Introduction

 

When you are looking for a restaurant to spend your time,

What do you usually do,

Well, I personally go ahead and type:

“Best Restaurants near me”

Or,

“Mexican Restaurant near me”,

And have you ever wondered why certain restaurants pop up and not others (even though they might be better),

Well, they are simply optimizing for local search by using some strategies that I am going to share with you today,

And here are the 3 Strategies to boost Local SEO for Restaurant:

1. The Website Optimization
2. Optimize Google My Business
3. Leverage Social

 

If you use those three strategies simultaneously,

You will see your organic traffic for local search boost tremendously,

But before going into the strategies,

 

What is Local SEO for restaurants?

 

What Is Local SEO For Restaurants?

In simple words,

Local SEO is the process of optimizing your business visibility for local search,

It is mainly to build awareness for local customers that are using search engines as a way of researching potential restaurant dine-out,

 

 

 

Many factors come into consideration such as:

• Relevance
• Distance
• Reviews
• Directories and citations
• NAP Citations (Name, Address, Phone number)

 

So when you are looking to optimize your local visibility,

There are three major goals that we are looking to achieve with local SEO:

• Stand Out
• Build Trust
• Increase Awareness

 

And to make sure that we are hitting those targets,

You will need to follow those 3 strategies,

So let’s get started with your first step which will be to optimize your website as a whole,

 

Optimize your website

 

The first step in making sure your restaurant is optimized for local search,

I do actually properly set up your website,

And there are 3 steps in optimizing your website:

1. Build Quality Content
2. Optimize On-Page SEO
3. Build Keyword Plan That Matches with Target Market

 

Build Quality Content

Content Creation and Marketing is a big player in your optimization process,

And you want to leverage this strategy as much as possible,

If you already have a website with a blog,

Then I will share with you a couple of practices to ensure you are taking the best out of it,

If not,

I highly suggest you start a blog for your restaurants,

As you will see your customer acquisition and retention highly increase,

But when it comes to website optimization,

You need to build quality content to be an authority in your field and to improve your search visibility,

Here are some of the best practices you can follow,

To build quality and relevant content that will increase your visibility:

 

 

 

But this is only for the overview of your blog,

Now we need to get deeper and optimize your actual content such as:

• Posts
• Videos
• Infographics
• Newsletter

 

Optimize On-Page SEO

When it comes to On-Page SEO,

It is simply the practice of optimizing the content available on a page itself,

And this involves:

 

 

By making sure that you are optimizing every post and page on your website,

Your chances of appearing in local search result highly increase,

Which results in increased awareness,

 

Build a keyword plan

Here I am especially talking about a keyword plan that matches your target market,

Building a keywords plan start with understanding your brand,

What are your concept and what types of content can you base your blog around,

Once you have answered that questions,

You should build a list of keywords that you would like to tackle and write content about,

For instance,

Let’s say you are Mexican fast food,

You are targeting a category of customers that are looking for convenience and fast service,

Maybe your keyword research will end up taking you to potential topics such as:

• What type of technologies do Mexican fast-food use?
• How to open Mexican fast food?
• What is the best order item in Mexican restaurants?

 

Those are only examples and you will need to check for the relevance and quality of each keyword,

Then you can start to build your content and optimize it,

By following those practices you will ensure that your website is fully optimized,

And you will see your customer acquisition increase at a fast pace.

Let’s dive into the next strategy:

 

Optimize Google My business

 

Google my business is one of google’s tools that allows business owners to make a listing of their restaurants in that instance,

In order to increase the search visibility, and give information about the restaurants,

After creating a Google My Business account,

There are a couple of practices you should follow to increase your listings efficiency:

Optimize your listings

By optimizing your listings,

You are increasing the chance to capture new customers and build awareness around your brand,

In order to optimize it you need to:

• Use your Restaurant name. …
• Correct Nap Citations
• Great description
• Correct Operating hours
• Outstanding images quality

 

By optimizing your listing I will enable you to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Engage with customers
• Build authority
• Gain great insights

 

Properly design your menu

Your menu is both a marketing and a communication tool,

You need to make sure that you have a well-designed menu that attracts your target market,

If you have some free time,

Here are a couple of great resources you can read to make your menu stand out:

• Restaurant design
• Menu Design
• Menu psychology

 

Focus on User Experience

By saying that,

I mean to actually engage with the community,

To be a part of it by:

• Following up with customers
• Reviewing critics
• Answering reviews

 

By doing so,

New and existing customers will actually see that you are present at any time,

And that your customer service is outstanding,

This point is crucial as it will boost:

• Customer acquisition,
• Customer retention,
• Customer loyalty,

 

Now you have an optimized website, as well as, optimized listings,

The last local SEO strategy for restaurants is to leverage social media to increase even more your visibility,

 

Leverage Social Media

 

Using Social Media to Increase your brand awareness and build a relationship with customers is a great strategy,

But you need to make sure you are following the best practices,

To also increase your visibility and organic reach,

There are 5 ways you can do so,

Let’s briefly go through all of them:

 

Use Social Media that the target market uses

Using social media is great,

Yet,

You don’t want to use them just for the sake of using them,

Meaning that the social platform that you use should match your customers preferred channel,

Whenever you do your market research,

You should identify what are your target market’s preferred channels,

And then based on that you will choose which one to actually focus on,

For instance,

If my restaurant is a fine dining restaurant targeting high-income people in the range of 50-60 years old,

I wouldn’t be using Snapchat or Pinterest to reach them,

That would be a great waste of time, energy, and money.

 

Create a content schedule

This is one way to stay consistent,

With social media,

Consistency is key,

And you should make sure that you are consistently posting and interacting with your community,

Be careful,

Because if you post too much you could be considered a spammer,

So make plenty of tests in order to determine at what rate should your posts and when,

Then you will be able to use any social media management platform such as:

• Buffer
• Hubspot

And many others

They will enable you to schedule your posts in advance and they have some advanced features too,

 

Repurpose Content

Repurposing content is simply the practice of recycling your content,

Let’s say you have a blog post about how to open a Mexican fast food,

Then you repurpose it by turning the same content into:

• A video for youtube
• An infographic for Instagram
• A podcast
• A pdf as a newsletter

There are so many ways to repurpose content,

Yet,

You should be careful,

Doing it too often might result in customer dissatisfaction by seeing the same thing over and over again,

 

Contest and Sweepstakes

Contests and sweepstakes are also great ways to interact deeper with your customers,

And it is actually excellent for increasing loyalty and retention rate,

Organizing a contest from time to time on social media has a lot of benefits such as:

 

 

 

Promote yourself

This goes without saying,

You should use social media to show your brand,

Build great content,

Make some awesome videos,

Showcase your menu, staff, and interior design

Interact as much as possible with customers,

Showcase your customer satisfaction,

The possibilities to promote yourself on social media are endless,

If you do it the right way,

You will increase your visibility for sure.

 

Conclusion

 

I hope you have learned how to use those 3 strategies to boost local SEO for your restaurants,

If you follow them,

You will meet your goals and your visibility will explode,

But now I get it,

Then what?

A local Seo doesn’t always work on its own,

That’s why I recommend you follow up with this ultimate guide on Restaurant Marketing,

If you have any doubts or questions,

Please feel free to drop us a couple of lines,

Stay safe and see you soon!