEO!
Below are some examples:
● Google My Business
● Yelp
● Foursquare
● TripAdvisor
● Yellowpages
3. List Your Restaurant on Review Sites and Encourage Reviews
Customer reviews can be the cornerstone of a restaurant's success or lead to the downfall of its reputation. With the majority of diners claiming they're influenced by online restaurant reviews, it's
important for restaurant owners to understand how to best manage, respond, and showcase their establishment's reviews.
Add your restaurant to the main review sites and keep in mind that the more services you offer your customers, the more you increase the chances of getting good reviews.
4. Get Other Websites to Link to Your Restaurant’s Website
Link building for restaurant websites is a necessary strategy to position said websites on Google’s first page and involves reaching out to trustworthy partners. A part of this process depends entirely on you (social media, business directories), whereas the other is tributary of your external connections as you need to get in contact with newspapers, bloggers or other content creators. Be sure to choose relevant sites and think of backlinks as PR, both for people and search engines. Have a list of places where you would like to have your restaurant mentioned and never buy bulk backlinks.
Start with Facebook, then, move on to Instagram which is an excellent medium to display mouthwatering food and make your brand well-known. Moreover, IG is a useful way of geting in contact with bloggers and influencers to further your growth. Everything related to food and cooking can also benefit from Pinterest. Leverage social media as a way to give people the chance to discover your brand. Post dishes with short recipes and start building links for your website or blog.
5. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
A responsive layout allows a website to rescale itself according to the device being used to view it. This makes the website adapt to different screen sizes without any rendering issues. Responsive web design works well for both mobile and desktop platforms as the website realigns its appearance accordingly.
Incorporating a responsive layout goes a long way in assisting websites in ranking higher on Google searches; it boosts their SEO value as Google prefers indexing and ranking websites that are mobile-friendly.
Moreover, mobile devices have significantly changed how people use the internet daily and this trend is on the rise as more people continue to access the internet primarily via their mobile devices. Furthermore, leading search engines like Google continuously seek to make the web a mobile-first search landscape, having a mobile-friendly website must precede developers and testers.
6. Test Your Online Ordering System
Benefits of online ordering:
More customers: Restaurants that use an online ordering service grow their revenue by 30% on average.
More sales: Average check size for takeout orders is likely to increase. Annual studies have shown that customers spend up to 20% more on online orders leading to a higher volume of orders and sales per order. This is due to more add-ons and more menu items per check.
More efficient transactions: Nobody wants to pick up the phone to place a takeout order anymore. With a third-party app or online ordering on your website, orders and payments are processed instantly.
Better customer experience: With integrated payments, customers can safely receive their takeout or delivery order without any direct contact with staff or the need to use high-touch payment terminals.
7. Launch a Blog
A blog helps restaurants give their existing website an additional way of reaching out to their customers and improving their social presence. Moreover, publishing more content increases the chance that they’ll touch on something that may really appeal to a particular customer e.g., sharing a recipe idea, or photos from the previous night’s happy hour. Another benefit that a blog can offer your restaurant’s website is improved search engine visibility. The more content you publish on your blog, the more frequent updates you will have on your website, which gives you increased links leading to your website. From there the search engines will continue to crawl your website and keep on coming back with each update and get it indexed for you into the SERPs.
These seven guidelines will assist you in constructing a robust basis for your restaurant search engine optimization and help you increase your brand’s awareness and drive new revenue to your business.