The restaurant website is a continually evolving animal.
Getting it to do what you want is a lot easier said than done. In most cases, restaurant websites act only as brochures and so getting people to click through still requires classic SEO techniques rather than flashy website antics and bells and whistles. That means, it’s got to show up in the results, and then it’s got to inspire a click.
Schema Markup is first and foremost being used simply to make your website stand out on the Google search results page. It’s unfair, but it really is that simple. That’s not to say that you should consider Schema Markup only as a way of adding some lights around your search results listing, but you could think of it that way. And for most restaurateurs.
Schema.org designed a way to label some of your site’s HTML content so that search engines – like Google, Yahoo and Bing – can better read the content and know exactly what it refers to. When they’ve done that, then they can re-present some of it to searchers on that search results page. Take a look here at exactly what Schema.org thinks restaurants should be indicating.
You won’t be immediately loading up your entire website with every possible Schema code, but because Schema is relatively new (or at least, because it’s only slowly being adopted), it’s a fast way to bump your click-throughs from search engines. In part, that’s because few of your competitors are going to be yet using it. Let’s get going.
Schema Markup Every Restaurant Website Needs
Contact Info
Work with your consultant to make sure that your address and phone number are correctly marked up. They’re important and they help Google to be sure that you are who say you are – and where you say you are. Street address and phone number info may also show up in certain kinds of search results.
Reviews
Those ever-important reviews are not nearly as important on TripAdvisor or Yelp as they are right on your own website. We work with well- reviewed – and some not so well-reviewed websites – to get the reviews where they belong. One of the places they increasingly belong is in the search results, and for that you need to have them correctly marked up on your site.
Events
Events are not just for theaters and cinemas. Lots of restaurants already use events to pack people in. Let’s use them to keep the search engines abreast of what’s new, what’s changing and different. And on your website, changes and different things are even more important as they look good in the search results, and they let Google know that things are being updated.
Menus
SEO people have long looked at menus as the answer to every restaurant’s SEO dreams. It’s just a long list of keywords, after all. Schema.org isn’t quite ready to add your entire menu but there are a number of industry rumors that indicate that somehow, at least some of your menu is going to be marked up. Staying ahead of that curve, let’s at least get “cuisine” up there and make sure the search engines and the searchers know what you’re serving.
Most of this Schema mark-up isn’t technically complicated, but it can be beyond the reach of restaurant workers or owners who aren’t doing it regularly. It’s a bit like learning HTML and then switching everything to CSS. Nett Solutions is doing an increasing number of restaurant websites, specifically because it’s an effective method for increasing foot traffic, reservations, and overall revenue for one of the most difficult industries in the world.