Restaurant SEO: A Practical Guide for UK Restaurants (2026)

Updated 30 September 2026

Most people find a restaurant in one of three places: the map pack on Google (the three listings under the map), the normal search results below it, and more and more, an answer from ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overview. Restaurant SEO is the work of showing up in all three when someone nearby is hungry.

You don’t need an agency for most of it. You need a complete Google Business Profile, a website Google can read, a steady trickle of reviews, and the same facts about your restaurant everywhere they appear. This guide covers each one, in the order that pays back fastest, and ends with a checklist you can run once a month.

1. Start with your Google Business Profile

For a restaurant, the Google Business Profile matters more than the website. It’s what shows up in the map pack, on Google Maps and when someone searches your name. Google ranks those results on three things: how relevant your profile is to the search, how close you are to the person searching, and how well known you are (reviews, links, mentions). You can’t move your restaurant closer. You can do a lot about the other two.

Fill in every field

• Primary category: be specific. “Pizza restaurant” beats “Restaurant”. Add secondary categories for anything else you genuinely are, such as “Takeaway” or “Italian restaurant”.
• Hours: including bank holidays and special hours. Wrong hours are the fastest way to earn a one-star review.
• Attributes: delivery, takeaway, dine-in, outdoor seating, vegan options, wheelchair access. Google uses these to match you to searches like “vegan brunch near me”.
• Menu: add it on the profile itself, and link to a text version on your website.
• Description: 750 characters. Say what you serve, where, and what you’re known for, in plain words.

Add a direct ordering link

The profile can carry an “Order online” button. If you don’t set one, Google often fills that slot with your marketplace listings, so a customer who searched for you by name ends up ordering through Deliveroo or Just Eat and you pay commission on your own customer. Pointing the button at your own ordering page is the single quickest win on this list. Slerp’s Order with Google sets this up automatically.

Photos and posts

Upload new photos every month: dishes, the room, the front of the building (so people recognise it from the street), the team. Phone photos are fine if they’re well lit. Use Google Posts for specials, events and new dishes. A profile that changes often looks open and cared for, to customers and to Google.

For a closer look at what a strong profile looks like, see how well your Google profile drives direct orders.

2. Get reviews, and answer them

Reviews feed both the ranking and the click. Two restaurants side by side in the map pack, one at 4.7 with 600 reviews and one at 4.2 with 40: you know which gets the table.

• Ask at the right moment. When a guest says the meal was great, that’s the time. A QR code on the bill or the takeaway bag that opens your Google review form makes it a ten-second job.
• Don’t pay for reviews. Google’s rules ban offering discounts or freebies in exchange for a review, and filtered or incentivised reviews can get removed.
• Reply to every review, good and bad, within a few days. Keep replies short and specific. A calm, useful reply to a bad review does more for the next reader than the review itself does harm.
• Keep them coming. Twenty reviews a month beats two hundred from three years ago. Recency counts.

3. Make your website easy for Google to read

Your website is where you convert the search into a booking or an order, and it backs up everything your profile says.

The basics that most restaurant sites miss

• Menu as text, not a PDF or a photo. Google can’t read dishes inside an image, and PDFs are painful on a phone. A text menu lets you rank for “katsu curry Leeds” as well as your own name.
• One page per location. Each with its own address, phone number, hours, map and a line or two about that site. A group with four restaurants and one “Locations” page is invisible in three of those neighbourhoods.
• Name, address and phone written the same everywhere. Same format on the website, Google, Apple Maps, TripAdvisor and Facebook. “Unit 3, 12 High St” on one and “12 High Street” on another makes Google less sure it’s the same place.
• A clear title on every page. “Pizza Delivery in Brixton | Nell’s” tells Google and the searcher what the page is. “Home” tells them nothing.
• Fast on a phone. Most restaurant searches happen on mobile, often outside. Compress photos before uploading and avoid autoplay video at the top of the page.

Take orders on your own site

If every “Order” button on your website sends people to a marketplace, you’re giving that marketplace the customer, the data and the commission. Ordering on your own domain keeps people on your site and gives you the customer relationship, including the email address you need to bring them back. That’s what a direct web ordering system is for.

Add structured data

Structured data is a small block of code that spells out your restaurant’s details in a format search engines read directly: name, cuisine, address, opening hours, price range, menu link. Most website builders and WordPress SEO plugins can add “Restaurant” schema for you. It won’t rank you on its own, but it removes guesswork, and AI tools lean on it.

4. Pages that catch more searches

People don’t only search for your name. They search for what they want, where they are. Each of these deserves its own page if it’s a real part of your business:

• Delivery or takeaway in [area]. List the postcodes you deliver to.
• Catering and office lunches. High-value orders, and far less competition than “restaurant near me”.
• Private dining and events.
• Dietary pages if you’re good at it: vegan, gluten-free, halal.
• Your signature dishes. If people travel for your smash burger, give it a page.

Keep each page honest and specific. Three good pages beat thirty thin ones copied from a template.

5. Get mentioned around your area

Links and mentions from other websites tell Google you’re a real, known place. For restaurants, the useful ones are local and easy to get:

• Directory listings: Apple Maps (through Apple Business Connect), Bing Places, TripAdvisor, Yelp, OpenTable or your booking platform, and Facebook.
• Local press and food writers. A new menu, a charity night or a collaboration is a story.
• Suppliers, breweries and producers who list the restaurants they supply.
• Local business groups, markets and events you take part in.

6. Show up in AI answers

More people now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google’s AI Overview things like “where’s good for a birthday dinner in Shoreditch?” These tools build their answer from what the web already says about you, so the same work above applies, with a few extras:

• Consistent facts everywhere. If your website, Google profile and TripAdvisor disagree on your hours or cuisine, AI tools either hedge or leave you out.
• Answer common questions in plain words on your site. Do you take bookings? Are dogs allowed? Is there a set lunch? A short FAQ page is exactly the kind of text these tools quote.
• Reviews that describe you. AI answers pull phrases from reviews (“great for groups”, “best tonkotsu in Leeds”), so the more specific your reviews, the easier you are to recommend.
• Get written about. Local guides and “best of” lists are heavily used as sources.

Common mistakes

• Sending your own name search to a marketplace. If Google’s “Order online” button and your website’s order button both go to a marketplace, you pay commission on customers who were already looking for you.
• PDF or image menus. Unreadable to Google, awkward on a phone.
• Different details on different sites. Old phone numbers, old hours, a previous address.
• Ignoring reviews. Unanswered complaints are the first thing a hesitant customer reads.
• A single-page website. Nothing for Google to rank beyond your name.

Your monthly restaurant SEO checklist

1. Check your Google Business Profile hours, including upcoming bank holidays.
2. Upload at least five new photos.
3. Publish one Google Post (a special, an event or a new dish).
4. Reply to every new review.
5. Make sure the “Order online” button points to your own ordering page.
6. Check your menu page matches what you’re actually serving.
7. Search your restaurant’s name on Google and in ChatGPT, and fix anything out of date.
8. Look for one new local mention or listing to add.

Where to start this week

If you only do three things: complete every field on your Google Business Profile, point its ordering button at your own site, and start asking happy guests for a review. Those three move the map pack, which is where most of your new customers come from.

Once they’re coming to you directly, keep them. A loyalty programme on your own ordering site turns a first order from Google into a regular.

Slerp gives restaurants commission-free direct ordering, an Order online button on Google, and loyalty in one platform. Talk to us to see how it would work for your restaurant.