Do you use SEO on your website? Be sure to implement these techniques to ensure that your restaurant website outways your competition.
This will boost your website’s traffic and improve your website’s visibility in search engines. Many sites don’t focus on SEO as much as they should and this checklist will help restaurant business owners and managers improve their websites and bring in potential customers.
SEO Checklist:
Choose your keywords
For each page on your website such as the homepage, menu page, catering page, etc. identify specific keywords that target that page. This will create traffic to your website when potential customers are searching for a specific term.
Optimize page titles, descriptions, images
Make sure your title is unique and not longer than 70 characters. The brief description should appear at the bottom of every Google page. Make sure your keyword or phrase is included in the description, but most importantly keep it compelling. The maximum character limit is 160, but the message must still be concise and to the point. You should optimize your images for your primary keyword, too. Make sure the main image on each page has an alt tag that contains the keyword of the page. Your website must attract people to it. In addition to the keyword, the image’s title should contain the keyword (it can be the same as its alt tag), and it should be as small as possible without losing quality.
Dominate in Local Search
Ensure all restaurant listings on all major and relevant local search properties have an accurate name, address, and phone number. Claim, standardize, and optimize listings across all relevant local search properties.
Create unique content
Your restaurant site must stand out from the competition by being creative, not designing basic assets, and engaging with customers. It’s important to remember that content doesn’t just have to be written copy; you can also present your menus, promotions, and more through video, photography, and graphics. Search engines look beyond your site’s keywords to understand the context.
Engage with customers on social media
Utilize social media to drive traffic to your website. Develop a strong social media presence with lots of engagement. This will keep people interested by using a unique approach to stand out from the crowd.
Add some internal links
Whenever possible, try to link out to other pages of your website from the content on each page on your website. You should link to all of your major pages on your homepage. When creating internal links, make sure you use the keyword of the destination page in the part of the sentence that you link to.
Encourage reviews and testimonials
A higher star rating will likely result in a higher click-through rate to your site and more foot traffic. Higher star ratings are considered a part of social media strategy.
Check your page speed
Always make sure that your page is up and running the way you want it. Sometimes a page can lag and cause someone to leave your site if it’s taking so long, so keep that in mind.
Measure your efforts
Your strategy needs to be evaluated to know which aspects are working, which ones aren’t, and where your efforts are yielding the highest results. As deep as you can connect, track your visibility, engagement, and conversion metrics to your business.
