SEO Best Practices for Restaurants in 2025: A Step‑by‑Step Guide

Creating a strong online presence for your restaurant is crucial to attracting customers. 77% of diners check restaurants’ websites before visiting—so if your restaurant doesn’t have a big digital footprint, you risk losing customers to the competition.

However, getting your restaurant seen in search results can be challenging, given the fierce competition for diners’ attention. Your business also needs to be discoverable through all the other platforms that customers use, such as review sites, blogs and map apps.

In this guide, we’ll provide the steps to build your online presence using search engine optimization (SEO) best practices for restaurants. Continue reading to discover how to increase your restaurant’s online visibility today.

8 Steps To Improving Restaurant SEO

We’ll break the process of boosting your restaurant’s SEO into eight easy-to-follow steps.

1. Create and optimize your Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile is one of the most critical components of your business’ online presence. With a Google Business Profile, customers can instantly see key details about your restaurant—including where you’re located, when you’re open, what food you serve, photos and customer reviews—across Google Search, Google Maps and Waze.

Visit the Google Business Profile page and sign in with a Google account to create your profile for free. It’s important to make your profile as detailed as possible since it will give customers their first impression of your restaurant. Here are some critical items to include:

• Your restaurant’s name, address and phone number
• Your operating hours
• A link to your website and menu
• A link for online ordering, if you offer it
• Service options such as “vegan-friendly”, “outdoor seating” or “takeout”
• Featured menu items

Next, add photos and videos to your profile. These should showcase your dishes, the interior and exterior of your restaurant (including seating areas), and any unique decorations that help your restaurant stand out. Ensure your images are of high quality and include alt text for each image to facilitate search engine indexing.

Since customers can ask questions and leave reviews on your profile, be sure to respond promptly. This boosts your ranking in Google’s local search results and signals to customers that you care about their feedback.

Finally, remember to keep your profile up to date. Edit your profile with any holiday hours or closures, and add posts to promote specials or new menu items.

2. Manage review site listings

A large number of diners use online review sites like Yelp, Tripadvisor, OpenTable and Zomato to discover new restaurants in their area or evaluate local restaurants they’re thinking about visiting. Therefore, it’s essential to list your business correctly on these sites and maintain an attractive profile on each platform.

To start, check whether your business is already listed on one or more of these sites. If it is, you’ll need to go through a verification process to claim the business as your own before you can edit your profile.

Once you have control over your listings, ensure that key details, such as your restaurant’s name, address, phone number and hours, are accurate. Then, begin optimizing each listing by adding your menu, photos, and a link to your restaurant website or reservation platform. It’s fine to use the same images and details you used for your Google Business Profile.

Customers frequently leave reviews on these sites, so be sure to monitor them and respond promptly to any reviews. As with Google Business Profile, keep your listings updated if your hours or menu change.

3. Create a keyword strategy

Inserting keywords into all of your restaurant’s digital properties—including your website, Google Business Profile and review site listings—is another critical step to improve SEO. Strong keyword usage helps your restaurant turn up in more searches and pushes you closer to the top of the results list.

To determine the most relevant keywords, consider what your customers typically search for when visiting your restaurant. For example, many diners will search for a restaurant using phrases like “best sushi in [city]”, “vegan brunch near me” or “affordable Chinese takeout”. Consider details such as the type of food you serve, your location, and the kind of experience you aim to offer.

You can also conduct basic keyword research using online tools, like Ahrefs, SEMRush and WordStream. These will suggest relevant keywords based on your website or competitors’ sites. Google Business Profile will show you the keywords customers searched for that resulted in them landing on your profile.

Once you know what keywords you plan to include, map them to specific pages on your website. For example, an Italian restaurant could use “[city] Italian restaurant” on the website homepage, “lasagna” and “chicken parmesan” on menu pages, and “top Italian restaurants” and “best Italian dishes” within blog posts.

Spreading your keywords across your site in this way prevents keyword stuffing and increases the likelihood that your site will rank highly for specific search phrases.

4. Optimize your website for mobile

Optimizing your website for mobile devices is necessary for ranking higher in search engine results and for meeting customers where they are. Surveys indicate that the vast majority of diners are using their smartphones to search for restaurants.

So, how can you optimize your website for mobile? Start by ensuring your site is fully mobile-responsive. If you’re using a website builder, most templates are mobile-friendly by default. If you’re creating a site from scratch, check that your navigation menu buttons are large enough to tap with a thumb and that it’s easy to place online orders on a smartphone.

It’s also a good idea to add your address and phone number to your site’s homepage and link them. Customers can then tap on your address to view your restaurant’s location on their map app or tap on your phone number to make a call.

Site loading speed is also an important consideration for mobile devices, as many customers will be using wireless networks rather than Wi-Fi. You can use Google PageSpeed to test your website’s mobile loading speed—aim for a score of 90 or higher on mobile.

If your site is slower than that, compress the images used on your site and enable lazy loading by adding the code loading=”lazy” within each <img> HTML tag. Lazy loading allows most of your page to load immediately, then loads images and videos as a user scrolls down the page.

5. Use Schema Markup

Schema Markup is code you can add to your website to make it easier for search engines to read. It’s a great way to ensure key information from your website appears at the top of search results.

There are different Schema Markup types, which are also called structured data. Here are a few of the most important for restaurants:

• LocalBusiness: Include your address, phone number, operating hours and accepted payment types.
• Menu: List all your menu items, including prices and images.
• Review: Add some of your top reviews from customers.
• Aggregate Rating: Display your overall review score from sites like Yelp.

Ensure your structured data is implemented in the JSON-LD format, since this is the recommended format by Google. You’ll need to access your website’s HTML code to add Schema Markup—most website builders have tutorials explaining how to do this.

Once you’re done, you can use Google’s Rich Results Test to make sure your Schema Markup is working properly and to see what information Google will display about your restaurant.

6. Generate and respond to reviews

Online reviews serve as social proof that customers liked your restaurant. Positive reviews can play a significant role in boosting your SEO and persuading undecided diners to give your restaurant a try.

To ensure you receive online reviews, it’s essential to encourage customers to share their experiences at your restaurant. Ask diners to write a review before they leave and follow up by email if you have their contact information. As an incentive, you can also offer a discount on their next meal.

It’s also key to monitor reviews as they come in and respond quickly. Thank diners for positive feedback and work quickly to address any negative reviews. Remember that most reviews and responses are public, so go the extra mile when responding to customers who leave negative comments. Offering a small discount on their next meal can show all your future customers that you care.

If you get great customer reviews, be sure to share them. You can post top reviews to your Google Business Profile, on social media and on your website.

7. Implement content marketing

Implementing a digital content marketing campaign is another powerful step you can take to boost your restaurant’s online presence.

In its most basic form, content marketing can simply mean hosting a blog on your website. Content could include information about your restaurant’s specials and team, or sharing stories about local food events and favorite recipes, all of which can help you build your online presence. As mentioned, remember to include keywords in your blog posts to help more diners find your restaurant.

Another approach to content marketing is to partner with websites that already have a large audience. For example, you can write a guest post on a popular food blog that breaks down one of your restaurant’s featured dishes. You can also partner with a local tourism website to share ideas for how to spend a day in your city, including stopping at your restaurant.

8. Measure results and keep optimizing

Once you’ve put in the work to optimize your restaurant’s SEO, check that your effort is paying off. Two of the most helpful tools for this are Google Analytics and Google Search Console, both of which are free.

Google Search Console provides information about how your website ranks for various searches. This can help you identify keywords to pursue in the future. Google Analytics tracks traffic on your website, counting visits and monitoring which pages of your site customers are most interested in.

You should also conduct quarterly SEO audits. Look for broken backlinks, check your site’s loading speed, and address any outdated content. This is also a good opportunity to update your menu and add new photos to keep your restaurant’s digital presence looking fresh.