The survival of any business enterprise depends on sales, and in the modern world, increasing sales requires having a strong digital presence. Clients and customers need to easily and quickly locate you across all platforms and one way to boost your online presence is by applying the right SEO techniques.
Most local restaurants do not have a well-optimized website. This means they don’t rank well in Google and are not good experiences for clients. It also means that they are not getting the amount of traffic they should and when they do get visitors they are not choosing to dine. Below are some tips to boost your local restaurant SEO and make online ordering more efficient.
How to improve your Restaurant Sales
- Optimize your website and its content
- Be smart with your keywords
- Make use of social media
- Go local/mobile
- Have an eye-catching picture
- Focus on conversions
- Continue monitoring your results
Optimize your website and its content
This is the first thing every business owner should do. Writing a good amount of relevant and high-quality content is what will help you show up on the top pages of search engines.
Don’t focus on keyword stuffing and many keyword-rich anchor texts. Those days are over. As you write content for your site, just write for your customers and not for search engines. Write about what they want to read about and not what you think will help you rank higher because of some keywords you want to include.
You should include key pieces of content to help you rank. They should have relevant titles, URLs, and use H2 tags. Though meta-descriptions for your pages don’t really help you rank higher, they will give the customer a glimpse of what’s on your website which can lead them to click on your website versus that of a competitor.
Great content can be in many forms, and your goal should be to create content in a variety of them, including blogs, video, Infographics, Podcasts, Animations, User-generated content, Guest blogs, Ebooks, and whitepapers.
Don’t forget to include your physical address and your contact information. It should be visible to all customers and shouldn’t be hard to locate on your site. Including real reviews and testimonials can also help a customer decide in your favor; so, make sure you strategically include them on your website.
Be smart with your keywords
Keywords in SEO are no more used the way they once were, but they are still an important part of the equation. Without keywords, prospective customers might never locate you when they go searching online, and this is why keywords are vital to your SEO strategy. You can strategically place relevant keywords in your content, web pages, headings, URLs, image descriptions, Metadata, page titles, and emails.
A great place to start with keyword research is with Google AdWords, but there are a lot of other keyword planning tools out there you can use. Remember to also include longtail keywords, since half of all searches are four-plus words in length; these phrases have less competition and they have higher conversion rates. When you have the right keywords in your toolbox, they’ll help connect you with prospects who are willing to patronize your restaurant.
Make use of social media
There are a lot of social media platforms that you can leverage. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the popular ones.
You must include your physical address, contact information, and links to your website in all these social media networks. While using Facebook, you have to be listed as a local business, because it will help locals locate you easier and more often on Facebook.
Make use of social media profiles to attract customers that will talk about you and share your content. Create interesting, relevant, and engaging content for your users to like and share. It will eventually help your business expand across a larger audience.
Go local/mobile
Two of the most important changes to SEO best practices that have come up in the last few years are the emphasis on mobile and local content, and the two go hand in hand. Local SEO is increasingly becoming significant as more consumers use mobile devices to search for businesses because 30 percent of all mobile searches performed today have intent.
Moreover, over 70 percent of people will visit a nearby business after conducting a local search; therefore, if you want to drive an audience to your restaurant, then you must focus on local content (including local keywords and landing pages), and you have to ensure your website is entirely mobile-friendly.
Have an eye-catching picture
It is easy to enhance local visibility by using high-quality images. You can take eye-catching pictures of menu items, dishes, and images of your restaurant. This would increase the effectiveness of your venture and also enhance search results.
Also, make sure that you’re making use of geotags and alt-text descriptions on the visuals that you display. It is necessary to embed keyword-rich information. This will maximize the local reach and make it easier for customers to find you.
Focus on conversions
As you get a lot of traffic to your restaurant’s website, a lot of people forget about focusing on the customers experience and are missing out on a lot of conversions.
Put the information that your customers need to know in an easy place to find. It shouldn’t take more than one click to locate your menu, contact information, or to make a reservation.
You’ve done all this work now to improve your local SEO ranking for your restaurant, now it’s time to convert that traffic. Ensure you include clear call-to-action on each page. It should be simple for a customer to make a reservation, order food, or contact your restaurant very fast. If people just browse your website and leave then you haven’t achieved much at all.
Continue monitoring your results
Ensure that what you’re doing is bringing the right results. There are a few good tools that you can use to monitor the results of your search engine optimization efforts.
First of all, set up Google Analytics on your site, to allow you to see how many visitors your site is getting and where they are coming from. More organic search visits mean that your SEO strategy is working.
You can also use other tools that allow you to track keywords and see how you are progressing week after week, to track keywords and see how you’re performing. Local restaurant SEO takes time to deliver results so the sooner you start the better off you’ll be.
In conclusion, remember that creating and maintaining a well-planned strategy that prioritizes all of these factors is just as important as the elements themselves because that’s the best way to ensure you build a well-oiled SEO machine that will help you boost sales. These tips will help you build a strong foundation for your restaurant SEO, drive new revenue, and awareness to your restaurant business.
