8 golden rules for SEO on your restaurant website

Are you creating a website for your restaurant? It's an excellent strategy for promoting your establishment online. Another advantage: a website optimizes your SEO! ... Provided you do it properly 😉 . To do so, follow the 8 fundamentals in this article!

How does a website improve a restaurant's SEO?

If you're reading this article, you probably know how important SEO is for your restaurant. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of digital techniques designed to get you to the very top of search results.

Local SEOis key to attracting customers to your restaurant.

Among the best practices for boosting visibility, having a website is essential for SEO :

• It legitimizes the existence of your restaurant (thanks to the unique address and domain name);
• It serves as a drop-off point when people are looking for your restaurant online;
• It brings together in one place all the links to articles that mention you ("backlinks");
• It provides all the useful, up-to-date information a web user is looking for (see menu, make reservations, get to you).

Warning: if your website isn't up to date or doesn't provide the right information, your SEO will be penalized.

Understand the 3 things customers look for on your site

According to a Semrush study, an Internet user who visits a restaurant's website is looking for 3 things above all else: 

• How to book ;
• View menu ;
• Order online.

In SEO language, these are called "queries".

Whatever type of business you're in, these 3 queries should be at the heart of everything you put on your website. 

This is the most important element in SEO: making it easier for web users to find what they're looking for. That's right: Google's algorithm favors sites where you can find what you're looking for in less than a few seconds.

No need to create a chatty site with dozens of pages. To facilitate these 3 queries, it's best to :

• Add "reserve" or "I reserve!" buttons ("widgets") throughout your site (on the home page, in the navigation bar, at the bottom of the site footer);
• Create a page entirely dedicated to the menu, up-to-date and rich in information and photos;
• Either create a page entirely dedicated to ordering, or add"order" buttons and shortcuts to your pages in delivery applications (Deliveroo, Uber Eats, etc.).

Choose a simple, fast and responsive theme

As we've just said, a restaurant website has to be easy to use, if it's to meet the needs of the Internet user.

For example, if you search for"how to run a successful marathon", you're likely to expect a long article, a tutorial or even a video.

Conversely, if you're looking for"Indiana Café", you'll probably want to check the opening hours or the menu.

First step: choose a simple, fast and responsive website theme.

Online, there are hundreds of ready-made "templates" (themes), both free and paid, for restaurants.

At Malou, we recommend the simplest (and best for SEO) : Wordpress. If you're less at ease with digital, Wix and Squarespace are easier to use.

The Wix advantage: there are pre-made themes for restaurant categories ("italian", "takeaway", "japanese restaurant", "bar", etc.).

And in terms of price?

• If your establishment is small or medium-sized, a free theme may suffice;
• On the other hand, for franchises or large groups, a paid theme will enable you to create more pages (e.g. one page per franchised restaurant). Expect to pay €100 to €150 per month.

To make your site fast (very important in SEO):

• Avoid videos (you can use gifs, which are lighter);
• Systematically reduce your images;
• Check your site's loading speed regularly with Page Speed Insight.

Last but not least: choose a "responsive" theme.

"Responsive" means adapted to reading on a mobile device (smartphone).

That's right: when they're looking for you, your customers are using their smartphones! 90% of restaurant inquiries are made on mobile.

Make sure your theme displays the word"responsive", then test regularly to see if your site displays correctly on mobile.

Create a logical URL (watch out for semantic bias!)

The URL is the address of your site.

For example: https: //mon-restaurant.com

The best way to create a URL for your restaurant's website is : 

• nomdurestaurant.com ;

or even

• nom-du-restaurant.com.

Above all, don't add unnecessary numbers or characters , as these will hinder precision (and therefore SEO).

Very important: if the name of your restaurant already exists, you must add an additional keyword such as "restaurant" or "café"!

Otherwise, you won't be found, or you may not have exclusive rights to the domain name. This common problem is called "semantic bias" in SEO.

💡 Let's take an example: your establishment is called Le Germinal.

When you search for the keyword "germinal" or "le germinal" online, you'll come across Zola's novel (and hundreds of other well-placed sites!).

Rather than changing the name, you can create the URL"restaurant-le-germinal" or"café-le-germinal" rather than"germinal.com" , which is unlikely to be available and/or will have no chance of ranking.

Building a logical tree structure

Don't be afraid of the jargon, it's very simple.

A website's tree structure is quite simply its architecture, its skeleton👇

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When creating your restaurant's website, you'll need to design this architecture. This is the path that visitors will take when they come to your site.

To map out this path, we need to ask ourselves: what does the web user want to know? Objective: give them what they want right away!

Remember the first point. The 3 queries of a web surfer who Googles the name of a restaurant are :

• How to book ;
• View menu ;
• Order online.

👉 When creating your tree structure, make sure that these 3 queries can be answered quickly.

For example: home page / menu / book or order 👇

Don't forget to add prominent "reserve" buttons on all pages!

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Or 👇 (with a "contact" page dedicated to your address, email and phone number)

A good idea for improving SEO: instead ofa "contact" page, add your contacts and addresses at the bottom of every page on your site (in the "footer").

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A tree structure for a restaurant website can be more complicated than the 2 examples above if you're a large group or a franchise.

In this case, a local SEO strategy can be put in place to highlight all the establishments . The right reflex: create a page for each establishment with local keywords 👇

Focus on images

Because we eat with our eyes, most restaurant websites are image-based.

Be sure to use your own photos , not those found on the Internet. A smartphone is all you need to get great results. Our advice: organize a photoshoot, it will pay for itself in no time!

SEO tip: add logical photos to each page.

For example: a photo of the interior of the restaurant or your room for the home page, photos of the dishes and drinks for the menu, photos of the team for the "about us" section, photos of the building for the "contact" page.

Reducing and renaming images 

It's another one of the best SEO tips.

• Heavy images slow down your site. Use tools like Resize to quickly compress their size;
• Rename images with your keywords as follows: restaurant name + image subject.

Example: ‍

restaurant-germinal-meilleure-creme-brulee

restaurant-germinal-salle-saint-ouen

restaurant-germinal-equipes

The Google algorithm scans the name of your images to see if they make sense. It's also a great way to insert keywords!

Use keywords

There's no need to write a lot about a restaurant's website. Remember: Internet users are looking for specific things.

However, content is one of the keys to SEO. 

Prioritize quality over quantity: create a list of personalized keywords that you can use throughout your site.

👉 For a successful SEO content strategy:

• Create a minimum of 400 words per site page;
• Insert your keywords in logical places (e.g.: specialty names in the menu, the chef's name or the restaurant's history in "about");
• For the most important keywords, place them in the titles of your site. This iscalled "H1, H2 or H3".

Adding backlinks

The Internet works a lot like life.

Most people trust someone who has been recommended by a friend. On your site, it's the same thing!

You're going to add links to signal to the algorithm that you're popular (other sites are talking about you!) and trustworthy. In search engine optimization, these are called "backlinks".

Both techniques:

• Insert links about yourself in your site;

List all the blog articles or magazines that mention you and add them to a dedicated "Press" or "Recommendations" page or corner. Most important of all: include the link for each article.

The best way to get other sites to point to you is for blogs and media to talk about you! As part of your strategy, invite food journalists.

The more important the site that mentions you, the more powerful it will be for your SEO. For example: an article in Le Monde, a well-known food blog...

• Make sure other sites or platforms link to yours.

Insert your website address everywhere: in your Google My Business listing, in your social media bios, in the platforms, directories and applications you use (Zenchef, The Fork, Mapstr...).

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Have you implemented each of these tips? Impeccable: you've done all you can for your site's SEO! Now all you have to do is wait. Remember to regularly update your information (menus, dishes, photos) and add links to articles about yourself to increase the power of your site.