Restaurants · SEO
SEO for restaurants
Diners search by cuisine, dish, area and occasion, often on Google Maps with a few minutes to decide. Restaurant SEO gets your details accurate and your menu readable by search engines. Then you're in the running.
From £349 per month, fixed fee
The situation
Why your customers are searching.
Restaurant search is local and map-led. Your Google Business Profile, reviews and photos carry much of the weight. The website still matters, though: it supplies the menu, cuisine and location detail that helps Google match you to searches for a particular dish or style of dining. With a PDF menu and thin pages, you can miss searches you're well placed to win.
What sends them looking
- Per-cover and commission fees from booking platforms are starting to add up.
- Weekends are full. Tuesdays and Wednesdays aren't.
- You've got a new menu, chef, refurb or opening to tell people about, including people who've never been in.
- You're in a tourist area, and visitors can't easily read the menu or book in their own language.
- Private dining, set menus or wine dinners need a steady flow of bookings to pay their way.
The problem
What costs restaurants work.
Where the work slips away
- PDF or photo menus are slow on mobile, hard to read and close to invisible to search engines.
- Photography that doesn't match the room or the plates leaves diners unsure what they're walking into.
- Opening hours, kitchen closing times and holiday closures can disagree between your website, Google and the booking platforms, and diners notice.
- Overseas visitors find you on Google Maps, then leave when the site, menu and booking route are English only.
- Send a diner to a third-party booking page and that platform can market other restaurants to them.
What makes customers hesitate
- The booking platform brings in covers. Pushing diners elsewhere feels like a risk.
- Proper food photography sounds expensive, and hard to fit around service.
- It's hard to see how a new website changes how full the dining room is.
- Past social ads brought likes and comments, and no bookings anyone could see.
How it helps
What SEO changes.
- Your Google Business Profile gets the right categories, a menu link, good photos and accurate hours.
- Menus become crawlable text, so searches for dishes and dietary needs can find them.
- Pages for your cuisine, your neighbourhood, private dining and the occasions people search for.
- Multilingual pages help visitors find you in their own language.
What you get
Google Business Profile optimisation
Categories, menu and reservation links, photos and special hours for holidays and closures, reviewed on a regular schedule.
Crawlable menu structure
Menus built as text with dish names, dietary markings and restaurant schema, so search engines understand what you serve.
Cuisine, area and occasion pages
Pages for searches like a cuisine in your area, private dining, set lunches or celebration dinners, picked from search data.
Multilingual SEO with hreflang
Translated pages with correct language markup, so a visitor searching in their own language lands on the right version.
Review request and reply routine
A simple process for asking diners for reviews and replying to them. It builds trust and supports local visibility.
Measurement
The enquiries that count, tracked properly.
What counts as an enquiry
- A table booked direct through your own site or booking system.
- A WhatsApp message or call to book, started from your website or Google Business Profile.
- An enquiry for private dining, a group or an event.
- A seat booked for a set-menu evening, tasting night or seasonal special.
What gets tracked
- Reservation clicks, calls and direction requests from Google Business Profile.
- How visible you are for cuisine, dish and area searches.
- Organic visits to menu pages and the share that start a booking.
- Organic visits by language version, where relevant.
Worth knowing
What customers check, and the rules to follow.
What customers look for before they call
- Photos of your own dishes and your own dining room, lit the way diners will see them.
- An up-to-date menu with prices, dietary markings and allergen guidance.
- Accurate hours, a map that works and a line on parking or transport.
- Recent Google reviews, with your replies on show.
- A booking route that confirms the table straight away, or says exactly how and when it will be confirmed.
Rules worth knowing
- Information on the 14 regulated allergens must be available, and for food sold online for delivery or collection, it's needed both before purchase and on delivery.
- In England, businesses with 250 or more employees must show calorie information on menus, online menus included. Most independents fall below that threshold.
- Ads featuring alcohol, wine pairings included, must follow the CAP Code's alcohol rules and Meta's age restrictions.
- Online menu prices should match what you charge in the restaurant, with compulsory charges included and any discretionary service charge shown as optional.
Straight answer
Is it right for you?
SEO suits restaurants playing the long game for steady visibility. Paid social handles the short-term pushes.
Made for
- Restaurants in competitive areas where diners compare several options.
- Restaurants with a distinctive cuisine or signature dishes people search for.
- Restaurants in tourist destinations with many international visitors.
Not for
- Restaurants that need tables filled this week. Meta Ads will move faster.
- Restaurants without a website they can change.
Starting price
From £349
per month, fixed management fee
What moves the price
- How competitive the market is
- The current site's technical health
- How much content is planned each month
- Whether local search and maps are in scope
Your ad budget is separate. It goes straight to the platform and is never marked up.
Questions
SEO for restaurants: your questions answered
Does the menu affect how a restaurant ranks?
It can. A text menu tells Google what you serve, which helps with searches for specific dishes, cuisines and dietary options. It also keeps your website and Google Business Profile consistent, and consistency supports trust.
How much do Google reviews matter for restaurant SEO?
A lot, for both visibility and choice. Diners read them before booking, and Google takes reviews into account in local results. A steady routine of asking for reviews and replying to them helps on both fronts.
Start a conversation
Tell Arête about the business and what currently feels missing.
You will receive a direct reply with the most sensible next step, even if that means recommending that nothing needs changing yet.
A direct reply
A personal reply, usually within one working day. No sales script, no chasing.
A short conversation
A look at the business, your current website and what a good result would look like for you.
A clear recommendation
The leanest sensible next step, with fixed scope and a fixed price. Sometimes that's nothing yet, and you'll be told so.
Prefer email? Write to info@aretemarketing.co.uk.