How to Get Your Venue to the Top of Google Search

The unique challenges of SEO for hospitality venues

There’s a lot of competition when it comes to claiming that top spot from Google. When people search for restaurants, they’ll be met with so many options – all of which are battling to make it to the top of the leaderboard.

That’s why putting a solid SEO strategy in place can massively improve your rankings and will help you overcome some of the challenges listed below.

Challenge 1 – Local and map pack rankings

If your restaurant has a great website that works well, has multiple booking features and provides customers with crucial information, then you may think that’s everything covered. However, none of these matters unless you have a good SEO strategy in place to ensure your venue shows up on local searches and map pack rankings.

Often, the people wishing to book tables at your venue will live locally. Therefore, when searching for places to visit in their local area, they will be met with several suggestions within a specified radius. This means it’s so important your venue shows up on this list, otherwise you will miss out on potential customers and will be overshadowed by other local competitors.

Your competitors may also feature in results directly in Google maps search results, bringing them more visits when people are conducting their searches. Being part of Google’s map pack means you’ll have a higher drive in sales and exposure which will highly benefit your business.

Challenge 2 – High competition levels

Hospitality has always been a sector with high competition, often with lots of venues situated in small areas targeting similar crowds and now the SEO race has driven this competition online.

Small businesses are the ones that feel it the most, as they must compete with the large chain restaurants that are likely to have a whole team to manage their SEO strategy. For example, if people are searching for pizza places in their area, it’s more likely that a large chain such as Dominos or Papa Johns will appear higher up on a Google search than an independent venue.

There’s also a great amount of competition between third party delivery sites such as Deliveroo and UberEats, who have many local restaurants featured. This means more exposure for these restaurants, meaning higher rankings. However, you need to pay commission to these companies in order to use them, therefore not every restaurant is able to provide a budget for this.

Challenge 3 – Mobile user experience

The mobile user experience is so important when considering hospitality related searches. It’s far more common for people to use their mobile rather than a desktop to search for a venue to visit.

You also must take into consideration the spontaneity factor of the decision-making process, as many customers decide to visit venues last minute, especially when travelling.

Therefore, it’s vital that your business’s site is mobile friendly to ensure the browsing and booking processes are seamless.

This is where mobile-first indexing comes into play. Google uses the mobile versions of content for indexing and ranking, rather than other devices such as desktops and tablets. Therefore, you must ensure that your site's desktop version and mobile version display the same information for this to be effective.

How can I help my venue rank higher?

You don’t necessarily need lots of technical knowledge when it comes to SEO best practice and there is plenty you can do to achieve higher rankings.

There are plenty of platforms created by Google, such as the Google Business profile, that are designed to help regulate all your business information in one place. Plus, there are many ways to utlilise your local SEO and content strategy to ensure your venue ranks higher.

Here are some tips for helping your venue rank higher on Google:

1. Invest in local SEO

Investing in local SEO is vital if you want your business to stand out amongst other big competitors. When people search for places to eat and drink in their local area, they are more likely to go with the suggestions that pop up first through the local search. This is far less time-consuming for them than manually searching individual venues.

You also need to be ahead of the game, as most competitors will be battling it out for the top space on the local rankings. Therefore, it’s important to ensure you’ve done everything you can to improve your local SEO.

A great way to ensure your business shows up on local searches is by citation building. Local citations are factors such as your businesses name, phone number and address. This information can often be found on social media platforms and businesses directories – basically anywhere your customers would be looking to try and find your information.

Having reviews also improves your local SEO rankings – would you visit a place without reading the reviews first? Most people wouldn’t, hence why they are such an important tool to help drive customers to your venue. They can also massively improve your social rankings and authority online, further improving your google ranking.

2. Create and maintain an optimised Google Business profile

When you want to find information about a business or venue, the internet is usually always the first place to go. So, you want to make sure that your restaurant can be easily found online, otherwise you may lose out to other competitors. That’s why it’s also beneficial to set up a Google Business profile. This allows you to stay in control of so many important aspects of your online presence within one space.

One of the simplest yet very effective things you can do via your business profile is keep your information up to date. These are the basics, like contact information and opening hours, so customers know when they’re able to visit and who to contact to book a table.

What makes your venue different from all the rest? Do you have any unique selling points that people need to know about before visiting? Do you have any awards you can mention? These are some of the questions you should ask yourself when writing your restaurant’s description on your Google Business profile to ensure you stand out amongst the rest.

Staying on top of reviews is another way to utilise your account. Here, you can respond to reviews about your business, which demonstrates that you engage with customers and take in their feedback. You may also come across reviews that could damage your brand by being untrue or offensive, in which case you could take action by reporting these to Google. Not monitoring this could cause potential damage to your SEO and customer intake in the long term.

Finally, you need to display high quality imagery. Images are usually what people see first and could potentially make or break their decision to book. If the images are of low quality, with no colour and little personality, then this does not make your restaurant look appealing. So always ensure your images are good quality, relevant to the venue and intriguing so you stand out amongst your competitors.

3. Prioritise user experience

You could have amazing images, all the relevant information plus glowing reviews, but none of that matters if your website doesn’t deliver a good user experience.

It was mentioned earlier that mobiles are the main device used when looking up restaurants and other businesses. So, it’s important that your site is mobile friendly, otherwise it can make things difficult for your potential customers. Ensure users can navigate to important pages, access contact information and learn about your brand without any extra hassle.

Keeping on top of Core Web Vitals is another extremely important tool that allows you to see how your user experience needs to be updated. This is a feature by Google that tracks how a user interacts with a page by measuring how quickly the page becomes visible, the times it takes for a user to interact with a page and the visual stability of the elements featured on the page. If all these factors run smoothly, then customers are more likely to return to your site and may recommend it to others.

By prioritising user experience, your site is far more likely to rank higher in Google searches. By simply placing the needs of the customer first, you can learn how they interact with your site, what needs to be improved and how you can streamline the experiences for different devices, all of which will benefit your SEO strategy.

4. Focus your content strategy on the local area

Most of your customer base will be people in the local area surrounding your venue. Therefore, it’s extremely important that those people can easily find and read about your venue online without having to dig too deep.

To do this, you should focus on optimiaing your web pages so they display local terminology that customers will be searching for. This will require you to research different keywords and localised terms that will help you identify the most effective words to include in your webpage copy. For example, if you happen to own a steakhouse situated near London Bridge, you could search ‘London Bridge Steaks’ and other variations to see what works best.

When you’ve completed your research and have selected the keywords you want to target, you must then insert them into your content. You can do this by placing the keywords into the URL of your web page, placing them in the title on multiple pages on your site, within your venue’s description, in blog posts (if you have one) and by linking to other related pages on your website. Be sure to choose different terms for each section on your site to ensure none of your pages are competing.

If you’re really content focused and do have a blog, then this can really help to drive local customers to your venue. You can include content about the area in relation to updates to your business, local news as well as things to do to appeal to your local audience.

5. Develop a strong FAQs section for your site

Having a page that features all the frequently asked questions you hear on a day-to-day basis allows customers to find the answer to their queries all in one place, which has an array of benefits.

Running a business is a time-consuming job, especially in the hospitality industry. Therefore, it’s not ideal for people to constantly contact your restaurant with questions. By having an FAQ page, customers can find the answer to their questions on one page. This means that they will not need to get in contact with your venue, freeing up your phone lines, email inbox and staff time.

It saves the customer’s time, which also helps with their overall experience. If they can immediately find the answer to their question without any unnecessary difficulty, then they are more likely to use your site again.

Plus, having an FAQ page improves the customer’s trust. It shows that you understand the queries and are willing to help by being fully transparent, which is something consumers value highly. If they have trust in you, then they are more likely to choose you over other venues that may not show the same hospitality.

But how does having an FAQ page help your venue rank higher on a google search? By using your chosen keywords, you can improve your site’s SEO which will enhance your ranking. This is so valuable for your site's organic performance as it boosts your internal link building which is an incredibly important search ranking factor. It’s as simple as that.

Other tips for hospitality SEO

As discussed, there are many ways to help improve the SEO for your restaurant. Here are a few more options you may wish to consider when thinking about your hospitality business website rankings.

Utilising Reserve with Google – This is a great way for people to book a table at your restaurant with ease. By using Reserve with Google, your customers can choose to reserve a table at the click of a button when searching for local venues on both Google and Google Maps. Customers may be more inclined to visit your restaurant again if the reservation experience was seamless and simple.

Keeping a bank of on-site imagery for Google images – By creating a collection of images, you’ll always be prepared to update the site and other features that will be seen on a Google search. Remember to make sure these images are good quality and reflect your venue's personality.

Ensuring menu items are up to date on your Google Business profile – This is a very simple one and that’s why it may slip under the radar. Customers love to know exactly what they’re getting, with some people deciding the exact meal they want before arrival. By keeping your menu up to date, you're ensuring your customers have all the information they need before booking. This is also important for your SEO, as people may wish to google certain dishes that you offer, meaning your restaurant is more likely to rank higher on a Google search for that specific dish.

Maintaining third party profiles (such as TripAdvisor) – By regulating and maintaining third party profiles, you’re ensuring that potential customers can receive all the relevant information about your venue. Customers may come across these sites before your own, meaning it’s their first impression of you. Therefore, it’s up to you to manage your reputation through these sites by keeping them up to date and replying to reviews regularly, indicating that you have the customer’s best interests at the forefront of your mind.

Next steps

So, we’ve discussed everything SEO – now, how do you get started?

Firstly, SEO strategy is a long game – so be prepared to be patient. It’s important to be mindful of how competitive the hospitality industry is, so it may take some time to perfect your new SEO strategy before it starts getting the results you ultimately want. Also, always ensure your site is built for mobile usage and not just desktop – this can affect your rankings later down the line if this isn’t considered.

Now you know that investing in local SEO is key to your success. These simple yet effective points, such as updating your contact information and making your opening hours clear, will really help boost your rankings. Customers love looking local, so ensure you’re on their radar.

Additionally, by setting up and maintaining a Google Business profile, you’ll be able to keep all you company’s information up to date, meaning the customer doesn’t have to get in contact to find this information.

Providing an unbeatable user experience will enhance your rankings drastically, as people will be more likely to recommend your site to others and will be more likely to book through you in the future.

You must also place a heavy focus on your content strategy in the local area. We mentioned before that local searches are key, and they really are. If you provide content that directly relates to the area, customers are more likely to come across your site.

Finally, it’s always good to have a solid FAQ page to answer all the questions customers may have, without the need for staff to take on that role. This is also a massive SEO driver as you’ll be mentioning all the keywords chosen for the site – so it will help drive traffic to you.

Of course, not all these strategies will align with your business model, but hopefully you’ve gathered some handy tips that will help with your SEO journey.

Are you looking for an online booking platform that can improve your SEO visibility with an optimised user journey for your customers? If so, we’d like to talk to you about Access Collins, our hospitality booking system.