How Local SEO Helps Restaurants Get Found by Hungry Diners Near You

Running a restaurant demands a lot more than just offering delicious food to your customers. Marketing your restaurant so local diners know you exist can be a challenge for busy eatery owners and managers. However, in this digital era, promoting your location and food online is vitally important. 

Hungry customers use tools like Google, Bing, or Maps to find food near them. In fact, 46% of all Google searches have local intent, meaning that customers are searching for something nearby. Then 76% of these searchers visit a physical location within 24 hours. 

Helping your restaurant appear at the top of these search engine result pages is the most effective way to market your restaurant to local people who are most likely to actually book a table, order online, or stop in for a bite. 

That’s where local SEO comes in. We’ll break it down. 

Increase Your Reservations & Online Orders With Local Search Strategies

Local search engine optimization is a set of strategies that make it easier for people to discover your restaurant online by aligning your restaurant website to closely match customer searches and search engine ranking algorithms. 

This sounds complicated, but most local SEO strategies are quite logical. After all, search engines exist to help customers find what they’re looking for. So, if your online presence closely matches what hungry people are searching for, then your restaurant is more likely to be promoted as the place to be. 

Local SEO Improves Your Local Profile

Including relevant keywords, encouraging reviews, building backlinks to your site, posting mouthwatering photos of your food, and making online orders and reservations simple all improve your local reputation.

When customers search for a restaurant, Google and other search engines will sort through the many restaurants listed online and display information for the ones with the best local reputation and most closely matching the customer’s search query.

Effective SEO strategies focus on all these elements to make sure your restaurant is positioned at the top of local search results. 

Optimizing Your Restaurant Site Increases Orders and Bookings

Thanks to smartphone apps and a demand for convenience, online ordering has skyrocketed over the past five years. With an average growth rate of 11%, the online ordering market gives you access to a whole new group of hungry customers.

However, they have to be able to find your website and know what you offer. If your website is visible on search engines, this will drive traffic to your website and make customers more likely to click “order now.” 

How to Optimize Your Website for Local Search Rankings

Local SEO is a cost-effective way to market your restaurant. Our local SEO strategies help your restaurant maximize organic traffic, meaning you have to spend less on paid ads. This makes the most of your marketing budget and prioritizes customers who are most likely to be searching for restaurants just like yours.

Since most customers probably won’t search for your restaurant by name, you need to optimize your restaurant SEO strategy to match your food or dining experience with a few main elements:

• Commonly searched keywords — Use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner to discover popular search terms (e.g., Indian food, kid-friendly, outdoor seating, online ordering, inexpensive, date-night) and match them to what your restaurant offers. 
• User experience  — Make sure your online ordering interface is secure, fast, and clear. Optimize all navigation menus for user experience so people don’t have to waste time finding your menu or hours. 
• Local citations — Ensure your restaurant’s information is clear and consistent across public listings and restaurant review sites like Yelp, Yahoo, TripAdvisor, and OpenTable. 
• Technical updates — Check for bugs, broken links and code, and missing data to ensure that everything is running smoothly on the backend. 

Restaurant owners and managers can maximize in-person visits and online orders by focusing their marketing strategy on getting low-cost organic leads. 

Not sure where to start? Our local SEO experts are pros at effective restaurant SEO strategies that bring more traffic and revenue to your location. Schedule a free SEO analysis today to see how your website is currently performing and where you can improve. 

Google Business Profile Optimization for Restaurants

One of the best ways you can see an immediate improvement in your local traffic is by optimizing your Google Business Profile. You may have already set up this page under its former name, Google My Business.

Basically, this listing functions like your online Yellow Pages listing. Google considers it your “official” listing for your business and will rank listings with relevant, fully completed profiles more highly. 

Here are some SEO best practices for optimizing your Google Business Profile:

• Consistent info — Ensure your NAP (name, address, and phone number) information is correct and consistent with your website and social media profiles. 
• Add links — Link to your website, social handles, and third-party ordering platforms so customers can quickly get more information or place an order.
• Include photos and reviews — People are motivated by appealing images of the food you serve, and over 70% of customers read online reviews to help them make a decision.

Optimizing your Google Business Profile listing is one of the single most effective local SEO tips for restaurants. A clear, accurate profile that includes photos and reviews will help your restaurant stand out among competitors. 

Google Local Service Ads for Restaurants

If you have maximized your traffic from organic, on-page SEO efforts, then Google Local Service Ads can be a good next step. Restaurants can increase in-person traffic and online orders by paying for sponsored ads that appear at the top of organic search results pages. This helps address the ongoing challenge of running a restaurant — how do I keep consistent business going? 

Google Service Ads are a good choice for restaurants and cafes because they charge per lead, meaning that you only pay when a customer actually clicks on the ad. 

That said, setting up and managing the bidding process for Google Ads can be time-consuming. SEO Design Chicago offers ad management services that keep your marketing running smoothly by making continuous adjustments to your ad strategy. This frees you up to get back to running your restaurant. 

Bing Places for Restaurants

One of the best restaurant SEO tips to boost name recognition and leads is to claim and complete all the local citations you can get. This makes your restaurant rank more highly across search engines and also gives customers more opportunities to discover you. 

While Google dominates the search engine market, you shouldn’t overlook Bing, which has about 25% market share of internet searches in the U.S. Moreover, people who use Bing also tend to avoid Google, so you can open up a whole new group of customers by including Bing Places in your optimization strategy.

Optimizing your Bing Places profile works much like Google Business Profiles:

• Update your NAP information
• Include links 
• Add photos and reviews
• Optimize for relevant keywords 

Including your Bing Places account is another easy win for getting found in local search. 

FAQs: Help Your Restaurant Rank Higher in Search Results

What is local SEO for restaurants, and why is it important?

Local SEO is the process of helping your target audience discover you more easily through search engines. Local SEO makes sure that your website is optimized for relevance, distance, and prominence, the three attributes Google takes into account when potential customers search for restaurants like yours. This makes it easier to get organic leads, meaning you can spend less on paid advertising while bringing in more diners and online orders to your restaurant. 

How can I get my restaurant to show up on Google Maps and “near me” searches?

The best way is to be featured in the Google Maps Pack, also called the Local Pack. This prominently displays information about your restaurant on a Google Map when customers conduct “near me” searches related to your cuisine, like “Italian restaurant,” for example. 

A fully optimized Google Business Profile, along with lots of authentic and positive reviews, gives you the best chance of getting featured on Google Maps Pack. 

Do online reviews affect my restaurant’s local SEO ranking?

Yes, authentic, positive reviews have a large impact on your local SEO ranking. You can request that diners leave a review and incentivize reviews to your Google Business Profile by offering coupons or small add-on items to their next restaurant order.

What’s the difference between SEO and local SEO for restaurants?

SEO includes all the tactics that help any given website show up in search engine results. Local SEO is a subset of SEO that focuses on ranking for local-intent searches. In other words, it helps your restaurant show up in search results that are tailored to your geographic location. 

How long does it take for local SEO to bring in more restaurant customers?

SEO is a long-term strategy that yields increasing gains the longer you invest in it. Most local SEO plans take about six months to be fully operational and generate higher rankings. However, some strategies, like updating your basic info across all platforms and optimizing your Google Business Profile, can show better results within a few weeks. 

Ready to get more local visibility for your restaurant? Request a free local SEO analysis today to see how SEO can help you grow your business!