Running a restaurant has its own ups and downs. Selecting a good spot, hiring an experienced and responsible workforce, dealing with difficult customers, and surviving busy hours are just some of the problems restaurant owners have to deal with all the time. Yet perhaps the most important concern for restaurant owners is knowing how to attract more local customers to gain more profit. with the right local SEO strategy, you will be on the right track to success.
Many restaurant owners have come to the realisation that having a website and improving their online visibility is the key to surviving the tense competition they’re facing. However, there are certain things you should know about your restaurant’s online visibility if you want your restaurant’s name to appear on top of search results. This article discusses 8 ways through which restaurant owners can increase their profit by adding local SEO to their menu!
1. Claim your business
First things first, if you have a restaurant, you have to tell Google about it. Simply, go to Google My Business and create a profile. There are three primary pieces of information you need to give Google here. Your restaurant’s name, address, and phone number; hence the acronym NAP. If you want to create the perfect profile, you can also add your schedule, menu, social media, and some pictures from your restaurant. Make sure your account is verified and update your profile if you change your NAP. Having a perfect account increases your chances of being more visible to people who are more important to you than those living miles away. it is also one of the primary local SEO tactics that will help you boost sales and attract more customers to your restaurant.
2. Launch a website
As a restaurant owner, you are supposed to know the most famous restaurants in your town/city. Make a list of those that have the most customers and you will find out that they each have a website. Running a website gives you the opportunity to exchange information with your customers and answer their queries. They can find out if you serve the food they are looking for, are open on holidays or other special dates, accept online reservations/payments, and a lot more. You can also share your Instagram, Telegram, or Facebook links so that they have more options to reach out to you. last but not least, you can share pictures/videos taken from your customers to convey the idea that many people love your food and trust your service. you can never go wrong with a well-built website when you want to improve your local SEO.
3. Create SEO-friendly content
Writing about your services and anything about your restaurant is a good idea, but the content should have some features to be SEO-friendly. When a person searches something like “seafood restaurant” in Google, Search engines find a thousand pages on Google related to seafood restaurants. Two questions come to mind. First, in what order do the search engines present the restaurants? And more importantly, what happens to those restaurants which appear on the second or other pages? SEO is the answer to the first question. Restaurants presented on the first page of Google are the ones that have been optimised for search engines in the best way possible. Regarding the second question, almost no one checks the results presented on the second or third page and so, they remain unknown. To have an excellent online presence your priority should be to create SEO-friendly content. The good news is that, by reading a simple on-page SEO guide, you can make your content more SEO-friendly.
4. Make your website mobile-friendly
Sounds like a bulky job for a chief, but it pays off pretty well. Having a well-optimised blog for your restaurant ensures receiving lots of demands. People often go online before deciding what to eat and where to order from. Therefore, if your website is well optimised, your restaurant will have more visibility and that is all you need. Yet, any net user can vouch for the claim that some websites take way more than others to load. Similarly, some websites do not allow for voice search while others do. Loading in seconds and allowing for voice search are two important features that make your website mobile-friendly. If your website is not mobile-friendly, you’ll practically lose many potential customers. It is neither costly nor time taking. So why not contact a web design company and ask them to remove one of the worst obstacles that has prevented many people from visiting your restaurant website.
5. Consider starting a blog
On your website, you provide information about your services, the type of foods you serve, special discounts you might occasionally offer, etc. launching a blog paves the way for you to discuss things less-related to your restaurant and more related to local people. This way, people searching about things other than food might find their way to your blog and then end up checking the menu on your website. Your blog is just like a bridge connecting customers to your website. For example, you can write about the benefits of crops or livestock raised in your town and mention your restaurant as one of the beneficiaries. Write about beautiful places in your city and tell your readers how visitors, eating in your restaurant, have enjoyed their time in your town. Discuss the importance of first-aid training and talk about the guy who saved one of your customers on a winter night. The intention behind your website is to attract more customers and blogging is one way to run more traffic to your website and improve its local SEO.
6. Use proper title tags and meta descriptions
When you post content on your website, you need to add proper title tags. A title tag is the main focus of your content and lets the reader know what the content is about. If you choose the wrong or less-related title tags, search engines will find them irrelevant to your content and do not suggest your content to the audience that you had in mind. So, always remember to choose the best title tags for your content. In the same way, meta descriptions describe the content and give more details to the search engines. It is also important to include your location, and the foods you serve in your meta description. Therefore a careful selection of title tags and meta descriptions contributes a lot to your site’s visibility.
7. Encourage Google reviews
You always want to be mentioned and talked about. Of course, no one likes being criticised. Therefore, you should provide excellent services to receive compliments. Research findings tell us that more than 80% of customers read online reviews before they buy from local services. Normally, when you look for some service, say a dentist, you have an eye out for reviews and ratings. The ones which have received more positive reviews will be among your first options. The same holds true for your restaurant as well. Just list your restaurant on review sites and try to encourage your customers to write their reviews. Remember, the more your restaurant’s name is mentioned, the more credit you receive from Google.
8. Invest in local citations
We already discussed the importance of your restaurant’s NAP in your Google my business profile. One way for Google to remember your restaurant better and direct more local net surfers to your website is to have your NAP repeated on a regular basis. Google my business allows for one NAP only. So, in order to have your NAP repeated, you must use local citations. for example, if you run a local beauty salon, you must mention your business information on local websites. There are plenty of free websites on which you can list your restaurant’s information and improve your restaurant’s online visibility and ultimately your local SEO. Continuous local citations of your Restaurant’s information is one of the most important factors affecting your online visibility and brings more credibility to your restaurant.
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