Local SEO simply means focusing your internet efforts on getting your business to appear in local search results. SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization.” Restaurant owners shouldn’t have any trouble with the “local” part; local means in your region. Strong local SEO helps customers find your restaurant, which can help you drive sales. In this guide, I’ll give you all the information you need to develop a local SEO strategy.
Key Takeaways:
- Local SEO ensures your restaurant appears in online and map-based searches for restaurants.
- If you only have the time to perform a single local SEO task, it should be updating your Google Business Profile.
- Restaurant owners can DIY many local SEO strategies, but for niche tasks (like implementing local search schema), you may want to hire a professional.
Local SEO Tips for Restaurants
If you spend most of your day prepping ingredients, training staff, and wrangling customer relationships, adding local SEO to your plate can seem like a tall order. It certainly sounds like something you’d need to do from a desk, and how much time do restaurant owners and managers really spend behind a desk? These tips will help you prioritize local SEO tasks and let you know when it’s time to hire a professional.
1. Claim Your Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is a free listing service that gives your restaurant an immediate internet presence. Establishing a Google Business Profile essentially introduces your business to the largest search engine in the world, helping Google understand when your business might be the answer to someone’s internet search. A study by Mobal.io found that customers searching online were seven times more likely to read a restaurant’s Google Business Profile than to visit the restaurant’s site.
(Source: Google)
Your Google Business Profile is also your key to appearing in local business results on Google Maps, which can drive even more business. That same Mobal.io study found that 64% of consumers click on one of the top three Google Maps results when searching for restaurants online.
How to Get a Google Business Profile
Getting a Google Business Profile is easy; just go to the Google Business homepage and follow the prompts to create an account. You’ll need your business email address and operational information, such as your business’s physical address, phone number, and hours of operation. If you have a website, online ordering link, menu images, or special offer to promote, you can add all of these to your profile.
Google will send you an email to verify your account, and then you’re live. You can update your Google Business Profile anytime, by signing into Google or Google Maps with the email address you used to create your profile.
2. Create a Mobile Friendly Website
A report by POS company TouchBistro found that in 2024, 72% of restaurants have a website. If you already have a website, make sure it is easily readable on mobile devices, not just desktop computers. Since 2021, research by Google and digital marketing agencies has found that anywhere from 60% to 89% of restaurant searches originate from a mobile device. So make sure your website and online ordering pages are mobile-friendly. A positive user experience on desktop and mobile devices is good customer service, and search engines notice when your mobile experience could be better.
If you are one of the 18% of restaurants without a website, read our guide to building a restaurant website and get ideas for creating or updating your site with our listing of the best restaurant websites.
3. Use Local Business Schema
In “Internet speak,” schema means structuring the information on a web page in a specific way so that Google and other search engines can easily understand and categorize the page’s contents. When you have a guest with dietary restrictions or food allergies, you might modify one of your popular dishes to meet their needs. Schema is like preparing this dish for search engines; you give them everything they need and nothing they can’t digest.
Local business schema is a way to format your website’s data on the back end so search engines can easily find, categorize, and reproduce key information about your business in search results. Local business schema tells search engines that this page belongs to a local business in your city or town. Implementing this schema correctly requires some familiarity with a website’s back-end code. Working with a web developer to ensure your local business schema is formatted correctly is best.
If you built your restaurant website via a restaurant-specific website-building tool, your site may already have local business schema built into the code. Check with your site-building brand or use the validator tool on Schema.org to determine if your site already has local business schema.
4. Understand Keywords
Keywords are words or phrases that people use when searching for things online. Different keywords are relevant for different things; the keywords that are meaningful to your restaurant business will be different from keywords for a bookstore. To amplify your local SEO, identify keywords that customers are likely to use to find your restaurant, and ensure those words appear naturally on your restaurant website, social media profiles, and Google Business Profile.
“Naturally” is the crucial detail. Search engines penalize sites that use “keyword stuffing,” which is adding lists of keywords completely out of context. For example, if a Philadelphia-based ice cream shop filled the footer of its website with a bulleted list that simply reads:
- Ice cream near me
- Philadelphia ice cream
- Best ice cream Philly
- Chocolate-dipped ice cream near me
The list could go on. You’ve probably seen sites that do this. And search engines do not like it. Lists like this will not help your local SEO.
The better way to get all of these keywords naturally on your restaurant website and Google Business Profile is to use menu item names and add any local awards to your site. For example, listing “chocolate dipped cones” in relevant menu spots and adding a callout and link to a local paper’s reader’s choice awards where the shop won “best ice cream in Philly” are natural ways to feature these keywords.
You can identify target keywords for your restaurant by putting yourself in customers’ shoes. What words are they likely to type into a search engine that would be relevant to your restaurant? Make a list of these words and phrases. Then identify places on your website and Google Business Profile where those make sense to add. You can also use SEO tools like Moz or SEMRush to identify some target keywords for local SEO. Both sites offer a basic free version or a free trial of the full product, which may be all small independent restaurants need to get started with some keywords.
5. Optimize Menus & Other Website Content
Search engines reward consistency and accessibility. So make sure your website is easy to navigate, including clearly labeled menus, high-resolution images, and contact information that matches your Google Business Profile.
Make sure the menus on your website load quickly, are easily skimmable, and include your location business information. Ensure your menu is easy to navigate, with clearly readable header text on menu sections to increase skimmability.
Add alternative text, also called “alt text” to all images on your page. Alt text describes the image with text to make the images (and thereby your whole site) accessible to screen readers and the customers who rely on them.
6. Participate in Local Restaurant Weeks
If your city, town, or county organizes a “Restaurant Week” where local independent restaurants offer meal deals or themed menus, consider participating. Restaurant weeks tend to get press and social media coverage, all of which have the potential to link back to your restaurant website. You’ll also likely drive more online reviews and improve your restaurant’s social capital online. Restaurant weeks have the added benefit of being tagged by their location, which is another signal to search engines that your restaurant is tied to a specific city or town.
(Source: Denver Restaurant Week)
7. Support Local Events
Restaurants have long been known for supporting community events with gift cards, food, or staff. In addition to boosting your profile in your community, participating in community events also boosts your online presence. Every online post, image, news story, or social media post about a local event has the potential to link back to your restaurant website. These are all “signals” to Google and other search engines that your restaurant business is actively doing business in your location, which can boost your presence in local search.
These news items are also excellent content to add to your Google Business Profile. Adding local events to your profile helps customers find you in off-site locations and provides a more complete, active Google profile.
8. Create Review Site Profiles
Review sites like Yelp and Tripadvisor are simply part of operating a restaurant nowadays. Every customer review posted on these sites—positive, mediocre, or negative—is social proof of your restaurant’s activity. It is important to claim these listings since you’ll want to ensure the business information is accurate. Having a uniform, accurate business information across platforms is a major signal to search engines that your business is active and reputable. Beyond monitoring customer feedback, you want your physical address, website, phone number, hours of operation, and menus to be identical across all third-party sites that list your business.
This can sound tedious, but it is manageable. Try setting aside a half hour every week during a slow time to check all the third-party sites that list your business and update information. When I managed restaurants, I always did this on Monday nights; it was a great time to catch reviews from the weekend and business was typically slow. If you are too busy for that, check with your point of sale (POS) or reservation software providers; many restaurant software tools now include built-in reputation management tools to help speed cross-platform monitoring.
Customer reviews can be a source of stress for restaurant owners and managers. Ease this tension by creating a plan for your restaurant reputation management and reading our suggested scripts for handling customer complaints.
9. Encourage Customer Reviews
You can encourage customer reviews by printing reminders on your receipts, posting QR codes that link to review pages, or verbally reminding customers to review your establishment when they leave. Offering an incentive (like “free dessert for a 5-star review”) is tempting, but this can backfire. Popular review sites like Yelp actively discourage “coerced” reviews. All it takes is one customer posting a photo of your “free dessert for a 5-star review” sign, and Yelp will flag your reviews as “compensated activity.”
Compensated reviews are also against Google’s terms of service. Google will remove any compensated reviews from your business profile, and it may also lower your business ranking in search. Compensating customers for reviews—via actual money or in-kind discounts—is not worth the risk.
10. Offer an Excellent Experience
This tip folds into the previous one; offering an excellent customer experience makes it more likely you will get many customer reviews. A study by PYMNTS found that consumers are nine times more likely to write a positive online review than negative ones. Offering a great experience—whether that is craveable food, a comfortable atmosphere, attentive service, or all of the above—boosts your bottom line in other ways; happy customers are more likely to return.
When I worked at a certain mega coffee chain, we called it “being legendary.” In his book “Unreasonable Hospitality,” Will Guidara calls it “giving people more than they expect.” These all describe the same goal—creating a memorable experience for your guest beyond basic, dependable service. Doing that little something extra is the surest way to see your online reviews (and your restaurant’s local search engine presence) improve.
11. Hire an SEO Professional
Most independent restaurant owners and managers can perform basic local SEO tasks. But if you don’t have the bandwidth or the time, you can find an SEO expert to help. Many freelance web marketers have local SEO skills, and SEO consultants and web developers often do, too. Look for web marketers and web developers who list local SEO specifically on their resumes. Find a web marketer by searching online freelancer sites or asking fellow restaurant owners for referrals.
Most independent restaurants will only need this service occasionally, so a freelance marketer or web developer is ideal. Multi-location restaurants and restaurant groups might have enough work to hire a full-time staff member. Make sure this person can handle all of your local SEO needs before initiating a contract. Ask what specific services they provide. Do they have the ability to implement local business schema on your website? Can they set up your business profiles on Google and review sites?
Why Local SEO Is Important for Restaurants
Restaurant customers are always local. Even tourists must be near your restaurant before they can patronize it. And most of those people search online for nearby businesses to meet their needs. Research has shown that about 80% of US consumers search for local businesses weekly. One in three people searches for local businesses daily.
When a potential customer in your area searches for “pizza near me,” local SEO ensures that search engines like Google know your shop is nearby and will include your shop at the top of the search results. Local SEO involves providing your restaurant business and location information online in a way that allows search engines to easily understand your location and offerings.
Local SEO for Restaurants Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Local SEO for restaurants can be a complicated topic. These are the most common questions I hear from restaurant owners and managers:
Last Bite
You don’t need to be a web developer or an SEO expert to boost your restaurant’s visibility online. Every community event you support and every customer review you receive can help boost your online profile. Making an effort to optimize your website and create a Google Business Profile is worth it to reach potential customers where they already go to search for restaurants. If you don’t have the time to handle local SEO yourself, find a freelance web developer or web marketing consultant to help with the legwork.
ALSO READ
