11 SEO Tips for Restaurants and Food Businesses

Attracting new customers is essential to keep your restaurant or food business thriving. However, relying solely on word-of-mouth or traditional advertising doesn’t cut it anymore. Building a strong online presence is crucial for standing out from the competition and drawing in hungry patrons—and search engine optimization (SEO) is key to achieving this goal.

SEO is the process of improving your restaurant website to follow best practices so it ranks higher on search engines and attracts your target customers.

As the founder of SEOSpace, the SEO plugin for Squarespace, and with years of experience running a successful SEO agency, here are my 11 easy-to-follow tips for restaurants based on real-world experience and the latest SEO best practices.

Why SEO matters for restaurants and food businesses

With 67.1% of the global population online in 2024, a jump from just 38% about a decade earlier, more people than ever rely on the internet to discover new businesses. Having a robust online presence is essential for your restaurant or food business’s growth. SEO is the key to unlocking this potential, driving more online orders and boosting your bottom line.

The benefits of SEO for your food business include:

1. Increased visibility and traffic

2. Cost-effective marketing

3. 24/7 availability

4. Enhanced credibility and trust

1. Increased visibility and traffic

Implementing effective restaurant SEO strategies can significantly increase your website traffic. When potential customers search for terms like “best pizza in town,” “healthy meal delivery,” and similar searches, you want your business to appear at the top of the results. This way, you’ll be found by potential customers without having to spend on ads. By optimizing your restaurant website for SEO, you’ll attract more relevant visitors who are likely to become paying customers.

2. Cost-effective marketing

Unlike traditional advertising methods, SEO for restaurants offers a long-term, cost-effective solution to getting in front of customers. With SEO, you can ensure your website organically ranks higher in search results, leading to long-term visibility and traffic without recurring costs from paid ads. When your website is optimized (and continuously updated), it can consistently drive new customers to your business. This makes SEO an invaluable tool for small businesses with limited marketing resources.

3. 24/7 availability

Your restaurant website can act as a digital storefront that’s open 24/7. With proper SEO optimization, potential customers can find information about your menu, hours, and location at any time, even when your physical location is closed. This constant availability can lead to more reservations and orders, boosting your overall revenue. It also saves you and your staff time, since your website can answer common questions or help you manage reservations.

4. Enhanced credibility and trust

When your restaurant appears in top search results, it gains more credibility in the eyes of potential customers. People tend to trust businesses that rank higher in search engines, associating them with quality and reliability. If they can get answers to their questions and learn about your business and its story once they’re on your site, that also builds trust, connection, and authenticity. This increased trust can lead to more reservations, orders, and positive reviews, creating a cycle of success for your food business.

So, what are the necessary steps you should take towards optimizing your food business website for SEO? You want to focus on on-page SEO, local SEO, and backlinks.

On-page SEO tips for restaurant websites

On-page SEO focuses on enhancing individual pages on your website—as well as page elements like SEO titles, SEO descriptions, copy, and images—to improve their rankings and attract more relevant visitors.

You want to focus on the following:

1. Find keywords your target customers are searching for.

2. Optimize your website structure for seamless navigation.

3. Enhance visual elements, ensuring they don’t affect load speed.

4. Publish quality content regularly to demonstrate your authority.

1. Find keywords your customers are searching for

When optimizing your restaurant website for search engines, start by choosing relevant keywords. You can use keyword research tools like Google Trends or SEOSpace to discover what terms potential customers might be searching for.

For a starting point, try phrases that follow this format: “[type of food] restaurant in [your city].” For example, “Japanese restaurant in Austin.” Incorporate these keywords naturally into your website’s content, headings, and SEO titles and descriptions.

Keywords are important because they help you communicate to Google what you want to rank for. For example, if you're a BBQ food truck in Nashville, and you don't clearly indicate that on your website, search engines won’t know what you sell and to show your site to people searching for Nashville BBQ.

By strategically placing keywords, you help search engines understand your content and match it with users' search queries. This increases the likelihood of your website appearing in relevant search results, driving more targeted traffic to your business.

For web page content, consider weaving keywords into the following:

• SEO titles: SEO titles are the blue links that show up on search results—you want them to be clear, concise, and relevant to your target customers. Ensure each page’s SEO title includes a relevant keyword and is between 50 and 60 characters. 

• SEO descriptions: SEO descriptions are the snippets of text that show below the linked text in search results—it’s also key for convincing searchers to click through to your site. Include a main keyword in the SEO description while keeping it between 150 and 160 characters. 

• Headings and subheadings: Headings and subheadings break up content for readers and aid search engines in understanding your page structure. Introduce the keywords into your headings and subheadings to emphasize how your copy is relevant to the keyword and focus of the page. 

• Throughout your copy: Try to incorporate some keywords every 200 words or so. This helps Google understand what your page is about and improves your chances of ranking for those terms.

Use Squarespace’s AI writer to help draft your copy

2. Optimize your website structure for seamless navigation

Website structure refers to the way your website is organized—from how you categorize different pages on your site to how you set up the content on those pages.  A user-friendly website structure enhances the browsing experience, which makes it easier for search engines to understand your website content. It also makes it easier for visitors to find what they need, which increases their chances of becoming a customer and the time spent on your website, which can impact your search rankings. 

While Squarespace websites are built to be user-friendly and provide a great foundation, you still need to implement SEO strategies yourself. When customizing your site, practice user experience best practices—create clear navigation menus, use descriptive URLs, and organize your content logically.

3. Enhance visual elements, ensuring they don’t affect load speed

A restaurant website that ranks high on Google is unlikely to lead to bookings and orders without attractive images of your dishes that leave visitors’ mouths watering. While images are key to driving crowds to your food business, if you don’t follow SEO best practices for images, you could be hurting your site’s search engine visibility.

Here are two steps to follow to optimize your images:

1. Ensure you compress your images below 250–500 KB before uploading them to your site.

2. Add alt text to each image once uploaded. Alternative text is text displayed for visitors to your site who use assistive screen readers—this is key for both accessibility and SEO best practices.

4. Publish quality content regularly to demonstrate your authority

Maintain an active blog on your food business website, focusing on high-quality content tailored to your target audience. You may publish your best recipes, updates to your menu, restaurant news, food recommendations for special events (like weddings), articles about seasonal foods, or best restaurant recommendations. This not only improves your SEO—because these posts are natural opportunities to highlight keywords—but also establishes your restaurant as an authority in the local area.

Another way to improve your restaurant business’s online presence is to engage in local SEO.

Get found locally: Local SEO for restaurants

Restaurants and food businesses are usually limited by location. Luckily, search engines often tailor search results to local businesses when it makes sense. To take advantage of this, you want to position yourself as a business in your local area. 

Consider the following tips to ensure your food business is being found by local searchers.

1. Leverage Google Business Profiles.

2. Harness the power of reviews.

3. Take advantage of local directories.

4. Issue press releases for newsworthy events.

1. Leverage Google Business Profiles

Your Google Business Profile is a cornerstone of your restaurant SEO strategy. This powerful tool puts your business location on Google Maps, giving local searchers another way to discover and locate your business. It ensures your business is visible when they search for restaurants like yours in your location. Claim and optimize your listing with accurate information, photos of your food and space, and up-to-date menus to stand out.

2. Harness the power of reviews

Customer reviews can make or break your local rankings. According to recent data, 82% of shoppers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. For your food business, this means that getting positive reviews is crucial for both your online presence and foot traffic.

To boost your local SEO for restaurants, consider these tactics:

• Ask directly. Train your staff to politely request reviews from satisfied customers or request reviews as follow-ups to reservations and on social media.

• Simplify the process. Provide clear instructions on how to leave a review, perhaps through table cards or QR codes that link to review pages.

• Leverage your website. Integrate review links into your restaurant’s website to encourage customers to share their experiences.

• Respond promptly. Engage with all reviews, both positive and negative, to show you value customer feedback.

3. Utilize local directories

Beyond Google, ensure your restaurant is listed in relevant local directories. These platforms not only improve your online visibility but also create valuable backlinks to your website (more on this later). Focus on industry-specific directories in your area, like Yelp and TripAdvisor, to maximize your reach.

Connect with local small business organizations to see if there are opportunities to be featured with them as well. If it’s within your budget, consider reaching out to local food influencers to promote your business in exchange for a discount.

4. Issue press releases for newsworthy events

When your restaurant hosts special events, launches new menus, or achieves milestones, leverage press and your own marketing channels to generate buzz. This approach attracts media attention and also creates valuable backlinks, boosting your local SEO efforts and establishing your business as a notable player in the local food scene.

Make use of your own online presence too. Post about news and events on your social media, your website blog, and share updates in a newsletter to customers.

Generating quality backlinks for your restaurant website

Backlinks are links from other websites to yours, and you need them to boost your website authority. Quality backlinks act as votes of confidence from other websites, boosting your domain authority. The higher your website’s authority, the more likely you are to rank for more competitive keywords. If you have a competitor that you can’t outrank on search engines, it’s often because they have more backlinks and, therefore, a higher authority than you.

So, how do you get backlinks to your food website? Let’s consider some of the best ways to generate backlinks to your restaurant website.

1. Consider ethical link-building strategies.

2. Partner with industry experts for healthy backlinks.

3. Monitor your backlink profile.

1. Consider ethical link-building strategies

Focus on earning backlinks through legitimate methods. Avoid shady or spammy techniques like sourcing backlinks from fake websites—they could harm your restaurant website’s reputation. Instead, create high-quality, link-worthy content that others will naturally want to link to or reference in their posts. This could include unique recipes, behind-the-scenes kitchen tours, or expert cooking tips.

2. Partner with industry experts for healthy backlinks

User-generated content (UGC) by food bloggers, critics, and reviewers not only leads to  buzz around your restaurant but also leads to relevant backlinks to your website. Links from other businesses and experts in the industry are a solid indicator of your legitimacy and quality to search engines, potentially leading to higher rankings.

To establish these relationships, reach out to relevant bloggers and food influencers in your local area. Often, they’ll share your business on social media and their site in return for a free meal—a good trade for boosting your site’s ranking in search results and encouraging in-person visits.

3. Monitor your backlink profile

Regularly audit your backlinks using tools like Google Search Console (GSC). If you encounter low-quality or spammy links, consider using Google’s Disavow tool to maintain a healthy link profile for your food business. A few high-quality backlinks from reputable sources are far more valuable than numerous low-quality links for boosting your restaurant SEO efforts.

Implementing these 11 SEO tips can significantly enhance your restaurant or food business's online visibility. From selecting relevant keywords to optimizing your website and building valuable backlinks, each tactic plays a crucial role in attracting more customers and establishing your brand as an industry leader. Stay consistent, keep your content fresh, and always align your efforts with your business goals to see sustained growth and success.