Restaurant local SEO, the complete guide

What is restaurant local SEO?

Restaurant local SEO is everything that helps your restaurant or café show up when someone nearby searches for food you serve, on Google Search and Google Maps. It rests on four things: a complete and accurate Google Business Profile, reviews that are answered, a fast website with a real menu, and the same name, address, phone and hours everywhere.

Most of the searches that matter are short and hungry: “brunch near me”, “ramen”, “coffee open now”, your own name. The person searching is often a few streets away and will decide within a minute or two. Local SEO is the work of being the obvious, trustworthy answer in that minute.

Nobody can promise you a position. What you can do is remove every reason for Google, and for the guest, to pass you over.

How does Google decide which restaurants to show?

Google weighs three things for local results: how well your listing matches the search (relevance), how close you are to the person searching (distance), and how well known and well reviewed your place is (prominence). You cannot change distance, so the work goes into the other two.

• RelevanceYour categories, your menu, your dish names and the words on your website tell Google what you serve. A café filed under the wrong category, or a menu Google cannot read, looks less relevant than it is.
• DistanceFixed by where you are and where the searcher is standing. This is why a great place can be invisible to someone across town and obvious to someone on the next block.
• ProminenceReviews, how many there are, how recent they are and whether you answer them, plus mentions and links from around the web and how established your website is.

If you are not showing up at all for searches you should win, start with the causes in why your restaurant isn’t showing up for near me.

Your Google Business Profile comes first.

Your Google Business Profile is the single most important piece of restaurant local SEO, because it is what people see in Maps and in the local results before they ever reach your website. Get it complete, accurate and owned by the business, then keep it current.

1. Own and verify itThe profile should belong to the business, not a past agency or a relative who set it up years ago. Add helpers as managers so nobody needs your password.
2. Use your real nameExactly as it reads on your sign. Extra keywords in the name break Google’s rules and are a common reason listings get suspended.
3. Pick the right primary categoryThe one that best says what you are, such as “Italian restaurant” or “Coffee shop”, then a few accurate extra categories.
4. Hours you can stand behindRegular hours, holiday hours and special hours, changed before the day, not after.
5. Menu, phone and linksA link to a real menu page, your phone number, and booking or ordering links if you take them.
6. Photos from this yearThe front from the street, the room, and the dishes people actually order.

The full list, item by item, is in our Google Business Profile checklist for restaurants. To keep the profile safe while you change things, read why Google suspends restaurant listings.

How do reviews affect restaurant SEO?

Reviews feed prominence, and they are also what a hungry stranger reads before choosing. A steady flow of recent reviews, each one answered by a person, helps on both counts.

Answer every review, good or bad. Keep replies short and human, thank people by the dish they mentioned, and never argue in public. A calm reply to a hard review often does more for the next guest than the review itself does harm.

Ask for reviews in ways that keep you inside Google’s rules and Canada’s anti-spam law: in person, on a card or a sign, with a QR code on the bill, and by email or text only to people who agreed to hear from you. Never offer anything in return. The details are in how to ask for Google reviews without breaking CASL.

What does the website do for local search?

Your website backs up your Google Business Profile: it gives Google more to read about what you serve and where, and it is where most people go to check the menu before they come. It needs to be fast on a phone, with a real text menu and your name, address, phone and hours written plainly.

• A real menu pageDish names as text on a web page, not a PDF or a photo of the board. Read why PDF menus hurt restaurant SEO.
• The first screen does the jobWhat you are, whether you are open, where you are, and one clear button. See what a restaurant homepage needs on the first screen.
• Words locals useYour neighbourhood, nearby landmarks and the dishes people search for, written the way you would say them.
• Labelled detailsStructured data that tells search engines plainly you are a restaurant, with your hours and menu. See menu structured data, explained for owners.

Everything on the full list is in the restaurant website checklist.

Why do matching details matter so much?

When your name, address, phone and hours match on Google, Apple Maps, your website and your social pages, Google can trust them, and so can guests. When they disagree, people turn up to a locked door and Google is less sure which version is true.

Pick one exact form of each and use it everywhere: the same spelling of the name, the same address format, the same phone number. When hours change, change them everywhere on the same day. This is the dull part of local SEO, and it is the part most often skipped.

Where should a restaurant start?

Start with whatever a guest would trip over first: wrong hours, a missing or PDF menu, an unclaimed profile, unanswered reviews. Fix those, then build the habits that keep them fixed.

1. This weekClaim and check the Google Business Profile: name, category, hours, menu link, phone.
2. This monthAnswer every open review, add current photos, put the menu on a real page, and make the details match everywhere.
3. Every week afterReply to new reviews, post what is on, update hours before holidays, and keep the menu page in step with the kitchen.

If you would rather hand it over, that is exactly what our restaurant SEO and Google Business Profile service does, together with the website. Get your plan and we will tell you plainly what we would fix first, and why.