SEO
For restaurants that want to grow beyond the map.
£400from, a month
- Cuisine, occasion and area keyword research
- Menu and occasion pages
- On-page and technical work
- Google Business Profile and reviews
- Content
- Monthly reporting
SEO for restaurants
SEO For Restaurants. Found First. Booked First.
When someone nearby searches for somewhere to eat tonight, Google shows a map, a few ratings and a lot of photos. We help put your restaurant, cafe or bar on it. With the menu, reviews and booking link that turn a search into a table. SEO from £400 a month, local SEO from £250.
- Google Maps and your Business Profile
- Menus, photos and reviews that sell
- Booking and tap-to-call that work
How diners choose
Diners Choose On Google. Often Without Opening Your Website.
People pick where to eat on their phone, often when they’re already out. They search “restaurants near me open now”, “places to eat tonight” or “sunday lunch near me”, and Google answers with a map of places nearby. Each one shows its rating, photos and opening hours, and often a menu and a button to book. A diner can choose, and book, without leaving Google.
That changes what SEO means for a restaurant. Your website still matters, but the bigger prize is the map, and what people see when your name comes up:
- Your menu, on Google and on your website, so people searching for a dish or a cuisine find you.
- Your photos, recent and appetising, because that’s what people scroll through.
- Your reviews, plenty of them, recent, with replies.
- A booking link and a number they can tap, so wanting a table and booking one take seconds.
The searches that matter
What Hungry People Type Into Google.
Restaurant searches by city, with monthly UK volume bands and difficulty ratings from Ahrefs (October 2026).
| Search | Monthly searches | How hard to rank |
|---|---|---|
| restaurants manchester | 1,000+ | Easy |
| restaurants birmingham | 1,000+ | Easy |
| restaurants preston | 1,000+ | Easy |
| restaurants liverpool | 1,000+ | Medium |
| restaurants chester | 1,000+ | Medium |
| restaurants whitefield | 100+ | Not rated |
| restaurants prestwich | 100+ | Not rated |
And these are some of the searches Google suggests as people type, in the UK, in October 2026. Autocomplete tells us people make these searches, not how often:
- Right now: restaurants near me open now · restaurants open now for dinner near me · restaurants open late near me tonight · places to eat tonight with kids
- The occasion: sunday lunch near me dog friendly · restaurants with private rooms · restaurants with outdoor seating · book a table near me
- The menu: restaurant menu near me with prices · restaurants with set menu near me
- The place: restaurants manchester city centre · restaurants liverpool one · restaurants preston town centre
Every city we checked gets more than a thousand restaurant searches a month, and three of the five are rated Easy. For an independent with a strong listing, that’s a real opening.
Tonight is the theme. “Open now”, “tonight”, “near me”. These searches happen when someone is hungry and close by, and Google answers them with the map. Accurate hours, holiday hours included, are not admin. They decide whether you show up at all.
People search for the details you can show. Dog friendly, private rooms, outdoor seating, menus with prices. If you offer it, say so on your Google profile and on your website, in the words people use.
If you searched “SEO for restaurants” to find this page, Google fills in the rest as you type, with suggestions like “seo services for restaurants” and “seo strategy for restaurants”. We don’t have a reliable monthly figure for that search, so we won’t make one up.
What we found
Booking Was Fine. The Small Things Weren’t.
As part of the research for our city pages in October 2026, we looked up 11 independent restaurants that came up for everyday searches in Liverpool, Chester and Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, and ran simple checks on the 10 websites that loaded. The samples are small, so treat these as what we found, not as figures for every restaurant.
- All 10 linked to table booking. Booking is rarely the problem.
- 6 of the 10 had no tap-to-call link on the homepage. Anyone who just wants to ring and ask about a table for six has to copy the number by hand.
- 7 of the 10 had no restaurant schema, the behind-the-scenes code that tells Google your cuisine, address and opening hours.
- 1 of the 11 had a website address that no longer worked at all, so anyone clicking through from the results hit a dead end.
- 1 didn’t send visitors to a secure https address, and 1 had a 2021 date in the footer.
None of this is hard to fix. That’s the point. When every restaurant on the street links to booking, the one that gets the small things right has the edge.
How we approach restaurant SEO
Win The Map Around You. Then Fill The Quiet Nights.
Google says local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity”. You can’t move the restaurant closer to everyone, so the work goes into the other two: making it obvious what you serve, and showing that people love it.
- A complete Google Business Profile. The right categories, accurate hours including holidays, your menu, your booking link and fresh photos. Google lets food and drink businesses add menu items with descriptions and prices, and add links so people can make a reservation or place a food order. Google also says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up. How we set up Google Business Profiles →
- Reviews that keep coming. A short link for receipts and table cards, and help replying to every review, good and bad. We’ll never write reviews for you.
- A menu Google can read. A menu page on your website, not just a PDF, so your dishes and cuisine are in plain text for Google and easy to read on a phone.
- Pages for the searches that fill quiet nights. Sunday lunch, private dining, set menus, vegan options, a page for each site if you have more than one.
- Tap-to-call and booking everywhere. The gaps we found most often, fixed first.
What we do
Everything That Moves Your Restaurant Up Google. Done For You.
- 01
Keyword Research
The cuisine, occasion, area and “near me” searches your diners make, ranked by what they’re worth to you.
- 02
Google Business Profile
Categories, hours, menu, booking link and photos, kept accurate every month. More on Google Business Profile →
- 03
Reviews
A simple way to ask happy guests for a Google review, and help replying.
- 04
Menu And Occasion Pages
Menus as proper web pages, plus pages for Sunday lunch, private dining and the things people search for.
- 05
Technical SEO
Restaurant schema, tap-to-call, speed on a phone and clean structure.
- 06
Links And Mentions
Genuine listings and local mentions that build trust.
- 07
Monthly Reporting
Rankings, visitors and enquiries, in a short, plain-English report.
How the costs work
Clear Monthly Pricing For Restaurants.
Local SEO
For restaurants, cafes and bars that mainly want to win the map around them.
£250from, a month
- Your Google Business Profile
- Menu, hours and booking link kept accurate
- Reviews
- Listings
Both run on a 6-month minimum, because SEO takes a few months to build. After that it’s month to month. We’ll give you an exact price once we’ve seen your site, your profile and the places around you.
What good looks like
Wrapd Studios. Twice The Conversion Rate. Half The Cost Per Enquiry.
- Website
- Google Ads
- Vehicle wraps · Yorkshire
Wrapd Studios: Same Budget, Twice The Enquiries.
Wrapd isn’t a restaurant, but it’s a local business that depends on people taking one action. We rebuilt their website around enquiries and rebuilt their Google Ads around the new site. Their conversion rate doubled, their cost per enquiry halved, and they had 338 more leads than the same period the year before. For a restaurant, that action is a booking, and we work towards it the same way.
- conversion rate
- 2×
- cost per enquiry
- ½
- leads, year on year
- +338
Screenshots of websites we’ve designed and built, including Wrapd Studios, Retail Creations, Helix Create, Legend Executive Chauffeurs, The Lockup, Law-Hire, Hale Events, Paintguard, Brand Works.
“They’ve built us two cracking websites, a custom questionnaire for our backend, and have been a huge help with SEO and Google Ads/PPC. Since working with them, the quality and consistency of our leads has massively improved.”
Works even better with
A Website Built For Phones. SEO That Brings The Diners.
If your menu is a PDF, your number can’t be tapped and your site crawls on a phone signal, SEO is pushing uphill. We build fast restaurant websites with real menu pages and booking built in. £1,000 to start, then from £200 a month for 12 months. After that, the website is yours. Restaurant website design →
Keep reading
More On Getting Your Restaurant Found.
Questions
SEO For Restaurants: Your Questions, Answered
Anything else, just ask. You’ll get a straight answer from one of us.
For most restaurants, the first job is local: your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your menu. Ahrefs shows more than 1,000 searches a month for restaurants in each of the five cities we checked, and much of that interest is answered by the map. If you’re not on it, those diners go somewhere else.
Yes. Google lets food and drink businesses add menu items, with descriptions and prices, to their Business Profile, or link to a menu. We keep it in step with the menu on your website, so diners never see last season’s prices.
Google lets you add links to your profile so people can make a reservation or place a food order. We add your booking link, check it goes to the right place, and make sure the same link is easy to find on every page of your website.
Ask, consistently, at the right moment. We set up a short link you can put on receipts, table cards and booking confirmations, and help you reply to reviews, good and bad. We’ll never write reviews for you or post them on your behalf.
Yes. Each site gets its own Google Business Profile and its own page on your website, with its own hours, menu and booking link. That gives each location its own chance in the map results around it.
Your SEO is carried out by our specialist SEO partner and managed by us. You deal with Dan and Jordan, two experienced specialists who agree the plan with you, check the work and report back every month. Hands-on, and honest about what’s working.
No, and we don’t guarantee rankings. Nobody controls Google’s results, and anyone who promises first place is guessing. We promise honest work, clear reports and effort pointed at the searches that fill your tables.
SEO is from £400 a month and local SEO from £250 a month, on a 6-month minimum, then month to month.
An honest conversation
Let’s Talk About Filling More Tables.
No hard sell. Just an honest conversation about your restaurant. We’ll check your Google profile, your website and the places around you, and tell you plainly what we’d fix first. It’s over video, so pick a time before service or after it.