Melbourne has a very competitive market of restaurants, eateries, café’s, burger joints, and pizza shops. Every restaurant owner wants to stand out from the competitor to dominate Google’s SERP for increasing their visibility and orders every day. Well, to boost your restaurant’s Google ranking in Melbourne and get your restaurant to the top of Google searches in Melbourne fast, there are multiple ways, which we are going to discuss in this post. I’ll also share with you which way is the best and most cost-efficient at the same time.

How to Rank Your Restaurant on Google’s First Page in Melbourne?

To rank your restaurant website on the first page, there are 4 proven methods:

• PPC (Pay Per Click)
• SEO (Keyword Research, Local SEO)
• GMB Optimization
• Social Media (Management and Promotions)

Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is the search engine advertising where you’ll have to run ad campaigns for your restaurant or pizza shop in Melbourne and target the suburbs where you offer services such as delivery, dine-in, and takeaways. Many believe PPC is an expensive marketing method, but that’s not entirely true. You can drive results from PPC If you understand how ad campaigns work, you only pay for actual clicks and conversions, as the name suggests—Pay Per Click. For restaurants and local businesses, Local Store Visits and Promotions is an ideal PPC campaign type. However, if you’re unfamiliar with PPC strategies, it’s best to hire an expert to manage your campaigns efficiently and avoid wasting your hard-earned money.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is another way to rank your pizza shop or restaurant in Melbourne in top Google searches. In PPC, you have to pay for the keywords you are choosing to get your website ranked in top searches, but SEO is the organic way to achieve the same goal at a comparatively lesser price. In PPC, once you stop the ads, your top ranking will disappear within minutes, whereas in SEO, it takes time to give results initially, but it’s results and ranking are long-lasting. But to perform SEO activities, there are some basic requirements that need to be fulfilled first, which are:

Creating Website for Restaurant

You must have a fully functional website where you can generate daily orders after ranking on the first page. If you already have a Google My Business page for your restaurant, creating a website should be your next step if you have long-term business goals. Even if you are delivering via third-party platforms like UberEats and DoorDash, having a website under your restaurant’s name is the first step toward building a strong online presence. Additionally, even if you use third parties for order fulfillment, you can drive traffic from your website to their platforms. This allows you to attract additional customers who visit your website to place orders alongside your existing customer base.

Keyword Research

After getting your website registered and making it live. Another task is to do deep keyword research, which is very crucial to SEO for any business. In simple words, it means we need to find out how people are searching on Google for products of menu items we are offering. If we get to know that precisely, it will be a win-win situation in the long run because we’ll get to know what most people are searching for related to our industry, and incorporating those keywords in your SEO will help you rank and reduce costs on PPC in the long run.

Now the question is how to find keywords, right? Well, there are various tools to do that, both free and premium ones. You can use Google Keyword Planner for free and Aherfs or Semrush in premium once for advanced features and better keyword research. Premium once are used for competitor analysis and other SEO advanced features. If you are just starting off, it is better to go with Google Keyword Planner.

Pro Tip: Businesses that are operating in particular locations only must focus on local SEO to drive results fast. For example, add suburb names as a postfix in your keywords to make it more effective and rank locally.

We personally use this approach for our clients to rank them among the top searches without spending on PPC.

On-page & Off-page SEO

There are various other activities that need to be performed in SEO after keyword research, which are on-page and off-page activities. On-page SEO includes writing suitable titles, meta descriptions, and inculcating shortlisted keywords in the website. Working on website speed and user experience plays the major role in driving better results. Whereas in off-page SEO, creating quality backlinks and numerous other activities need to be performed to get desired results.

Google My Business Optimization

It’s the most important part of online visibility, especially for the businesses that are operating locally and have their own physical address or location. It helps customers navigate them to your location. Now the question is how to optimize your Google My Business profile, right?

It is quite simple if you have created your business profile; make sure you’ve addressed the correct details and navigation here. The contact number, email, and address must be the same on your website too, which you are going to add here. To make the most of it, share weekly updates here like offers and deals. Respond to the reviews in comments and queries in the messages on time. This will help you maintain your online reputation.

Social Media Management

Last but not least, social media visibility is also equally important if you are building your business for the long run like a brand. People often try to connect brands on their social media pages like Facebook, X, and Instagram. It helps businesses create their strong brand identity and helps increase customer recall when they see your frequent updates after following you. So for branding purposes, social media is a must-add to your digital marketing checklist.

Conclusion

The best strategies for local restaurants to dominate top searches on Google are SEO and SMM without hurting your pockets. With SEO, you can get your business ranked in local searches and create a strong online presence at a way lower price, and with social media management, you can create your own strong branding and market positioning. Google My Business profile is a must in every case.

I hope this guide helps and gives clarity on how you can promote your restaurant and generate 2x orders.

Need Help? Feel free to reach out to learn how we’ve ranked our clients restaurants with SEO and help you get your website ranked on top Google searches.