2.32 billion: the number of Facebook users in the world, or the equivalent of almost one in three humans. No need to prove how essential a marketing tool the social media platform is. If well-mastered, it can turn into a powerful engine to drive new customers to a restaurant and keep them coming back.

Here are a few answers to the most frequent questions we hear from restaurant owners. If you don’t find what you’re looking for here, feel free to contact us or leave us a comment with your question.

1. What should you post on your restaurant page?

Pictures of your dishes, of course, but not only, because no matter how appetizing they are, they could quickly bore your followers.

Sharing the behind the scenes of your restaurant, pictures of your team, funny anecdotes, info on the restaurant’s history, the location, inspirational quotes... can be a way to connect with your followers and engage with them. Sharing content from other pages not necessarily linked to the restaurant can also reinforce engagement on your page, and to gain time by using existing content.

The restaurant La Maison Plisson alternates between pictures of their food, quotes, and light or informative videos:

2. What tone should you strike?

To reach your goals, we don’t advise you to take on an aggressive, commercial tone on your Facebook page: it would turn into an advertising display which would turn off your followers. We recommend you share 80 percent of entertaining content (photos of food, the preparation in the kitchen, short team videos…), 15 percent of informative content (a new menu, new opening hours, punctual closures…), and 5 percent of commercial content.

For example, the Big Mamma and Bella Napoli restaurants recently took advantage of the approval of the Neapolitan pizza into UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage to share original content on the subject:

3. At what rate should you post?

Posts shouldn’t be too frequent: it’s not a question of flooding your followers’ news feed; you don’t want to run the risk of their unfollowing you. Be careful not to post too infrequently either: they could wonder whether the restaurant’s closed! Posting between 2 and 7 times a week is a nice medium.

4. At what time should you post?

Anytime between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., your posts have the best chance of being seen and generating engagement. It may be a good idea to suggest a lunch offer!

5. What format should you prefer?

Photos

Facebook posts with images generate 2.3 times more engagement than text. If a text is accompanied by an image, people are 65 percent more likely to retain the information three days later. Pictures play an essential role: their quality is paramount. You have to make sure nothing inappropriate is lying around in the background; every detail counts!

Videos

Sharing videos is a great way to arouse people’s interest, since this type of content is very appreciated. When a Facebook page publishes a video, the audience’s engagement rate is on average 10 times more important.

For example, the short 16-second video posted by Big Mamma on their Facebook page was seen over 16,000 times, racked up 406 responses, and was shared 14 times. The engagement rate of this video is much higher than the average rate generated by the page’s other posts.

Polls

Feel free to set up polls, they’re very easy and quick to make. Users appreciate this type of fun, interactive content. Polls show that the restaurant is interested in its customers. They reinforce the bond between them and generate engagement on the page. It’s smart, for example, to mobilize your followers to pick a new dish for the menu among a few options, and to invite them to come and try them at the restaurant to give their opinion. You can also rely on your followers to improve your service and make your customers come back again and again. Asking their opinion on a new opening or a new item on the menu is a way to ensure the success of these new things. It’s what O’Sign Café Restaurant did before launching its Sunday brunch:

6. How do you turn followers into customers?

You can add a call-to-action button that leads people to a booking page (on your website or a third-party platform like TheFork or Resy. Your followers will be able to book a table online without leaving the Facebook app.

It’s possible to set up special deals via the online booking system (let’s say, four meals for the price of three). To benefit from the offer, you can pick criteria like having registered a reservation between 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. The idea is to communicate about the offer many times before it’s activated in order to create anticipation. Temporary deals can help generate a sense of loyalty in your followers by playing on the feeling of privilege they confer.

7. How do you generate engagement on your restaurant page?

Liking users’ responses is essential. The more clicks, likes, comments, shares, and views there are, the more visible the restaurant will be.

We recommend you not revealing all the information in one post. To generate maximum traffic, you have to compel the user to click on the link to your website. If the information is fully shared, then there is no incentive to click and see it.

In addition to polls, contests and giveaways are also a great way to favor user engagement. The restaurant Get Out is a proponent:

We also advise you to regularly interact with your audience, like customers’ comments, reply to them, and react very quickly to their private messages. Always respond, even if it’s just to say thank you.

8. How do you use hashtags to increase your visibility?

Hashtags are very useful, and not only on Twitter. They can redirect to your restaurant page users searching for the same keywords you’re using.

9. Why should you collaborate with influencers?

Influencers are people who’ve gathered audiences of thousands of people on one or more social media platforms. They share their day-to-day, their interests, their latest finds with their followers. Collaborating with influencers whose audience matches your target customer base is a way first to make a bigger name for yourself, but also to make people want to come and try your restaurant and thus to bring in new customers.

Anaïs from Parisianvores regularly shares appetizing videos of her favorite restaurants, and as a result offers them a platform to be seen by all her followers.

To pick the right influencers to work with, there are 3 main criteria to consider:

• the pertinence of the content compared to your restaurant (eg. don’t seek out an influencer who shares only vegan recipes if you want them to highlight your cheese or meat dishes).
• the reach, meaning the number of people you will potentially be able to reach thanks to the influencer’s community.
• the resonance, or the engagement rate of the influencer (number of likes, shares, comments, views…).

10. Why and how should you use Facebook Ads?

Mastering ads on Facebook can allow you to considerably increase your revenue: by reaching new customers and making those who already like your restaurant come back. We’ll soon share with you an article on building successful Facebook ad campaigns step by step.

Bonus: beware of spelling and grammatical mistakes!

They give the restaurant a bad rap and can make you lose credibility, especially with users who aren’t in the habit of making them...

These days, it is essential for a restaurant to be visible online on every platform likely to bring in customers.

Here you’ll find 16 practical tips for restaurant owners to help them drive more business.

1. Create a responsive website adapted to every screen

Having a website is the best way to showcase your restaurant, make online users want to come, and compel them to book a table or order online. Since the end of 2016, mobile search rates have surpassed desktop rates, and 70% of people with a smartphone will look at a menu on their phone. The design of your website thus has to adjust to the screen upon which it is viewed.

2. Optimize your Google My Business profile to improve your ranking in search results

Too many restaurant owners neglect it, for lack of time or interest. Yet an optimized Google My Business profile is extremely useful. It has to be completed, updated with normal and exceptional business hours, closures, and special events, and kept up with photos and regular publications. As an example, we optimized the business page of Bask, a tapas restaurant in San Francisco, and it now ranks first in the search results for “tapas San Francisco”, which is the combination of search words that’s more likely to bring them customers.

3. Reply to every customer review

Whether they express their opinion on Google My Business, TripAdvisor, TheFork, Yelp, or any other platform, whether they are positive or negative, our advice is to reply to every single customer review you get. Not only will this allow you to win the loyalty of the authors and gather feedback to improve your service, it will also allow you to improve your SEO. Indeed, most restaurant ranking algorithms reduce the impact of negative reviews when restaurant owners make the effort of replying to them.

4. Publish high-quality pictures

The French have a saying that goes, “you eat first with your eyes,” and it has never proved more true than nowadays. Sharing beautiful pictures of your food, restaurant, and team on your website and on social media allows you to develop a relationship with your customer base and to attract new people to your business. The people behind Big Mamma are particularly adept at this practice—you can read our analysis of their marketing strategy here.

5. Index your restaurant in all the pertinent outlets

Registering your business in a maximum number of outlets, directories, platforms, blogs or guides is useful in two respects. First, it allows you to multiply the number of booking platforms you have available and to attract more customers. You then create inbound links to your website. The more a website accumulates referral links from other websites which Google trusts (such as TripAdvisor or restaurant guides like the Guide Michelin), the more its natural search engine ranking improves and the higher it features in search results. Here you’ll find the 12 best websites to register your website.

6. Create and keep up an active Facebook page by sharing the news of your restaurant

Facebook is a great tool to maintain your relationship with your customers on a daily basis, by sharing the news of the week, the specials of the day, a new menu… It is also wise to share photos or videos of the behind the scenes of your restaurant, to show how it is “backstage,” from purchasing fresh produce to cooking it on the stove—this type of authentic content can reinforce your brand preference rate in the hearts and minds of your customers. We shared more tips to maximize your visibility on Facebook in this article.

7. Create an Instagram account and publish the most mouthwatering pictures

Instagram is one of the most effective social network when it comes to food content. The American fast-food chain Shake Shack understood that well, and it now counts more than 425,000 followers on its Instagram account, where they share as many pictures of their employees and the interiors of their establishment as they do burgers.

To optimize your online presence on every platform, you can use a social media management tool like Hootsuite!

8. Collaborate with influencers and food bloggers

Working with social media influencers and food bloggers is a sure-fire way to raise your profile efficiently. On the one hand, influencers have gathered audiences of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of followers they can share their experience at your restaurant with, in picture or video format. On the other hand, you can use that content for your own Instagram page, by sharing, or “regramming” their posts on the restaurant account. Shake Shack also does that well:

The re-sharing of California-based blogger Kirbie’s original post got Shake Shack more than 9,000 likes on their account. We devoted an article to our favorite food influencers in Paris, you can read all about it here.

9. Invite customers to share content from your restaurant

A restaurant’s customers are its first ambassadors, they’re the mouthpiece through which buzz originate, but you have to give them the tools to generate buzz. At Paris New York, thousands of selfies taken in the bathroom of the restaurant have already been shared on social media. Why? According to founder Rudy Guénaire, “one day a customer published a selfie he took in our bathroom, there was a nice effect with the pink and green neon lights. I reposted it on Instagram and one thing after another, more and more customers came and took selfies in the bathroom. We even had people come in just to take a selfie! Since then we put up a wall of pictures with the best selfies.” If the operation wasn’t premeditated, it succeeded in spreading brand content on account of Paris New York and confirms that the originality and quality of the decoration, or even a simple detail, can compel customers to take pictures and publish them on social media.

You can read more about PNY’s social media strategy here.

10. Create a Google + page and keep it updated

If Google’s social media platform “only” has 500 million accounts compared to Facebook’s 2 billion, having a G+ account for your restaurant is a good way to improve its natural search engine ranking. It’s a good idea to share all the posts you publish on your Google My Business page on your G+ account.

11. Use Google Analytics to improve your website

Google Analytics is a tool to track the ebb and flow of traffic on your website and understand users’ journey on the different pages, see which links get the more clicks, which pages the most views, etc. With all of these observations, you can then improve your website to maximize how long people spend on it and compel people to click on the most pertinent links (booking buttons, online orders…).

12. Regularly update your website

Having a responsive website with pretty pictures isn’t enough. You have to keep it up to date, publish new content about events or special menus at your restaurant. A website that still has a New Year’s Eve menu up after January isn’t coherent. Our advice is also to delegate the maintenance of the website so that a technical failure doesn’t stay without a solution.

13. Set up an online booking system on your website

Once you learn the rudiments of SEO, it is of interest to set up a booking module on your website to generate reservations without a middleman like TheFork which takes commissions on every booking.

If you want to increase your revenue on to-go orders, we advise you to offer an online order service on your website, or even a Click & Collect system to allow your customers to choose their order in advance and gain time.

14. Add an itinerary suggestion tool on your website

Adding a “how to get here” or “directions” button on your website is a nice way for users—who for the most part will browse your website on their phone—to get to your restaurant easily. The Citymapper plugin is particularly adapted to restaurants in Paris.

15. Launch paid ad campaigns on Facebook

Facebook Ads allows you to target potential customers in a precise way—with age, interest, and location criteria in particular. It is essential to launch campaigns with high-quality photos and to highlight a pertinent call to action such as “order now” or “get your meal delivered” or a promotional deal.

16. Launch paid ad campaigns on Google

Google Ads are a good investment to make once you’ve learned the basics of SEO. Still, we advise you to choose your keywords carefully and budget your ad spending with caution to make sure you maximize your rate of return.

Most restaurant owners already have a lot on their plate, what with managing suppliers, a kitchen, stocks, a team, customers… if you simply don’t have the time to apply our tips to your business, leave us a little note, we can help!

How many people would think about booking a table for lunch or dinner at a hotel restaurant when they’re not staying at the hotel? Not very many. This is precisely what’s at stake for hotel restaurants looking to fill their tables.

Hotel restaurants are first and foremost restaurants. They offer the same service as their autonomous counterparts: a kitchen, food, a seating room, and a staff. We talked to experts, hotel managers, and restaurant supervisors for hotel groups to better understand the issues of the trade and the measures taken to respond to them.

Everyone in the business is of one mind : hotel restaurants operate at a far lower rate than their seating capacity

Hotel restaurants struggle to attract customers who aren’t hotel guests

At first glance, it’s easy to think that hotel restaurants have a head start over other restaurants—they come in with a ready clientele staying right above. Research has shown that hotels with 63% of their rooms booked will be able to fill ⅓ of the restaurant’s tables with those very same customers. An occupancy rate of 30% guaranteed by hotel guests doesn’t sound so bad. Save for the fact that ⅔ of the restaurant remains to be filled. To get there, hotel restaurants will have to target non-guest customers.

This is where things get tricky: having lunch or dinner inside a hotel isn’t yet part of the customs for the general population. Most people don’t think about it because they don’t see the restaurant independently from the hotel.

It proves even more complicated for hotel restaurants to bring in outside customers as they’re usually not visible as restaurants, but as “a part” of a hotel.

A lack of identity separate from the hotel puts hotel restaurants at a disadvantage

A restaurant with the same name as the hotel that houses it exists only as a “feature” of that hotel. This explains why potential customers aren’t even aware of hotel restaurants in themselves, and don’t think about them when looking for places to eat. But this initial observation isn’t a death sentence, and many hotel restaurants across the Atlantic manage to reach very satisfying occupancy rates while keeping the name of the hotel and adding unique epithets for the restaurant.

This is the case for Standard Grill, the Standard Hotel’s restaurant, which managed to take advantage of the hotel’s reputation to open its doors to customers from other horizons.

Others go even further and turn the hotel’s restaurant into a brand in itself.

Creating and tapping into a strong brand identity can mean a bright growth potential for hotel restaurants

Some hotels have pushed the strategy to the point where they turned their restaurant into real profit centers. The Barrière Group, responsible for the Fouquet’s brand, now welcomes on a daily basis diners eager to eat at Fouquet’s, not at "the Barrière Hotel’s restaurant." “The Fouquet’s brand was created with the goal of reinforcing our restaurants’ image to attract more customers outside of hotel guests,” Pierre-Louis Renou, manager of the Cannes establishments, tells us. The group succeeded in building such a strong restaurant brand that people have stopped associating it with the parent hotels.

Other hotels manage to negotiate exclusive deals to house atypical or in-demand restaurants still rare on the market. In New York, the Parker is now home to the sole location of the Burger Joint brand. The “burger joint” is located behind a curtain in the main hall of the hotel, and boasts a unique decor (with customers’ testimonials on the wall), its own website, and its own social media accounts. The concept is showcased both in situ and online, and it works: expect an average waiting time of one hour every day to taste a burger!

Hotel restaurants have their own unique features

According to the hotel they’re in, their location, their product line, some restaurants have a more urgent need to bring in outside customers than others. Olivier Clerc, Restaurant Operations Director for the Grape Hospitality group, tells us that hotels close to business centers (where companies lack an office cafeteria) host many business lunches, but struggle more with weekend shifts.

Hotels located near offices with cafeterias don’t often succeed in attracting individuals for the lunch shift, but manage to get more satisfying turnover rates in the evening with hotel guests.

For others, we can also highlight how season patterns impact hotel restaurants. Anthony Torkington, former general manager at the Saint James Hotel in Bouliac, tells us that the Saint James’s restaurant in Bouliac attracts enough customers in the winter to generate a satisfying revenue on lunches. In the summer however, evenings work better thanks to the summer specials they developed, the longer days, and an outdoor terrace with a panoramic view of Bordeaux.

We spoke to specialists in order to identify the best initiatives for hotel restaurants to attract customers in the right areas.

Promoting a hotel restaurant: taking physical and digital steps helps improve turnover rates

Giving the restaurant a proper identity is the first step in making sure it is viable

To attract customers who aren’t hotel guests, a hotel restaurant is already ahead if it has a proper identity—a name, distinct from the hotel, a logo, a chef, a website. The restaurant has to be visible physically and online as a separate entity in and of itself.

That was Grape Hospitality’s wager with Happy Dock, the restaurant housed by the Mercure Hotel in Le Havre. The place was refurbished, the menu redesigned by Sophie Menut, the chef at the helm of the kitchen. Today, the restaurant has its own website, and appears as a restaurant in its own right:

The Hoxton Grill in London’s Hoxton Hotel preserved the already famous Hoxton brand, and followed the model of the Standard in New York:

Once its proper identity established, the restaurant has to be promoted and to that end use the right cost-effective online marketing tools.

Communicating not as a hotel feature but as a restaurant strengthens the establishment’s online presence

80% of people look up restaurants online. They have to be able to see, right next to independent restaurants, suggestions of hotel restaurants welcoming customers who aren’t guests at the hotel.

To that end, restaurants have to be listed online independently from their hotel. Good organic SEO, a smart online communications strategy, a website, and independent Facebook and Instagram accounts are necessary to boost the restaurant’s visibility.

This is what the Hoxton Grill in London’s Hoxton Hotel did on Instagram:

A good social media strategy is a way to reach more potential customers, but we also recommend focusing on having strong local roots to widen turnover rates.

Developing strong local roots is a way to promote the restaurant to those most likely to become loyal customers

Consumers trust products as long as they know where they come from. Working with local growers and producers means getting closer to customers. The Saint James in Bouliac picked that method for the dishes on its menu, but it also went further.

The Saint James in Bouliac created the "Saint James Market." Four times a year, on a Sunday between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., the hotel invites local growers (who supply the restaurant’s kitchen) to sell their products to the public. About 1100 people come every time. The goal of the seasonal market is, as Anthony Torkington relates, is to attract and entice Bordeaux residents to come have lunch or dinner in hotel restaurants: “We highlighted this type of events to promote the establishments and get people talking about them in a different light.”

Developing strong local roots can also take the form of astute diversification to highlight specific services and improve the restaurant’s renown.

Diversifying the smart way: by capitalizing on their strengths and proximity to hotels, hotel restaurants have the potential to become drop-in “third places”

Introducing new activities associated with the hotel’s restaurant is a way to attract a new customer base

Diversification is a way for hotel restaurants to take advantage of their strengths, namely how close they are to a hotel and all of its amenities. Indeed, as Olivier Clerc points out, “We have to inject life into hotel restaurants, these days we live in a world where everything is modernized, and we have an obligation to go out and get customers from outside of the hotel.” By capitalizing on these assets, hotel restaurants can organize special events and bring in new people inside their walls. Grape Hospitality’s restaurants took some interesting initiatives in that regard.

Once a month, the Mercure Hotel in Roissy sets up an exhibition by volunteer artists, with a gallery opening to boot, which attracts new people to the hotel, and is also a chance to sell beverages and various meats and cheeses, either at the bar or in the hotel.

By taking advantage of the existing hotel structures, the restaurant can develop a range of products aimed at customers outside of the hotel

Hotels usually serve breakfasts which more or less resemble what a brunch would look like (eggs, cheese, charcuterie etc.). Starting with the advantages they already had, the Amour Hotel and the Marriott Champs Élysées developed a brunch offer to attract customers outside the hotel. One way to promote their new diversified offer was to collaborate with influencers.

Two of them, pia_mbd and callmevoyou were invited to try the brunch and share their experience on their social media accounts. Their audience, for the most part young, urban, and for whom brunch is a fact of life, was able to discover the hotel restaurant’s new offer.

One of the oldest English traditions is the afternoon tea, and it is more than renowned in London: in some of the most beautiful hotels such as the Ritz London, one has to wait several months for a seat a one of its tables set for tea. The tradition has since crossed the pond and hotels in Paris seized the opportunity to fill their salons and generate new avenues for revenue. Indeed, hotels like the Shangri La or the Westminster Hotel have developed a “Tea Time” service catering to a younger audience, and resorted to influencers to promote it.

Another example of smart diversification: Olivier Thomas, director of the Blagnac Pullman near Toulouse, saw that the restaurant’s lunch revenue was seriously impeded by the proximity of a number of office cafeterias. The simple lunch menu wasn’t enough to attract the surrounding business crowd. Seeing this, Olivier Thomas developed a special menu with real added value and a competitive edge: “packages,” or lunch formulas to which he added a pass granting access to the pool, a massage, or a sports class within the hotel.

Going beyond with a strong concept grants hotel restaurants a new appeal

Still at Grape Hospitality, the Mercure in Sophia Antipolis took in a restaurant with quite a strong concept: “In the Dark. Dinner is served in pitch-black darkness by nonseeing people. The experience goes beyond the simple meal; senses are thrown. Deprived from their sight, customers are invited to re-evaluate their perception of taste. This buzzworthy initiative was a way to promote both the hotel and the restaurant, and to bring in a new audience. The success was such that the collaboration was renewed.

We would like to kindly thank the hotel restaurant professionals who took the time to answer our questions:

Pierre-Louis Renou, Area General Manager for the Barrière Group in Cannes. He manages three hotels: the Majestic Cannes, the Gray d’Albion Cannes, and the Carl Gustaf St Barth.

Anthony Torkington, former General Manager at the Saint James in Bouliac. He was just named new General Director of Relais & Châteaux.

Olivier Clerc, Director of Restaurant Operations at Grape Hospitality. Launched in 2017, Grape Hospitality is the owner, operator, and manager of 85 hotels in 8 European countries, which represents over 9000 rooms operated under a franchise contract.

Today 8 Americans out of 10 are choosing or checking restaurants online. You need to be listed in all the relevant platforms to attract new customers.

Restaurants need to have a strong online visibility to get new customers. Below are the top 14 platforms where you should be listed to increase your sales:

1. Google: the importance of local SEO

On average, 9 billion Internet searches are made on Google each day. Whenever someone searches for a restaurant online, Google will suggest the most relevant results based on their search criteria and location. The first page of results will include 3 local businesses on a map and a series of links deemed relevant by Google - generally the first links come from TripAdvisor, Yelp or media articles.

The most effective way to attract customers in your establishment? Get a spot in the top 3 displayed on Google Maps. To achieve this, you must first create a Google My Business profile if it does not exist and regularly update it with quality content, by sharing publications, adding photos, responding to comments.  The optimizations we made for Bask, a tapas restaurant in San Francisco, allowed the restaurant to get 57,000 views and get in the top 3 Google search results for its most strategic queries.

Creating and optimizing your listing on Bing and Yahoo is also useful - even if they are much less used than Google (respectively 3.4% and 1.8% of requests). Appearing in the first results in their Google My Business equivalents (Bing Places and Yahoo Local) reinforces your visibility as well.

2. TripAdvisor: the n°1 travel site

The platform registered 315 million unique visitors per month in 2015 and 200 million reviews. Available as a mobile app or website, TripAdvisor allows you to specify your search with criteria: neighborhood, type of food, price range, specific diet etc. The application uses geolocation to suggest nearby establishments to users.

The more complete a listing is (pictures, descriptions, attributes, number of important notices, comments with answers etc.), the more the TripAdvisor algorithm will push the establishment among the first research results. In the U.S., nearly 90,000 food establishments are already listed. Another reason it is useful to be visible on TripAdvisor is because the pages of the website are well referenced on search engines. For example, if you have an Indian restaurant in New York, when someone searches for an Indian restaurant, under the top 3 Google results, links to TripAdvisor and Yelp pages featuring "The Best Indian Restaurants in New York City" will appear. Appearing at the top of these specific rankings will inevitably attract new customers.

The most effective solution is to appear even higher among the first 3 results suggested by Google. The Maharajah in Paris, France, with whom we work, ranks today in the 1st position for the request "Indian restaurant" in Paris, which is a great way to attract new customers directly.

3. Yelp: The leading service industry social network in the U.S.

With geolocation, Yelp can suggest shops, restaurants, cafes and bars nearby. The search criteria are similar to those of TripAdvisor and The Fork; nevertheless Yelp also looks like a social network. It is indeed possible to "check in" in establishments as one would on Facebook and "follow" friends or users to discover their favorite establishments or those they advise against.

4. Bing: Places for Business

Being one of the top search engines, every month over 150 million users search for local businesses and services on Bing, and many of these people are looking for great places to eat. If people aren’t searching on Google, chances are they’re searching for your restaurant on Bing.

5. Allmenus: The menu listing platform

People need to look at the restaurant menu before they decide to dine in or to order. Every month, over 550,000 people visit Allmenus to make their choice. It is one of the most comprehensive restaurant and food delivery guide with over 255,000 menus. This menu-oriented directory includes listings for hundreds of thousands of restaurants, and it is searched by millions of people each month. Plus, your Allmenus listing will also appear on other top search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

6. CitySquares: The partner for local businesses

Founded 13 years ago, CitySquares champions itself as a partner for local, independently owned businesses, including restaurants. With over 700,000 visitors, CitySquares is one of the most influential website to list your restaurant. It also markets itself as an outlet to help businesses gain exposure across the web. Think of this directory as very “hyper-local”. It is an ideal listing spot for eateries looking to draw drop-in traffic.

7. Foursquare: The social media app to choose a restaurant

With over 50 million active user per month, not only is Foursquare a popular directory for restaurants, it is a popular social networking website, too, easily connecting to your Twitter handle. Guests can check in and comment on your restaurant, and this level of interaction makes them feel like they’re already at the table. Over 1.9 million businesses have already registered their locations to connect with customers.

8. Eater: The trendiest guide to find a restaurant

With over 10 million visitors per month on their website, Eater has gain trust from the American audience. With a quirky tone, sense of humor and great pictures, Eater presents the best tables that have not ticked all the criteria to appear on the Michelin Guide but are nevertheless excellent!

Eater is particularly active on Instagram with over one million subscribers and an audience that grows by at least 2% to 3% each month. For Food influencers, using the hashtag #Eater has become a reflex and seeing your publication "regrammed" by Eater is a real sign of recognition!

9. TimeOut: The trendy urban guide that also features restaurants

TimeOut presents the best addresses for a night out (restaurants, bars, exhibitions, shows etc.) in big cities like New York or Los Angeles, London, Paris or Madrid. The content is not exclusively related to food, but a rich section is dedicated to restaurants, tea rooms, pastry shops and bars—an opportunity for restaurants to gain visibility with a similar target audience as the Eater. The media outlet is particularly active on Facebook where it has gathered almost 1 million subscribers for the New York page.

10. OpenTable: The booking platform dedicated to restaurants

It is one the world's leading online restaurant booking platforms, seating more than 24 million diners per month via online reservations across more than 43,000 restaurants. The OpenTable network connects restaurants and diners, helping diners discover and book the perfect table and helping restaurants deliver personalized booking services to keep guests coming back.

Every month, OpenTable diners write 450,000 restaurant reviews. What are they saying about your business? Join the conversation by creating your OpenTable page. The directory listing is worth it for the OpenTable app alone.

11. Yahoo: Local Listing

Much less used that Google, Yahoo still owns 12,7% of the U.S. desktop search market and 7,1% of the U.S. mobile organic search market. With news, reviews, ratings, directions and interactive maps, the multi-faceted Yahoo! helps over 150 million people find local restaurants and eateries. Use Yahoo! to share information about your business and reach new targets.

12. Zomato: The discovery service

Formerly Urbanspoon, Zomato provides you with in-depth information on go-to places around you. It allows you to respond to guest reviews, add photos to your page and update key information about your establishment. Fail to claim your Zomato page and you won’t be able to do any of this. Don’t miss out; claim your page today.

13. Airbnb: The travel booking platform getting interested in restaurants

Airbnb customers in 16 U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Charleston, Austin, Seattle, and New Orleans are now able to book restaurants through the lodging-reservations service. The short-term vacation rental company announced a few months ago that it has officially partnered with the restaurant booking system Resy. Reservations can be for tables, prime seating, and prix-fixe dinners, and Airbnb noted that in the future it will consider offering exclusive tables for Airbnb users, as well as social dining experiences where guests can share a meal and meet other Airbnb travelers.

In 2017, Airbnb registered on their U.S. website over 44 millions users, and is projected to have over 86 millions of users by 2021. In the face of such an audience, it is more than worth it to have your restaurant listed on Airbnb. Even though most people still use the platform for short-term vacation rental, the restaurant booking platform is a way to attract more eyes on your business, and will probably grow in the next few years.

14. Mapquest: The mapping service

With over 35 millions of users every month, Mapquest is one of the largest online map services and can help bring local customers right to your restaurant. Trusted by drivers, this listing is great for businesses seeking to attract any type of customers in the direct area. To be seen in this driving app is a must for your establishment.

Good local SEO is essential for your restaurant to bring in more customers: you to need appear in Google’s top 3 search results, which requires an effective optimization of your Google My Business page. We did it for Bask - a tapas restaurant in San Francisco. It worked pretty well.

83% of Americans use their cell phones to search for a restaurant. The challenge is to appear in the first research results to attract all potential customers to your restaurant. That's what we did for Bask.

Bask is a great French-Spanish restaurant located in San Francisco. Founded by two French couples that are friends, the restaurant serves Basque specialties and tapas. It already had a regular clientele, but could generate even more table turnover. That's why Patrick, the manager, called us.

The initial report: at the end of the summer, Bask was invisible on Google

The keywords typed on Google by the most promising customers were: "tapas" and "tapas restaurant". However, when a web user near Bask was looking for "tapas" or "tapas restaurant," they found Bask's competitors first, and went to their establishments as a result.

Here is what used to come up when searching for the keywords near San Francisco:

There was no mention of Bask in the first few Google search results for the queries "best tapas," "tapas sf," or "tapas San Francisco," which meant that the restaurant had very little chance to attract customers online, due to bad SEO practices.

Search Engine Optimizations (SEO) to improve the restaurant's online visibility

We first identified strategic keywords, words that potential customers would type to find similar restaurants and that struck a good balance between search volume and competition on Google. We then created optimized content with strategic keywords for the restaurant to rank higher in the search results list. We completed the listing with all the relevant attributes for key queries, added photos by naming them strategically, built up the Google + account, and regularly shared news updates from the restaurant.

We also responded to all customer reviews by inserting keywords into our responses.

After a month of optimizations: Bask appeared in Google’s top 3 results

Today, when people in San Francisco look up where to eat tapas, Bask appears in the first search results.

Bask also appears on the top 3 for the keywords "best tapas" and "tapas sf" near San Francisco

Increased number of visits on the restaurant page and an increase in the number of customers found online

The optimizations we oversaw have worked to make Bask get to the top 3 tapas-related strategic search results in San Francisco and the number of times the restaurant is viewed on Google confirms it to this day. In one month, Bask gained almost 57,000 views, almost exclusively on Google Maps. But being visible on Maps means being seen by potential customers nearby, increasing the chances they will actually visit the restaurant and turn into customers.

In one month, Bask won nearly 80 additional customers, to which must be added those who did not need to ask for directions to the restaurant.

Before we began work on Bask's SEO, nearly 32% of Internet users who ended up on Bask's pages found the restaurant by typing its name, meaning that they either knew the restaurant already or were already customers, and 68% discovered it while seeking a similar establishment. After a month, more than 2000 additional people discovered Bask thanks to the improvement of its SEO. The number of new potential customers reached increased by 80.5%.

Bask finally appears at the top of search results that used to favor its competitors. Internet users looking up tapas restaurants are now able find Bask: they're more likely to try it and go back once they have tasted their famed grilled octopus, their sautéed squid and their croquetas...

If you find yourself in San Francisco, remember to book your table here — we promise you won't regret it.