SEO and Restaurants : Optimisation for Restaurant and Catering Websites

Introduction to SEO for restaurant websites

Like any other online sector, restaurants and catering businesses also need to optimise their online presence to be discovered by new customers and to remain competitive. Search engine optimisation (SEO) plays a crucial role here. SEO allows restaurants to improve their ranking in search results, leading to greater visibility and increased traffic to their websites.

The importance of SEO for restaurant websites

SEO is not just an option for restaurants, it's a necessity. And why? Because most consumers today search for restaurants and restaurant services online. To be more precise, they use search engines like Google to find restaurants in their local area or to discover new places to try. If your restaurant doesn't appear at the top of search results, you're potentially missing out on dozens, if not hundreds, of potential customers.

SEO strategies for restaurant websites

Fortunately, there are many strategies that restaurants can use to optimise their website for SEO. These include using relevant keywords, optimising site images, producing quality content, gathering reviews and optimising for local search. Each of these strategies plays a vital role in optimising a restaurant website for search engines and ultimately attracting more customers.

Local SEO for restaurants

Local SEO is particularly important for restaurants. Customers often search for restaurants specific to their locality, and local SEO allows your restaurant to appear in these specific searches. What's more, Google often favours local businesses in its search results, which can give your restaurant a decisive advantage.

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In short, SEO is an indispensable tool for restaurants that want to increase their online visibility, attract more customers and stay competitive. With a well-planned and executed SEO strategy, restaurants can significantly improve their online performance and growth.

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Understanding local culinary research intentions

Before taking any technical action, restaurant owners need to analyse the queries that occur in their catchment area. A study by BrightLocal shows that 93% of consumers consult Google Maps at least once a month to find a restaurant. Terms such as "Italian restaurant near me", "organic burger Paris 11" or "vegetarian dishes open late" dominate geolocated searches. Knowing that a user on mobile is often less than 800 m from the place they will end up visiting, optimisation should focus on short-tail keywords (type, neighbourhood) crossed with an intentional long-tail (diet, time slot, atmosphere).

In practice, a bistro in Lyon can use Google Search Console and the "Performance" reports to see that the query "quenelles artisanales Gerland" is generating impressions but few clicks, a sign that the title tag needs to be optimised or the snippet needs to be more attractive. To consolidate this approach, we can combine seating plan data (peak times) from booking solutions such as TheFork, to anticipate search peaks and adjust the distribution of local ads or call extensions.

Google Business Profile: the cornerstone of local SEO

Complete the basic information

Although a website is still essential, the screen that is displayed first in the knowledge panel is the Google Business Profile (GBP). The "Category" fields ("pizzeria", "tapas bar", "caterer") have a direct influence on the proximity algorithm. In 2022, a Whitespark study showed that category/query matching accounted for 36 % of the local ranking factor. Multiplying secondary categories ("vegetarian restaurant", "meal delivery") therefore widens the radius of visibility.

Using advanced attributes

The attributes "Vegan", "PRM access", "Heated terrace" and "Click & Collect" act as filters, particularly in Google Maps. According to its Search Console, a micro-restaurant in Bordeaux that ticked "Gluten-free dishes" saw a jump of 18 % in clicks from "Gluten-free Bordeaux" queries over the period January-March 2023. This gain was not due to any changes on the site itself: the ssimple GBP update was enough.

Posts, Q&A and bookings

Restaurant owners can publish weekly "Posts" to announce an ephemeral menu or a tasting evening. This content - optimised photos (720×720 format, 4:3 ratio) and 100-300 characters - enhances the freshness of the profile. The Question/Answer section, which is often neglected, can be pre-populated by the restaurant owner: asking the question "Do you offer vegan options? and then answering it helps to fill the space before someone else does so incorrectly. Finally, the Reserve With Google API connected to Zenchef or OpenTable speeds up the conversion from click to reservation, a criterion based on behavioural relevance.

On-page optimisation for a well-positioned menu

The "Menu as a keyword target" page

Instead of publishing the menu as an image or PDF - unreadable by crawlers - a restaurant should structure its page in HTML, section it by category (Starters, Main Courses, Desserts) and tag headings in <h4>. Each dish can then be enriched with descriptive content: origin of ingredients, allergens, food and wine pairings. For example, "Risotto with Vercors ceps and 24-month Parmesan cheese" becomes indexable micro-content ("risotto with Vercors ceps", "24-month Parmesan cheese").

At the end of 2021, for example, the website of the Michelin-starred restaurant Mirazur published an article detailing the genealogy of its permaculture-grown vegetables. Queries for "permaculture restaurant Menton" began to point to this page, doubling organic traffic over six months (SEMrush data). There's nothing to stop you turning your menu into a story, while boosting visibility on niche expressions.

Using structured data Schema.org/Restaurant

Google encourages the use of the Schema type "Menu", "MenuSection" and "MenuItem". Example of JSON-LD markup for a dish :

{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "MenuItem",
"name": "Bao of lacquered pork belly",
"description": "Bao steamed, farmhouse pork belly lacquered with chestnut honey, homemade pickles",
"offers": {
  "@type": "Offer",
  "price": "11.90",
  "priceCurrency": "EUR"
},
"suitableForDiet": "https://schema.org/LowLactoseDiet"
}

This type of tagging facilitates the display of "price range" or "popular dishes" in SERPs, increasing CTR by 2 to 10 % according to SearchPilot tests. The American restaurant "The Halal Guys" saw its "Combo Platter" portions appear in the "About" tab on Google Maps thanks to this tagging.

Mobile-first and user experience on smartphones

More than 80 % of restaurant searches are carried out on mobile. Google has been evaluating Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS) since June 2021. A Paris food-truck went from 3.8s to 1.7s LCP after migrating .png images to .webp and Cloudflare CDN caching, resulting in +25 % positions in the local pack. Photo carousels must be lazy-loaded to avoid a CLS greater than 0.1. On iOS, the Apple Maps overlay sometimes opens when a "Directions" button is clicked: if the viewport is not set (), the user encounters an unpleasant zoom and leaves the site, a negative signal for local relevance.

Site speed and user appetite

Surprising as it may seem, the home page of a restaurant chain like Chipotle exceeded 4 MB in 2020. By simply cutting out third-party scripts (Hotjar, Facebook Pixel, Instagram widget) via Google Tag Manager, the weight was reduced by 38 % and Pagespeed gained 12 points. For a small establishment, a high-performance shared hosting provider (e.g. o2switch) combined with a caching plugin (WP Rocket) will suffice, provided that CSS/JS is minimised and DNS pre-rendering is activated for content supplied by Deliveroo or Uber Eats.

Management of notices and gastronomic E-A-T

Importance of Local Reviews

According to ReviewTrackers, 68 % of consumers will not visit an establishment with a rating of less than 3.5/5. Reviews are now included in the local algorithm ranking and the MapPack filter (Vicinity Update 2021). Encouraging customers to leave a review 24-48 hours after their visit via a Sendinblue SMS or a QR code on the table increases the volume of fresh reviews, a key criterion for Google.

Responding strategically

Responding to a negative review with empathy ("We're sorry about the waiting time; our chef had to deal with an unforeseen problem with the delivery of fresh produce") demonstrates expertise and authority (E-A-T). The Nando's chain even mentions its HACCP procedures to reassure on hygiene, generating positive semantic signals. Weekly monitoring using the LocalClarity tool enables recurring themes to be detected (waiting, noise, price) and local FAQ pages to be optimised.

Internal networking: mapping a taste journey

The site should link the "Menu" page to the "Product origin" and "Partner winegrowers" pages. Anchors ("our seasonal vegetables", "our biodynamic wines") improve relevance. Micro-silos (Menu > Starters > Tartars) make it easier for Googlebot to explore. After restructuring into silos, a brewery in Lille noted an increase of 200 % in indexed pages and the rise of the query "moules-frites maison" from 12th to 3rd position.

Long-term content creation: food blogging and recipes

Regularly publishing articles ("How to choose a natural wine", "The real story behind ramen", "Lactose-free tiramisu recipe") enables us to target informational queries and capture web users in the discovery phase. In 2019, "Tartinery (New York) produced a series of posts on sourdough bread, generating 40,000 monthly visits and a sponsored partnership with a flour brand. Recipes can be tagged with Schema Recipe to add "stars", cooking times and calories.

Social SEO: Instagram and TikTok as brand query boosters

Although social signals are not a direct factor, a spike in brand searches increases the overall volume and sometimes leads to co-occurrence in auto-completion ("noma copenhagen price , " big mamma menu ). TikTok videos showing a spectacular "cheese pull" boosted the query "pizza carbonara big mamma" from 0 to 12,000 impressions/month in a fortnight in France (Ahrefs figures). So it's a good idea to synchronise your social editorial planning with your web publication, by including a UTM-tracked link to your bookings page in your Instagram description.

Local netlinking and gourmet partnerships

Backlinks from neighbourhood sites (lifestyle blogs, tourist offices, local markets) send Google a signal of geographical consistency. A restaurant in Rennes obtained a link from the "Producers" section of the magazine "Bretons en Cuisine", improving its Domain Rating by 7 points. Partnerships with food events (Street Food Festival, Fête de la Musique) also provide backlinks from ticket offices and municipal press releases. Although these links have low raw metrics, they have thematic and local trust.

Voice search and domestic assistants

20 % of mobile searches are said to be by voice. Queries are formulated differently: "OK Google, what's the best Mexican restaurant open right now? To answer, you need: 1) an updated GBP profile (opening hours), 2) FAQPage tagging combined with "Speakable (Google Actions). In 2020, "Domino's launched an Alexa skill for ordering and locating the nearest shop. Independent restaurants can use the Jetpack Voice Search for WooCommerce platform to capture these requests without a huge budget.

Internationalisation: attracting tourists without losing Google

In Paris, 52 % of covers in high season are tourist covers. A multilingual site (EN/FR/ES/CN) must manage hreflang (" x-default ) to avoid cannibalisation. The "Le Relais de l'Entrecôte" restaurant offers an identical "Menu" page in five languages; despite the duplication, Google understands the target thanks to the hreflang. Be careful with the URL: /en/menu vs /menu?lang=en risks diluting signals. To boost your ranking on Baidu, you need to host a CDN version in China and avoid blocking Google Map embed; prefer an SVG map.

Digital accessibility and RGAA 4.1 compliance

Far from being a simple moral duty, accessibility also improves SEO. Alt attributes describing each dish ("photo of a salmon mango avocado poke bowl") reinforce the semantic context. AA contrast (4.5:1) on light grey text in a menu can have an impact on user closure, reducing dwell time. The Pret A Manger site implemented an RGAA redesign, saving 8 % in average time on page and complying with UK public procurement requirements.

Performance monitoring: KPIs and dashboards dedicated to the foodservice sector

Beyond the classic average position, a restaurant must analyse :
- the percentage of mobile vs desktop traffic,
- the rate of calls from the "Click to Call" button (GTM event),
- the ratio of impressions/clicks/reservations (Data Studio, TheFork API).
A bar in Brittany has connected its Tiller till to Google Analytics via Zapier; it now measures the revenue generated by acquisition channel (organic, social, display) and validates that 43 % of Friday's sales came from organic queries "bar concerts Lorient .

Common mistakes to avoid

1. Publish the menu in PDF format only, no HTML version.
2. Forget to update special timetables (holidays, holidays) on GBP.
3. Use a non-indexable custom font as text in images.
4. Deploying pop-ups that do not comply with mobile interstitials (Google UX penalty).
5. Neglecting HTTPS security (expired certificate): browsers display a warning blocking access and crawling.

Case study: the SEO revamp of the bistro "Les 3 Canonniers

This bistro in Nantes (50 covers) was suffering from a non-optimised one-page site. Action taken:
- Creation of dedicated pages ("Market menu", "Wine list", "Local producers"),
- Schema Restaurant and MenuItem integration,
- Redesign of .webp. photos
- Addition of a quarterly blog "Grandma's recipes revisited,
- Local link-building campaign (wine blogs, tourist office),
- Collection of opinions via QR code stuck on the bill.
Results: +178 % organic sessions in 10 months, up from 7th to 1st place on "bistrot nantroir", +32 % direct bookings (drop in Deliveroo commissions).
The lesson: even with a limited budget (€3,000), semantic consistency and technique can rival the chains.

Outlook: the era of Search Generative Experience (SGE)

With the arrival of Google's EMS, which displays an AI-generated response before links, restaurants need to target the "panel of sources". This means :
- full markup (schema),
- expert content (history, fermentation processes),
- strong local authority (reviews, press backlinks).
Initial tests in the United States show that restaurant listings with more than 100 reviews and an active blog are cited twice as often in the response generated by AI. Anticipating this shift as early as 2024 will enable us to maintain our share of organic clicks despite the reduction in blue slots.

Operational conclusion

SEO optimisation for the restaurant industry is more than just keyword research: it encompasses reputation management, mobile UX, structured tagging and culinary storytelling. In the age of conversational search and real-time local data, restaurants need to think of themselves as geolocalised gastronomic media. Every dish, every producer and every story becomes a query opportunity. By combining technical levers (Core Web Vitals, Schema), semantic levers (content, silos) and community levers (reviews, social networks), an establishment - whether it's a neighbourhood pizzeria or a Michelin-starred restaurant - can sustainably emerge above the competition, reduce its dependence on delivery platforms and establish its brand in the digital ecosystem.

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