For restaurant owners and operators, websites – or more specifically, SEO – can play an important role in attracting guests to your business by providing information, marketing events, and promoting your menu. The more traffic you see on your website, the more people you’ll see through your doors.

The key is that you want to come up in as many searches as possible when someone is looking for a restaurant with your specialty or in your area, so working your way up the search results should be an ongoing goal for your business.

Boosting your website

Your website itself can determine whether you are attracting online attention. Most searches are mobile, so make sure that your site is optimized for mobile devices. As well, as search engines “crawl” to read your website, and making it easy will yield better results. Documents in pdf form, like menus, are harder for search engines to read and will lower your ranking. Also, stick to images that load fast and small video clips, if the content takes too long to load, it becomes less searchable.

There are lots of tools out there (free and paid) that can help you use your website to get to the top of internet searches.

Using keywords

Keywords are the words people are typing into their Google searches, and the most popular words are the ones you want to start using on your website to show up in those Google searches. 48 per cent of Google searches are for local businesses, so you want people in your area to find your website when they are searching for a restaurant nearby. Start by looking at which keywords are the most popular with tools like Google Adwords to get an idea of what’s trending before you start integrating them into your website.

Be sure to include these words wherever you can, including back-end content like photo titles and meta tags. Google likes title tags to be less than 60 characters and meta descriptions to stay under 160 characters, so if you follow those guidelines and include keywords, you’ll be on your way to improving your search ranking.

Maximizing online content

Refreshing your website and adding new content will help you remain relevant online, so switch up your content and photos on a consistent basis. If you have a blog or post recipes, try and stay at a once or twice-a-week frequency so your content stays fresh but it’s not too much for people to follow.

Another good way to get attention online is with positive reviews, so look for ways to get guests to leave positive feedback. When you reply to those reviews, you can include a website link so people can go straight there from the review. Social media posts can also help, so post regularly, engage with your guests, and encourage them to share your content to reach as many people as possible. The more your business is seen online, the better the chance you have of directing them to your website.

Using your website as a tool to boost your online presence and increase traffic in your restaurant is part of a winning online marketing strategy.