4 tips to increase your restaurant's online visibility
In an increasingly digital world, your online profiles are your restaurant's primary storefront. Boosting the visibility of your restaurant online is an essential part of developing your business and demands the use of new communication practices.
How to increase your restaurant's visibility online ? How to develop a social media community ? How to create a Google My Business profile ?
In this article, discover our four tips to help you stand out online.
Step 1 of 1
Attract more customers to your restaurant with Google My Business
Adapting to the digitalisation of the restaurant industry
87% of people rely solely on information they find online when choosing their next restaurant. To adapt, the restaurant industry must digitalise. It is up to each restaurant owner to develop their online visibility to meet the needs of today's consumers.
Today, your establishment's profile is the first source of information your customers consult before going out. The volume of "discovery" searches has tripled in two years.
The customer forms an image of your business through the appearance of your website, the quality of your online reviews and your digital storefront.
To establish a good SEO strategy and boost awareness, the first step is to create a Google My Business profile.
While Google has made creating this profile easy, mastering the codes for increasing visibility and reach requires some knowledge. Experts such as the company Partoo, can help you with SEO and transforming online traffic into visitors to your restaurant.
Four tips for boosting your restaurant's visibility online
1. Creating and optimising your Google My Business profile
Having a Google My Business profile significantly improves your establishment's visibility and SEO. To create it, log in via this link and enter your information. Once the profile has been published, you need to make sure it is viewed by as many people as possible!
How to do it
Optimise your profile (for browsers and for Google)
To make your profile attractive, enter the information requested and add a lot of photos. Potential visitors need to get a good idea of where they'll be eating. To make sure they discover you first, you will have to win over Google's robots. If they decide your profile is relevant, it will be ranked higher up in the search results.
You, therefore, need to choose the right categories for your restaurant, have a complete profile and pay attention to key words – they are just as important for Google My Business referencing as they are for a traditional website.
Complete your online informations
Conflicting information on your restaurant could see you eliminated from search results. Make sure your display name, restaurant location and opening times are always the same.
If Google detects inconsistencies between the opening times you indicate on your profile, your website and your Tripadvisor account, they will penalise your restaurant. This means that your Google ranking will be lower and other restaurants will appear in the first results.
Choose the right category
84% of Google My Business profile views for a restaurant or business come from discovery searches. You might have a better chance of being discovered online by indicating a precise search category, like "Mediterranean restaurant" for example.
2. Reply to online reviews
Customer reviews and testimonials play a key role in brand reputation on the Internet (e-reputation). To avoid disappointment, it's often the first thing we look at before deciding whether to visit an establishment. As reputation is essential for growth, it's important to always keep it in mind.
Your business will be confronted with both positive and negative reviews. In both cases, you should be able to respond.
If they are positive, it's easy to thank your customer. For example, you can send them a survey by email to improve loyalty.
3. Creating an effective website for your restaurant
Creating a website for your restaurant provides you with a new communication medium and an online storefront to boost your establishment's visibility. Today, customers tend to go online to choose a restaurant or check restaurant information.
To make sure that people can find the right information quickly and won't turn to your competitors, it's essential that you have your own website, which should include:
Opening and closing hours and days are the information most searched for online in the restaurant business
The address and means of access, which could also be accompanied by a Google Maps link
Your current menu to showcase your food
A button that redirects to an online ordering page (delivery, takeaway and click & collect)
Contact and booking information, online or by phone
A link to your establishment's social media accounts
4. Developing a social media community
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn – today, we spend a lot of time on social media. For many restaurant owners, it's an opportunity to increase their reach and develop a community around their business.
This makes it important to launch your restaurant on the various social networks as early as possible to get ahead of the competition.
Every day, 2.3 billion people log in to Instagram globally and could potentially come across your posts if your account is properly managed. All of this requires organisation, but getting started on Instagram isn't as difficult as you might think.
A presence on different platforms is key to your development and you can then initiate new marketing strategies such as improving visibility with online advertising on Facebook, for example. All of these steps will improve awareness of your business and allow you to create a genuine active community that will follow you and share your content, which today can become an impressive force.
And, to finish, don't ignore the impact of platforms such as The Fork for promoting your restaurant online and ensuring impeccable SEO.
Online visibility, e-reputation, positive reviews and website optimisation –Partoo's expertise can help you improve your restaurant's online visibility on all these levels with impressive results.
The Google My Business profiles of restaurant owners who have used them can experience a flurry of actions:
+62% phone calls
+158% itinerary requests
+43% clicks to the website
Step 1 of 1
Attract more customers to your restaurant with Google My Business
