Wouldn’t that be amazing to bring FREE Traffic to your website with a little bit of work? Wouldn’t that be even better if that was done with the help of your customers? How to do Restaurant Marketing for FREE? I am talking about word-of-mouth Marketing Online here. Maybe, tiny bit more than that. The question is how to bring lots customers to your Restaurant without spending any money on Advertising? To be able to do that you need to do SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. You need to optimise your website for Search Engine, so that, when people search Local Restaurants, your Restaurant will appear on top of others. First and foremost, your website must be optimised for Mobile Devices. More and more people are searching and finding Restaurants on their mobile phone and they book a table on their mobile phone. So, let’s see what you need to do to bring more customers to your website for FREE.
General SEO Hack
- Submit your Business Information to “Google My Business” – that way you will rank in Local 3-Pack at Google Search Results Page. If you have more Reviews, you will Rank Higher
- If your website is on WordPress, use Yoast SEO Plugin. Identify Keywords you would like to Rank on Google and use those keywords in your website
- Write articles on Food you serve at your Restaurant. Use keywords you would like to Rank throughout the articles. That way Google will likely Rank you on those keywords within your city
- Use Google Search Console to find out issues about your website and fix it. Create a XML Sitemap and submit it. You can set your business location inside Google Search Console
- Submit your Restaurant info on all major web directories like Yelp, TripAdvisor and etc. Because when someone searches a Restaurant near them, 1st page results display Local 3-pack, ads and mostly big web directory website results
- As a Restaurant, you will share a lot of pictures. Make sure you optimise them using right keywords and image titles containing keywords you would like to rank
Google Reviews Hack
- Using Google Online Reviews you will build TRUST, increase Business Reputation
- To have more reviews and high stars are the most important factor to Rank High at Local Business Search. Google encourages business owners ask their customers to write Reviews. Start with your Loyal Customers first. Don’t do it at once. It will look suspicious.
- Always ask your happy customers to leave a Review on Google
You can use “Google Review Link Generators“ to make it easy for your Customers to Review your Restaurant
Google Maps Hack (Google My Business)
- At “Google My Business” make sure you add your Restaurant Categories. All matching Categories (Turkish Restaurant, Turkish Cuisine, Turkish Restaurant at Russel Square and etc)
- When you add images to “Google My Business” make sure you add Local SEO related keywords. Remember, you want to Rank High locally.
- Your Restaurant Details (Name, address, phone number and etc) must be consistent throughout the Web
- Use Google My Business “POSTS”. It is a mini ad which appears on your Google Search Result Profile on the right hand side of the page. Use it to promote offers, events, menu updates, new dish. Use images 590px x 445px
- Ask questions to your “customers” on Google My Business. Anybody can answer it
- Add “Services” where you can list your Menu. It is only visible on Mobile
- Upload Videos. 30seconds, 720px, 100MB videos. Should be your own video
- Add Business Description to your
- Add a “Book a Table” Button. You need to sign up with 1 of the Service Providers Google Recommends. Then you can start taking bookings. You can also track the Conversions
- Activate the “Message” Feature where anybody can ask you question. You will receive the message on your phone.
- You can also use “Website Builder” to create your website, if you don’t have one yet. It is drag-and-drop website builder. No technical knowledge is Required
- How to track any visits to your website from your Google Profile? Go to Google Analytics “Campaign URL Builder”. Set up a special link, auto-create the URL and paste this URL on your Google Profile website Link.
TripAdvisor Hack
- 3 things you need to give attention to Rank High on TripAdvisor : Ratings, Recency and Relevance
- TripAdvisor have General Ranking & keyword/Category based Ranking. Dinner Ranking, Lunch Ranking, BBQ Ranking and etc
- You would try to Rank on certain Food like “Best Adana Kebab” and etc
- To Rank High : Get more Reviews & ask your customers mention your Dish at Reviews to rank on those certain dish or type of food
- Some Restaurants exist thanks to TripAdvisor. If your Restaurant is in a Tourist Area, make sure you look after the tourists well and ask TripAdvisor Reviews
- Respond to TripAdvisor Reviews.
- Make sure you have TripAdvisor Stickers, you use TripAdvisor Promotion Toolsand TripAdvisor Website Widgets to take the TripAdvisor marketing to the Max
Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel
It is important that you have Facebook Pixel & Google Analytics integrated into your website. You should be able to track your website visitors. How did they find your website? Which pages they checked and how long they browsed your website? Their age groups, locations and etc? Conversion Rate? You would want to have these information in hand to understand your customers better and to target similar type of people in your restaurant marketing efforts.That is about it. If you have any questions, if you want me advise on how to actually do these things, please leave a comment below. I will try to help you out. Thanks for reading. I hope you learned something useful here.
