SEO for Restaurants
Every table booked through a platform costs you a cut. Every table booked through search costs you nothing.
Restaurant search is dominated by three results on a map, a set of photos and a review score. Get those right and you take bookings directly. Get them wrong and you pay a booking platform or a delivery app for access to customers who were looking for you anyway.
Why restaurant SEO is not the same as other local SEO
The decision is fast, visual, and usually made within a mile of where the person is standing.
The map pack is the menu
"Restaurants near me" and "Italian in [town]" end in the map results. Photos, review score, price band and opening hours decide the tap, often before your website is involved at all.
Platforms are renting you your own customers
Booking platforms and delivery apps outrank most independent restaurants for their own name and cuisine terms, then charge a commission on the covers. Direct visibility is the only way to shift the balance.
Your menu is search content and Google can read it
A PDF menu is invisible. A structured HTML menu with dish names, dietary information and prices can be read, indexed and surfaced, and it feeds the rich results people actually click.
Occasions are searched separately
Sunday roast, private dining, Christmas parties, birthday bookings, vegan options, dog friendly. These are high-intent searches with their own pages, and most restaurant sites have none of them.
What we actually do for a restaurant
Five workstreams, all aimed at direct covers.
Google Business Profile, run properly
Correct categories and cuisine, menu link, attributes, price band, accurate hours including holidays, and a photo set that is refreshed rather than three shots from 2019. This is where most restaurant search decisions are made.
A structured menu Google can index
Real HTML menus with dishes, prices, allergen and dietary information, plus Menu and Restaurant schema so the detail can surface directly in search results.
Occasion and dietary pages
Sunday roast, set lunch, private hire, Christmas bookings, vegan and gluten free options, family and dog friendly. Each is its own search and each brings a booking with intent.
Direct booking pushed above the platforms
Your booking route made the obvious one on every page and on your profile, so a customer who wants your table does not have to route through a commission-taking intermediary to get it.
Reviews and photos on a system
A steady flow of recent reviews and fresh photography, both of which weigh heavily in restaurant ranking and both of which quietly stall in a busy service week.
What restaurants get searched for
UK monthly search volumes, DataForSEO, August 2026.
| Search term | UK monthly searches |
|---|---|
| marketing for restaurants | 320 |
| seo for restaurants | 210 |
| local seo for restaurants | 210 |
| seo services for restaurants | 50 |
| digital marketing for restaurants | 50 |
| google ads for restaurants | 10 |
What you get to see, from day one
No invented cover counts and no borrowed screenshots.
We do not publish invented case studies. Real anonymised numbers are shared as they land, never before.
Single site restaurants start on Local
One venue, one town, the menu, occasion pages and the map pack. Local covers it. Groups with several venues want Regional. See Regional and National.
Local
£300/mo
Leave anytime. Buy the site outright for £5,000 whenever you like.
AN £8,000 WEBSITE INCLUDED FROM DAY ONE
Start with your free mockupThe photos get them looking, the site gets the booking
If the menu is a PDF that will not open on a phone and the booking button is halfway down the page, the search work has done its job and the site has thrown the table away.
See websites for restaurants →Restaurant SEO questions we get asked
How long does restaurant SEO take to work?+
Google Business Profile and menu structure work can shift map pack visibility within two to six weeks, which is where most restaurant search value sits. Occasion pages such as Christmas bookings need to be live months ahead of the season to rank in time.
Can we stop paying booking platform commission?+
Reducing it is realistic; eliminating it usually is not, because platforms do bring genuinely new customers. The goal is that people who already want your table book direct rather than routing through a platform that charges you for a customer you had earned.
Does the menu really need to be HTML rather than a PDF?+
Yes. A PDF is close to invisible to search, awkward on mobile and impossible to keep current. A structured menu can be indexed, can appear in rich results and can be edited in minutes when a dish changes.
What does it cost?+
Local is £300 a month with no upfront build fee for a single venue. Regional is £1,500 a month for groups. The website build is included.
We are busy already. Is this worth it?+
Being full on a Saturday is not the same as being full on a Tuesday, and being full through a platform is not the same as being full at full margin. The work targets midweek covers, private hire and direct bookings, which is where restaurant profit actually lives.
Do you work outside Bristol?+
Yes. Built in Bristol, working with businesses across the South West and beyond.
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