It is important for a restaurant to be searchable on mobile. As you can see this is a great way to take up a lot of real estate on Google, with no extra cost to you.
Speaking of no extra cost, another easy way to deepen your search impression is through quick URLs. Google My Business has added a feature to add additional links to their menu. While this capability is open to all businesses, restaurants seem to get the best of it. Where a lowly SEO consultant can only add a link to an appointment scheduling page, restaurants can add additional links to their menu, their order-ahead URL and their reservations URL. This helps users get to the part of your site they’re most interested in, perhaps saving staff time on the phone by promoting the reservation page. And you’re even allowed to link to a page that isn’t on your own domain if you use an outside vendor to provide some transactional functionality.
Your Menu in Search Results
This feature seems to be largely overlooked by restaurants, yet it’s a highly valuable area of the results. For those unfamiliar, it appears for menu-related searches and looks like this:
Everything you might want to know about a location’s menu is accessible right in the search results.
You may wonder why a user wouldn’t just go to your site, or point out that this menu doesn’t have any of your branding. Both are valid points.
I would advise that the purpose of showing up in search results is not to get traffic to your site but rather to drive business through your door. If this gets you extra real estate in the results, it’s inherently good. The pros definitely outweigh the cons. Plus, people will be able to quickly access your website due to the links we set up above.
Alongside our SEO efforts during and after development of the website, Google My Business is an amazing tool. It can be used by restaurants uniquely and should be taken advantage of. Maximizing your real estate on Google will lengthen your reach and deepen your search results.