You have tons of tasks on your plate when you’re starting a new restaurant: preparing the menu, negotiating with suppliers, hiring staff and getting everything in order. But is your restaurant leveraging all digital channels and dishing up new content to get more customers? Are your potential customers able to find you on search engines? Are you utilising all marketing tools available to attract more customers? If your answer is no, where do you start? Today, SEO Sydney will run you through 3 basic local SEO tips that will kick-start your journey in creating a successful online presence for your restaurant.
Set up a Google My Business Page
Akin to the Yellow Pages directory of the past, this listing provides you with an opportunity to control what potential guests learn about your business when they search for it online. It’s about being found online instantly when customers search for your business name – it’s the field that appears on the right, with maps, ratings and searches.
Remember to list your trading hours, address, contact details, and of course, your website. If you’re not sure how to do that, watch our video guide on how to create and claim your Google My Business listings.
Diversify!
Do not stop at Google! Claim your business listings in directories across the Internet, including Zomato, Yelp, Bing and Trip Advisor. Apart from that, experiment with different Google My Business features.
One of the most recent enhancements to Google My Business is the ability to add posts. For restaurants, this enables you to add menu items, photos of specials, events and offers. It’s a place for you to add links to blog posts or recipes.
Another one of the most helpful aspects of Google My Business is the ‘Insights’ section. Data is collected and curated to provide you with extensive information such as “How did customers find you?” and “How many of them there are?”. Over time you can track what posts are popular, so you can better tailor future ones.
Get Social!
Encourage reviews – they are often considered as a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy and are an engagement tactic because they can have a broader impact on traffic to your site. A higher star rating likely means a higher click-through rate.
According to a 2016 Brightlocal study, 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Use this to your advantage and don’t hesitate to ask for feedback from your satisfied and loyal customers. Here are 5 tips to get feedback back from those customers. You can now also incorporate reviews from sites such as TripAdvisor to your google My Business listing.
Moreover, incentivise users to check in to your restaurant on social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare are all extremely useful tools to do that. Again, make sure that all of your social media profiles have your physical address, contact information and links to your website.
And of course, be active and consistent with your social media posts!
Wrap up:
Your restaurant’s rankings will not improve overnight – local SEO takes time and effort. Claiming your listing on Google My Business won’t make much of a difference right away if you don’t have good food and service. Your business needs to provide value for money in order to be able to attract customers in real life and online. If you’re confident your business is great but needs a little help reaching new customers, SEO is the way to go. If you would like help with doing this, feel free to contact us at SEO Sydney – the experts in providing professional and proven SEO results for our clients
