4 SEO Tips for local food and drink businesses
- Alina Sahhanoglu
- Jan 21, 2018
- 3 min read
Do you own or manage a local restaurant, café, pub, takeaway, patisserie and you would like to be quickly found on Google by anyone who wants to eat or go out in your local market? If yes, please go on reading because this article is for you.
Before we give you the tips, allow us to answer few FAQs regarding SEO.
What is SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is, according to Wikipedia “the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results”.
In simple words, it’s a magic formula to rank businesses such as yours in the online.
SEO is about the right answer to a search. If someone is looking for a”Chinese restaurant in York, UK” and you own a Chinese restaurant in York, all you wish for is for your page to show up fist.
Why use local SEO?
Unless you have been living in a cave, you have definitely noticed listings for local businesses appearing at the top of your search results on Google. These listings are a very powerful advertising and marketing tool, especially for small businesses.
Don’t take my word for it, let’s check some statistics:
4 in 5 consumers use Google and other search engines to find local information;
50% of consumers who conducted a local search on their smart phone or tablet visited a store within one day;
18% of local searches on a smartphone lead to a purchase within a day.
Impressed, well you should be, now let’s dig a little deeper.
Tip 1. Google My Business
If you haven’t done it already, go to google.com/places and claim your place. Show to the world where you are, photos from inside and outside your business, photos of your products and customers.
Surprising enough many businesses have not done it yet, so this gives you a net advance in front competition!
When creating your listing, make sure you choose the most accurate description of your business, for example “patisserie”; “ French Restaurant”; “Brazilian Rodizo”; “Chinese Restaurant”; “Fish and chips”etc.
Another important aspect is to make sure that all the elements of your profile are filled in.
Tip 2. Reviews
The more people review your local business, the higher you will rank. So, it’s time for you to ask your good customers to go and review your business on Google. If you have a robust social media activity, you could ask your followers to review your page on Google as well.
Tip3. Build citations
Citations are links of local SEO. A citation occurs each time the name of your business, address, phone number is mentioned on the web. The citations are the exchange currency in the online environment. The more you have, the higher you’ll rank.
The easiest way to build citations are the local business directories.
Here are a few to start with:
Tip 4. Use Social Media
In 2018 there is no Internet without Social Media! The important content is not only linked, it shared, liked, twitted and pinned, it could even be boomeranged…
The way people use the Internet has radically changed and Google couldn’t remain indifferent. Many studies on Google’s ranking algorithm show a large correlation between high ranking pages and strong and consistent social media activity.
Social media is an easy way to create backlinks and it also increases traffic back to your site.
We at GAMA (York) have developed Social Media Packages that are affordable and tailored to fit the profile of small local businesses.
Thank you for reading!
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