Do you want more people to find your restaurant when they search on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yelp? Then search engine optimization (SEO) services for restaurants are necessary for you!
Did you know that there are one billion restaurant searches on Google each month, and “food near me” is one of the search terms that is reportedly rising the fastest, according to Forbes?
It is achievable to rank better and outperform the millions of other search results with the aid of restaurant SEO services.
Without a doubt, SEO is an essential component of restaurant internet marketing. Customers can easily find excellent restaurants online since SEO helps restaurants rank their websites in the top positions in search engine results.
Consequently, the majority of restaurant owners are not SEO experts, so they turn to digital marketing companies that offer restaurant SEO services for assistance. But many are unaware of what to look for and what to ask to secure the best agency.
What Is The Typical Cost of SEO?
The average US SEO agency would charge $2,000 to $10,000 per month for their services, with expert organizations charging up to $150 to $250 per hour. Depending if it is Local SEO, Regional SEO, National SEO, or Multinational SEO, At Max Mobile Solutions, our services start as low as $700 USD and charge $70/hr because we are more concerned about serving more and more happy customers than collecting a premium hourly rate.
For many, it is a hefty investment and we understand this so we also recommend custom, tiered plans that start small and build up as sales and conversions increase.
Restaurant owners are still unsure of what SEO services are and why they need them despite making such a significant commitment to enter the digital realm.
Our company, Max Mobile Solutions, has over 8 years of experience in restaurant digital marketing, with 2 female award-winning owners Maxine Ebegbuzie & Nwanneka Baraka to lead the charge to success with you. We pride ourselves on being data-driven and on top of the latest trends and changes. We will explain what SEO services include in this article and how your restaurant business might profit from them.
1. Research low-competition, high-traffic restaurants’ SEO keywords that are easy to rank for
The first step in increasing website traffic for your restaurant if you deal with a seasoned SEO company (Such As Us!) is to conduct keyword research.
SEO experts can check the keyword rankings of your restaurant’s website using tools like Semrush, Ubersuggest, and Google Search Consoles, to discover which keywords are already doing well and which ones they can raise. Finding the keywords that are priorities requires conducting a thorough study because there are millions and billions of keywords on search engines.
An SEO expert may develop a content strategy for your restaurant after identifying the top SEO keywords for it based on the keywords’ traffic, intent, and ranking difficulty levels.
If you’re thinking about using SEO to increase website traffic for your restaurant, know that it is a critical INVESTMENT for the long term. It can take 3-6 months to start showing benefits but when it does, your traffic will be much cheaper than pay-per-click advertisement; giving you a steady flow of leads and conversions over time. But hiring a company that knows which keywords to focus on can have a significant impact in the future.
2. Produce top-notch content to boost your backlinks and shares and rank on the first page of search results
For Example, “Chinese food near me” comes up in a simple Google search with 2 million results!
Because of the intense competition, and the fact that search engine machine learning is thinking more and more like a human; it is becoming more adept at selecting the top material to rank highly.
Hubspot claims that Google uses 200 ranking variables to decide where a website appears in search results. Though it’s not necessary to adhere to all 200 of them, it is obvious that Google’s sophisticated machine learning likes SEO content that is educational, pertinent to the search phrases, and simple to read.
Of all, SEO involves more than just great content. Restaurant SEO experts with experience know how to write content that appeals to certain niche clients while taking into account all the ranking elements for Google crawlers. Due to its brick-and-mortar B2C business style, restaurant SEO is fundamentally different from typical E-commerce SEO and lead generation.
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3. Increase the number of quality backlinks and referrals
Off-page SEO is another term for link building. On-page and off-page SEO strategies are frequently used in tandem to help websites rank higher in search results and increase traffic.
The more links that point to your website, Google considers it to be more authoritative. For example, if many restaurant review sites link to your restaurant website, Google and Bing will believe your restaurant is popular and will elevate you to the top of the search results page.
Backlink quality is also important. A backlink from Forbes or Yelp to your restaurant is not the same as one from an unknown blog. There are numerous shady overseas SEO firms that purchase backlinks that lead to spam websites.
In the event that Google suspects you of purchasing backlinks, they will penalize your website and remove it from search results.
4. Fix all On-Page SEO issues
On-page SEO is a technique for improving the ranking of specific web pages in search engine results. A restaurant SEO expert will make sure that your local niche keywords are present in the copy, alt-tags, meta titles, and descriptions of every page of your website.
Your business may appear high in the search results when people are looking for a new dining option and may even seem “more popular” than the other restaurants that are listed below you.
Let’s continue the “Chinese food near me” scenario.
You want to make an order from your favorite Asian takeaway establishment, which is only 5 minutes away, but when you Google “Chinese cuisine near me,” you can’t find its website. Currently, you enter its name into Google directly, and the website mysteriously and miraculously appears!
Why did this happen?
* This is primarily due to the lack of terms on the Asian delivery website that may have helped Google identify the type of business it is.
On-site SEO services for restaurants typically include:
- Publish credible, pertinent material with a keyword focus (Like this blog that you are reading).
- Include pertinent keywords in the metadata.
- Consistently update your articles to reflect any fresh modifications, like a new menu.
- Produce internal links and linkable content.
- Make photos and movies appear in the Google Images and Google Videos search by adding alternate tags, titles, captions, and descriptions.
5. Restaurants can benefit from technical SEO services to improve UX (user experience)
Making user experience enhancements is a part of technical SEO. Google can index your website more efficiently and help deliver your information to the right searchers if it has a clear site map layout. Google, Bing, and Yahoo, read your site’s code and make determinations. So if you are not laying the proper foundation for your website to be understood by the search engines, you will be thwarting all your other invested efforts. If you are investing in pay-per-click ads, it will cause you to have a higher cost per click.
Google calculates the Quality Score for your advertising, which has a direct impact on your CPC (cost per click). Google’s quality rating is determined by the quality of the landing page, the website it is on and its relevance to the search. There are additional factors that we will discuss in another post, however, your technical SEO must be optimized before you implement and execute your marketing plan.
Not all “SEO” is equal. Many SEO firms focus on backlinks and neglect the technical essentials. If, as an entrepreneur, you understand the value of SEO and are currently paying for monthly SEO, I would suggest peaking at your technical SEO independently. We offer FREE, no strings attached audits so you can see your status. If you see that your technical SEO is actually not optimized, I would suggest considering a change of providers because it, statistically, directly affects visibility, user experience, and ultimately conversions.
Let’s continue on! “Spiders” are the term for website crawlers used by search engines. Spiders are a particular kind of bot that search engines like Google and Bing normally control. They serve the function of indexing website content so that websites can be found in search engine results. Spiders examine your website for duplicate material, restricted backlinks, and content.
Google’s ranking heavily considers how mobile-friendly and quick a website is. Site speed optimization software is typically installed by expert website agencies when creating custom WordPress websites to ensure load speeds on desktop and mobile are up to standard and do not hinder a positive user experience.
If your restaurant offers online ordering, an optimized, custom-built website gives you more freedom to include features that can help you increase sales.
Maxine Ebegbuzie
Tech Woman of The Year 2022, Digital Marketing Specialist, Web Designer, Business Consultant/Coach, and proud mother of an adult daughter who is an Applied AI specialist, software, and web developer. She is a writer, poet, and community builder for over 20 years. She does training sessions and webinars on SEO, geolocation, geoconquesting marketing, SEM, social media strategy, branding, and so much more.
