One of the most important things after starting your restaurant business, choosing the right theme and your niche, finding the perfect place and hiring people, is of course marketing. When you are looking to do SEO for your local restaurant website, you shouldn't use the usual SEO methods, you should use local SEO. We will try to help you understand how local SEO works and why it’s better for your restaurant.

Local SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the term given to increase a web page’s appearances in search engine results. The method typically involves utilizing keywords that the targeted audience is likely to search for, while also including context associated with the surrounding area. Unlike standard SEO, local SEO focuses on improving a web page’s results in a specific region. It is an efficient way to gain more visitors to your website that are living in a specific geographic location of your choice.

Benefits of local SEO

Local SEO is vital if you own a business in a particular location so that people within that area have a higher chance of coming across your website and finding out about your business. Failing to do so would make it difficult for local residents to find your business’s website, and may allow your website to appear to people in other parts of the world who are unable to visit your business. That would be very counterproductive, so we are going to give you a bit of advice on how to avoid that and make your website easier to find for people living near you.

Using local SEO

There are various strategies you can use to successfully incorporate local SEO and we will show you some of them and how to implement them to their full potential. The basic thing you need to know about any SEO is that you basically implement particular words, that give the best results in search engines, into your website.

Where is your restaurant located?

When you are thinking about doing a local SEO for your restaurant, the first thing you need to think of is where it is. It is very different than making a SEO for a website that doesn’t promote a local business. You should define the geographical location of your potential customers that you want to attract to your restaurant. You want to implement the name of the town, region or the country where the customers are mostly from. The terms that you want should be classified and grouped correctly in subcategories. Some of those subcategories are:

• Core restaurant terms: Those are the terms like "restaurants" and "Leeds City restaurants", generic terms that a customer might use to find the best restaurant close to them. You can research these terms with Google Keyword Planner and get a better picture of what are the people in your proximity mostly searching for.

• Your restaurant's niche: If your restaurant is selling Chinese food, you would want to include terms like "Chinese restaurant", "noodles", "fried rice", etc. If you aren't sure what would the best terms be, you can research them using Google Maps and searching for similar restaurants? The more specific terms you use, the better. If you use very wide terms like “food” or “meat” that won’t bring specific customers to your website and it can have an opposite effect, you might have more visits that are accidental.

• Correct information about restaurant’s location: You should make sure to have the correct information about the location of your restaurant on all data sources. Be sure to double check this, because the last thing you want is for your customers to get the wrong information about your restaurant, or think that your business is not professional. You can start doing this with Google My Business and develop from there to any other source you might think of. Don't forget that you can always promote your business in local yellow pages or local newspapers.

Past Customers

When your business becomes enough popular that it can be easily found with a few simple online searches, you need to encourage people to give you feedback about your restaurant, especially online. This won’t only ensure the customers of the quality of your services, it will also bring more customer to your restaurant. Ask them to review your restaurant and give you top star ratings for all the potential customers to see. People tend to go to the places that have the higher star rating, so you can encourage people to give you the highest star ratings with any creative idea you might have. You can start a promotion for your customers that gives them discounts or special promotions for the review they will be leaving about your business. The higher the number of reviews and the number of good star ratings is the more popular your website is going to be on the search engines.

Engage with customers

Creating a healthy group of people that will actively follow you on social media and share their opinion about your restaurant is crucial in local SEO. You really want to engage with your customers and give them the opportunity to let you know what they think about your business, let them speak up their mind. Setting up your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram business page and promoting your website there is a great way to increase the organic traffic to your website. You can communicate with your customers and let them know about any new promotions, features, food, and innovations of your business by inviting them to come to check it out on your website. You shouldn't overlook the social media, they can work wonders for your website's traffic.

Produce unique and original content

Don't be one of those businesses that are copying other successful businesses in every aspect. They have the website that looks similar, their posts look almost the same, their promotions and articles are very similar - don't do this. It's your unique restaurant, make sure it stays that way. Come up with an interesting way to present it to all of your customers. You can do it with a video, a photo album of all your favorite meals and dishes, or maybe even with the pictures of satisfied customers with their recommendations. You can do it in a million different ways, and your only limit is your imagination. Be sure to constantly update your content on the website so you can make a strong connection with your customers. It doesn’t just build a bond between your customers and you, it also ranks you higher in the search engines if you have a constant flow of new and original content being published on your website. You can even share information about the culture or inspiration for your niche restaurant and make some interesting articles that your customers would like.

Optimize your restaurant website for mobile phones

Mobile marketing is growing rapidly and you need to adapt to it. You should start using Google Analytics on your website, so you can check out where does your traffic come from. With Google Analytics you can check out from what particular site the customer is browsing your website and even from what particular device. The interesting thing that you will notice is that, depending on the place of your restaurant, more than a half of the visits will usually be from mobile phones and tablets. Considering this, it's really important to optimize your website for mobile and tablet users, so they have the best experience using it. If you have some extra money for investment in your business, you should think about buying an app for your restaurant. Usage of the mobile apps is rapidly growing, and having your own app can work wonders for your SEO. One more thing your app does is that it implements new innovations you might have in your restaurant, like food delivery, special promotions, and discounts, new and exotic meals, or maybe even some events happening in the near future. The best part of having your own app is that the customer is just one click away from any new information you want to tell them.

Final Thoughts

One of the most convenient ways to promote your website is in the content itself. It is a necessity to have a basic understanding of your business’s target audience. Try to figure out what kind of people is your restaurant tailored for and then try to reach out to them with local SEO, making them find your website in a few simple clicks. Comprehend what search terms local people, that are interested in your industry, commonly search for and your website and business will be receiving more satisfied visitors in no time.