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Shane Barker | March 1, 2021 |
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced brick-and-mortar businesses to rethink their operations. Now more than ever, it’s important to serve your customers through multiple channels, both in-person and online. And to grow your sales and reach, it’s essential to build an SEO-friendly restaurant website.
But why?
Consumers increasingly rely on search engines like Google to look for local businesses — including restaurants. So, if you don’t maintain a powerful online presence, it’s likely that they won’t discover your restaurant.
So, how can you create an SEO-friendly restaurant website?
Let’s find out.
Here are some tips to help you develop an SEO-friendly restaurant website with ease.
Nearly 51% of all web traffic now originates from mobile devices. So, if your restaurant website isn’t optimized for mobile, you’ll likely lose out on about half your potential customers.
What’s more?
Google is also going to roll out a major update of how they index websites that will take the mobile-first approach for website indexation. To ensure your website ranks higher in search results, it’s essential to prioritize mobile optimization of your website.
And how can you do that?
You can take the mobile-first approach while designing your website. Alternatively, you can adopt a responsive design approach where your website will resize based on device screen size.
Doing so will ensure visitors who browse your website from their mobile devices will also get a good browsing experience.
What’s more?
Your website should also load fast to provide a good user experience. For this, it’s essential to make the website as light as possible. Also, you should consider using a reliable WordPress hosting provider also determines the website’s loading speed.
For instance, note how Sweet and Savory Cafe has a website that fits well on the mobile screen.
Image via Sweet and Savory Cafe
As a restaurant falls under the category of a local business, you must claim your Google My Business (GMB) listing. This can help strengthen your website’s local SEO and can help aid discovery in local search results.
While getting your GMB listing, make sure you enter the correct details pertaining to your address, name, and phone number. These details must also be the same on your website and other places like social media.
When you get listed on GMB, your website will show up in local search results as knowledge graphs or even in the maps.
For instance, note how the below restaurant shows up in the knowledge graph.
Image via Google
One of the most important things that you need to consider when creating an SEO-friendly restaurant website is your content marketing strategy. Your content strategy needs to work in conjunction with your SEO strategy to get you the desired results.
Content forms the backbone of any website, and the same applies to yours as well. You need to write high-quality content for your website to ensure that your audience finds it helpful. It also helps to create a blog for your website.
What’s more?
You can conduct keyword research using various tools for SEO to find keywords relevant to your brand and add them to your content. This can improve the SEO of your website and help it rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Additionally, it’s important to create a content strategy, as it defines not only what content you’ll create but also how it’ll be distributed. This distribution plan can help you get added exposure and can help drive traffic to your restaurant’s website.
Yet another way through which you can create an SEO-friendly restaurant website is by coming up with different landing pages. These pages are important because they essentially focus on one particular goal, such as lead generation, conversion, or other objectives
You can create landing pages for various services you offer, such as home delivery, or party planning. Additionally, you should conduct keyword research to find relevant keywords for each of these pages and optimize your content using them.
But why?
Each of these optimized landing pages will get listed in the search results. This means they’ll drive targeted traffic to your website and bring in conversions as well. Also, add a CTA to every landing page to provide a better user experience and conversion.
To create and optimize landing pages with ease, you can leverage landing page builders. These platforms can simplify the process as most of them have a drag-and-drop functionality to add or move elements on the page.
Your website’s security matters as well when it comes to SEO. In fact, Google has added HTTPS as a ranking signal for websites. You must add an SSL certificate to your website to protect the data of your visitors.
But why?
Search engines like Google prioritize user experience, and if they direct users to websites that aren’t secure, it leads to a poor experience.
Security is even more important when you’re taking online orders for your restaurant. In such a situation, you’ll have sensitive information about the customer such as their delivery address or credit card number. That’s why it’s critical to use point of sale (POS) platforms that prioritize secure and compliant payment processing. A secure platform ensures your SEO is taken care of and so is your customer data.
To broaden your restaurant’s reach and drive conversions, it’s essential to concentrate on your website’s SEO.
For building an SEO-friendly restaurant website, you need to optimize it for mobile. Additionally, you should also claim your GMB listing to give your local SEO a boost.
What’s more?
It’s essential to have a powerful content strategy in place to ensure that you can leverage content marketing to improve your website’s SEO. You should also consider adding a blog (like the one you’re reading!) to your restaurant website.
You should create and optimize landing pages and secure your website with HTTPS to improve the browsing experience and bolster your SEO even further.
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is the co-founder of Attrock, a digital marketing agency. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.