SEO for Restaurants: 5 Tips to Improve Search Visibility

Have you seen that recent American Express commercial? It claims that 90% of restaurants fail in the first year.

Another study, from 2005, found that 60% of independently owned restaurants fail in the first year. That statistic doesn’t sound much better, does it?

Luckily, both of those stats have been disproved. In fact, only 17% of restaurants shut their doors in the first year, and that’s actually much lower than other service-based industries.

One of the leading contributing factors to failed restaurants is ineffective marketing. Check out these tips for SEO for restaurants to avoid this demise.

1. Are You Mobile Optimized?

This has been stated time and time again for quite a few years now, but the details keep changing.

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project is the next big thing, simplifying HTML so web pages can load at warp speed on an Internet surfer’s cell phone. After all, most people are using their phone to access online content.

Google doesn’t play around — they will measure how fast your site loads and dock you major cool ranking points for anything slower than three seconds.

Maybe you’ve got an excellent point of sale technology like Harbortouch in your restaurants. Remember, the tools of the trade don’t end there.

2. Super Social Media

Everybody wants to go viral these days — especially businesses.

You’ll get cool social media points for getting shared across sites, which means more cool SEO ranking points. Big points mean big exposure, and visibility is the goal.

We’ll never know the top-secret recipe for Google’s algorithmic secret sauce, but we do know that the highest rankers on Google all have strong social signals.

3. Structure Your Data

Okay, this one isn’t for SEO newbies. Structured data involves code — that language that only true computer nerds speak.

If you’ve got a good team, they’ll write code in a way that will change the way your site appears in a search engine. The description beneath your link will include more useful details, leading to a much higher click-through rate.

That’s definitely something you want!

4. Give Your Site A Voice

This is a hot new trend that can put your business ahead of the curve. SEO for restaurants should be optimized for potential customers using voice search.

Most folks are skeptical, but the numbers don’t lie: about half of Internet users are using voice search to scour search engines.

This requires a whole new method of keyword research. Most people don’t speak in the awkward phrases they type into the search bar. It’s a whole new world.

5. Cutting Edge Content

Tons of sites are trying to fake it until they make it, but Google is god of the Internet. This is a company that created an algorithm that can practically read your mind.

Fancy word alert: Latent Semantic Indexing. Google collates billions of terms, creating a hierarchy that no fluff piece can escape.

What does that mean? Google will search your pages and rank you based on the strength of the concepts in them. Combine that with their RankBrain tool and there’s no escaping the fact that even an Einstein-level SEO expert can’t save cheap content.

SEO for Restaurants Made Simple

The folks at Reliablesoft.net have been around the SEO block, even SEO for restaurants, operating since 2002. Years of experience evolving with the rapid trends of technology has created a solid operation of search engine optimization experts.

Check out our services for savvy SEO tips and guidance at your fingertips.