Restaurant Website Remake and SEO

SEO criteria for website remakes

Here is a recap of our approach that can work within most any industry for businesses looking to get immediate visibility in search engines (which continues to be more than relevant in early 2024).

Lean and performant website

Make sure the website is the most performant possible in terms of speed. This is not just through the use of cache, but with lightweight code to ensure quick page load. If you are using wordpress, think about using Gutenberg, or Bakery as we did in this case. Other builders, while offering exciting tools, tend to add extra code to sites that may slow down performance.

Meta-tags and titles

Brush up on the ‘non-visible’ elements of the page, notably the title and description. These should be managed page by page. Again, with WordPress you can install notable plugins such as Yoast or Math-rank. The key is to provide titles that match the content precisely. On the home page your brand can be first, while on your interior pages you can place your company name at the end. Descriptions should be more marketing oriented with the goal of encouraging visitors to click on the link that is the Google results. 

Google Search Console

Immediately after your site goes live, connect to google search console and submit your site map. This can accelerate immensely the time it takes to get your site indexed. If the sitemap is properly built Google will find all pages, analyze them, and make them available for search.

This does not mean you will rank number one for any given keyword. But your site will be indexed and benchmarked against your competitors. It will take the content you give it, and begin to develop a relationship of trust. When Google understands your content and trusts you, the search engine will then begin to rank you higher for specific keywords, most importantly for your brand.

Google MyBusiness

For local search, such as restaurants, it is critical that you get listed in Google MyBusiness (or update with your new domain name as was the case here). Not only does this secure prominent visibility when your company/brand is searched, but you can begin collecting reviews and posting articles. Though this is not an SEO related task, it is directly related to SEO searching. This task alone is the main reason in less than one month our French restaurant was back on top of the listings, ahead of Yelp and other tools that take up SERP property. Further, search ‘french restaurant coconut grove’ and see how good the results are from where you are.

Backlinks

Where possible, inform your previous partner websites to update their url with the correct one. This as well will give quick results to the situation.