Local SEO is important to businesses of all sizes. But, when it comes to local SEO for restaurants, it is a subset of restaurant search engine optimization (SEO) that is very important to a restaurant’s marketing strategy.
Doing local SEO for restaurants not only helps restaurants attract more customers or increase brand awareness, but it also helps them build trust and credibility.
Therefore, if you are looking for a cost-effective way to market your restaurant, then using these three tactical local SEO strategies for restaurants will be of great help. Before we dive into discussing the three tactics, it will be important to understand what local SEO for restaurants is all about and the possible things search engines consider before ranking a business for a local search query.
Three Local SEO Tactics for Restaurants that Provide Immediate Results
To immediately benefit from your local SEO efforts for restaurants or food businesses, below are three tactics to use:
1. Optimize Your Food and Restaurant Website’s Online Presence For Relevance
The following simple tactics will help you optimize your food and restaurant business online presence to pass the search engine relevance test and be shown in local search results.
The number one tactic to improve relevance is to use keywords that match your customers search intent in your online content. And using a dedicated page to provide solutions surrounding the keywords.
For instance, instead of using a vague term like “restaurant menu” to name your content title or page title, you could use something like “restaurant menu with prices” or “restaurant menu with photos.” That will help provide useful information that can help customers make faster decisions to click or, by chance, meet their specific search needs.
Secondly, to optimize relevance, use geo-modifiers that have the name of your city, neighborhood, or landmark in your content. For example, instead of using a general term like “Chinese restaurant,” you could use something like “Chinese restaurant in downtown Lynchburg” or “Chinese restaurant near River Ridge Mall.”
Also, use specific and relevant long-tail keywords that capture your restaurant’s cuisine, location, and unique selling points, like avoiding using a generic term like “best restaurants”. Instead, use something like “best vegan pizza in Lynchburg” or “award-winning barbecue near Liberty University.” This way, you can target customers who are looking for exactly what you offer and reduce the chances of competing with other restaurants that may not be as relevant to your niche.
2. Optimize Your Restaurant Business for Proximity or Distance
Proximity is one factor search engines consider before showing a business in the local search results. To optimize proximity in your local SEO for restaurants, you can use the following tactics:
The number one tactic is to embed a map on your business website’s contact-us page. This will help search engines pick your business’s precise location.
The second tactic will be to claim and verify your Google My Business profile.
3. Improve Your Business Prominence
Your business is more likely to rank in local search results when it is well known and has a good reputation.
For you to improve your business prominence, the best approach will be to grow your business online reviews and ratings. One tactic you can use to achieve that is by encouraging customers through SMS marketing to review your restaurant business online.
The second way to improve your business’s online prominence is by having consistent opening hours, location, contact phone numbers, and business description across multiple platforms like social media and online business directories.
Remember, aside from the listed tactics, good customer service and great food are a more easy and natural way to grow traffic to your restaurant location. Having that in place will make your local SEO effort more productive.
What is local SEO for restaurants?
Local SEO is a subset of SEO that is simply the process of optimizing your business’s online presence to increase local traffic, visibility, and brand awareness.
Local SEO focuses on improving your business’s ranking in local search results.
Local search results are search results that search engines show when a user enters a local search query.
A local search query is a search query that includes a location. For example, “Pizza Near Me,” “Best Coffee Shop in Town,” “Pizza in Downtown Lynchburg,” or Things to Do in Lynchburg, Virginia.”
Local SEO for restaurants is an SEO effort that focuses on improving your restaurant business’s ranking in local search results.
Typical local search results include the following information: business name, address, phone number, websites, hour of operation, customer reviews, star rating, photos, videos, and map location.
Therefore, optimizing local SEO for food businesses around those areas of information will be a vital step to take.
Possible Factors Search Engines Consider Before Ranking a Restaurant Business for a Local Search Query
Search engines consider these three factors before ranking a business in local search results:
- Relevance
- Distance and
- Prominence
While considering relevance, search engines look at how well a business’s webpage, advertisement copy, social media page, or any other online assets can satisfy the searcher’s query intent. For instance, if a user searches for “best steak and cheese near me,” search engines will try to show results of steak and cheese restaurants that are located near the user’s current location.
The only way search engines will know if your restaurant sells steak and cheese or be able to solve the users’ search needs is if the term “steak and cheese” is present on the business website and the context in which the term was mentioned there.
Remember, your business might not be the only restaurant that has the term steak and cheese on its online assets. Search engines will have to consider distance to provide the most relevant result to the user.
To consider distance, search engines look at the location of the user and match it up with the location of a nearby restaurant business with a relevant result. Restaurants a few miles from the users will be at the top of the list.
Next will be for search engines to decide the best restaurant to show the user. That is where prominence comes into play.
Search engines use factors such as online reviews, ratings, citations, social media presence, and click-through rate to measure how well a business or website is known and trusted by its customers and potential customers. The more prominent a business or website is in its local area, the more likely it is to show up higher in local results.
How Virimark LLC Can Help With Your Restaurant Local SEO
Virimark LLC is an SEO company in Lynchburg, Virginia. Virimark helps businesses and restaurants improve their business ranking in local search results.
Local SEO is one of the services provided by the Virimark SEO company. They provide a variety of other industry-specific SEO services.
If you are looking for affordable local SEO for restaurants, Virimark LLC is the best SEO agency to contact. This is because of their free one-month trial of SEO services. Your business will spend zero dollars in the first month of working with and enjoying Virimark LLC’s quality SEO services.