How you can SEO Optimize your Restaurant Website

If you want to increase the ranking of your restaurant website to first seach page, you should carefully optimize the site itself for the requirements of search engine. This is called internal optimization. This is when we configure the code and the site files.

By itself such a setup can provide TOP 10 results  with just low competition. However, without this optimization, the site is much more difficult to promote in the search engines – it will require more money and time.

We will give you a simple checklist of 7 items.

1. Responsive design

Today it’s important not only to have Responsive but mobile friendly design.

If the site of your restaurant is displayed incorrectly on mobile devices, different screen sizes in different browsers – you could lose customers, because it’s easier for a person to close your site and open a site of another restaurant rather than scroll left or right on a smartphone or having to deal with the wrong layout of the site.

Google prefers mobile friendly websites. A site without responsive design is more difficult to get into the TOP10, and with so much competition it will be almost impossible in the near future.

Responsive design is needed if you want to create a new restaurant site.

You can check if your site is optimized for mobile devices in Mobile-Friendly Test – Google Search Console

2. Download speed

Site load speed is an important website for ranking criteria on Google. This is important for the user when he/she tries to load your site on a mobile device. Or when there is weak wi fi connection , also when the amount of Internet traffic is limited.

Try to avoid too “heavy” large images, music, video in the background that can confuse visitors to the website.

Sometimes the site management system generates unnecessary clutter like junk files on the server and slows down the download speedup. This  increases the load time and negatively effects user experience and seo success. As a result you get less customers and money, If you want to avoid that, ask your website developer to make your restaurant’s page speed as fast as possible. You can check your page speed here: Use PageSpeed Insights

3. Tags “Title”, “description”, “keywords”.

Write tags “title” and “description” these texts will be displayed when you search on Google. What to write in them:

• Name of the restaurant
• Geo location (restaurant near central park)
• Type of establishment (restaurant, pizzeria, pub)
• Type of cuisine (sea food restaurant)
• Can be combined (sea food restaurant in Cannes)
• Restaurant class (exclusive, 3 Michelin star restaurant)
• Features of the restaurant (restaurant with … karaoke, a large hall, closed booths, an open veranda, etc.)
• A restaurant in the style of …

When drafting a name think about what phrase the visitor will use, while looking for a restaurant.

The length of the “title” and “description” that Google displays is different on desktop computers compared to mobile devices which  is limited. To ensure that the text does not break off halfway, depending on a device, try to fit the length of the title in 70 characters, and the length of the description is 155 characters.

If you do not have enough characters in the title specify the name and the most important characteristic. The rest of the information can be added to the description, and specify the characteristics that interest your client.

Until recently, web developers were working on tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <strong>, <b>. These are notations that highlight parts of the text on the site. But lately these tags are losing their importance for search engine optimization. Therefore, we will not pay attention to them in this article.

4. Text, keywords

Google analyzes the text of the site – if it is relevant to the user’s search query. Therefore it’s not enough to just insert images and with a small description. It’s important to write-up good content at least 2-3 paragraphs of the text, and use phrases that people will probably use while searching on the Internet.

A more detailed description of those parameters, which we indicated in point 3 (“title” and “description”). In tags we are limited to the number of characters, other than that the site gives you the opportunity to write complete information for users and search engines. Do not miss this opportunity!

5. Make Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml.

In the Robots.txt file, we tell search engines which site folders do not need to be indexed. This is done in order to speed up indexing for Google. We hide technical folders that do not contain information for the user.

Also, this file specifies the main address of the site – either with www, or without www. Search engines consider sites with an address with www and without www – different sites that copy the content of each other. To avoid this, we specify which URL is considered the primary URL.

Sitemap.xml is a file that lists the pages and categories of the site. For restaurant websites, this file is not important, because such sites usually contain few pages (1-5-20). Google will see them and without prompting Sitemap.xml. But if there is a blog on your site that you often update, then it makes sense to create a Sitemap.

6. Search and delete duplicate pages

You should find and delete all duplicate pages. This is very important, because the more relevant query the search engine can consider as a duplicate of the page being promoted with a completely different address! And in fact all your work on promotion will be useless.

Therefore, in order for this not to happen, it is necessary to prohibit in advance to indexing or deleting duplicate pages. Your website’s cms can generate such duplicate content and you will not even know it. You can find out if your website has duplicate content here

7. HTTPS protocol or SSL certificate

HTTPS is a protocol for secure communication over a computer network. This means that the site owner has installed an SSL certificate and this site is “safe”. There are SSL certificates of different levels of reliability for different purposes. What does it give restaurants sites?

1. A) If you have an online store on the site, the buyer writes personal information, card data to pay for the order, then an SSL certificate is required to avoid the leakage of personal and financial data.
2. B) If only the form of sending a message or booking a table on your site, HTTPS protocol is not so important. Nevertheless, you show the site visitor that even his name with the phone will be received only by the owner of the site. You show your concern for the safety of the customer data.
3. C) HTTPS is a good ranking factor for Google. If you are just starting to create a site and plan to work on its promotion, it’s better to put an SSL certificate on the site from the beginning

If on your site the visitor does not fill in any personal data, then you do not need the HTTPS protocol. But, as we said it is better to install this certificate.

These 7 points are not all opportunities for internal optimization of the site. But they are basic and for restaurant websites it’s enough.