A Guide to Simple SEO for Food and Drink Businesses
Need to up your website game and don’t know where to start? Start here
You probably already know this, but food and drink is one of the most popular industries online, which means it can be one of the hardest to be found in. You could have the best sourdough in Bristol, but if Google can't find you, neither can many of your potential customers.
And I bet you’re doing brilliant work on your socials, newsletters, and getting out there to partner with suppliers and shops. It’s all crucial work, but it’s time-consuming, tiring and requires consistent effort.
So how do you get found by the people who aren’t just passing you by on their Instagram feed, farmer’s markets or the high street?
How do you start doing great SEO for your food and drink business? To match the search intent of people who are out there, already searching online for exactly what you do?
Basic SEO Practices for Food and Drink Brands
1. Get your local SEO sorted with a Google Business Profile
If someone searches 'best brunch near me' and you're not showing up, you’ve missed out on a new customer, their friends and family, and future loyalty. A Google Business Profile is free. It takes a few practical steps to set up (their approval process is pretty robust, but that goes in your favour, because no-one else can pretend to be you), but when you do, you can describe your business using keywords (see point 2), as well as post updates, photos, keep your opening times bang up to date, and collect and respond to those all-important reviews.
Hint: It’s still an often-overlooked tool, so you can leapfrog over lots of your competition by getting this bit right.
2. Do some basic keyword research
If you have a restaurant in Stoke, calling yourself a restaurant in Stoke won’t set you apart from your fellow eateries. Your customers are searching for things like 'vegan Sunday roast' or 'gluten-free bakery' or ‘dumplings in Hanley’. You beat your competition by picking a specific search term to bake into your copy and being not only one of the top search results for that term, but one of the only options searchers choose.
Research tip: type what you do into Google and scroll down to see ‘People Also Ask’; other related, specific phrases that people search for will appear here, and you can do this as many times as you like – for free.
3. First step on-page SEO essentials - meta title and H1
It’s the first technical step to getting brownie points with Google. When you’ve found a great keyphrase, include it in your home page meta title (also called an SEO title) and your H1, that’s the first heading on your page. If you don’t know how to do this yourself, your web designer should be able to help. Google looks at these two things first and sees if they a) make clear sense and b) match up. It’s step one to better SEO and the easiest and quickest win for improved visibility.
Common H1 mistake to avoid: if your brand name appears in your meta title (sometimes it’s automatically added by your SEO plugin) remove it. It takes up valuable space, and you only want to include keywords that people are searching for. Soz to have to tell you this, but they’re not searching for your name if they don’t know you yet.
4. Add some fresh content. But where? Your blog!
A blog isn’t something that’s been put in a glass cabinet in the Internet Museum. It’s still the best way to talk in more detail about what you do, who for and why. It’s a robust, evergreen SEO strategy that keeps working long after you hit publish. You get to show off what you know, include even more specific key search phrases, and you get to add links to other pages on your site, showing Google you are real, you’re thinking logically, and you have an SEO strategy.
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Copywriting for your food or beverage website
5. Write juicier product descriptions
You know how people say you eat with your eyes? Words are what people eat before they even see, smell or taste your food in real life. Maybe everyone knows what ricotta tastes like, but they don’t know what your ricotta tastes like.
Writing lots of different, interesting and mouthwatering descriptions can be hard, that’s why there are copywriters. But talk about your food like you’re standing on a street with a plate of it for passers-by to sample.
Tip: if you find writing hard and aren’t ready to hire a copywriter, ask someone you know who’s not in your business to help you describe your products. The crucial part here is point of difference, not generic buzzwords or overused clichés.
6. Find your brand voice
Are you the cheeky corner caff mate or the elegant Sunday-lunch spot, dahling? Your brand voice should tell customers about you before they've clicked through to your menu page. Not only do they want to hear themselves in your voice, but they also need to know why they should choose you over the basic bistro down the road who, sure, does OK food but seems to have a bigger personality than you (and maybe is more on top of their Google Business Profile, too).
If you’re still in doubt remember this: A unique voice reflects the hard work you’ve already done. Don’t let that go to waste.
7. Tell your story (coz no-one else can do that)
People don't just buy food, they buy into the story. Where did the vintage caravan where you serve your food come from? Do you work with local suppliers and which ones? What made you go into this business? Can I have the recipe for your cheese scones? You’re telling your customers why you should become friends.
Don’t wait! Storytelling is one of the main reasons a food and drink copywriter is so important for your marketing, but if you can get your story out there yourself in the meantime, you don’t need to start perfectly; you just need to start.
8. Check and amend your calls-to-action
It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to get more bookings, sell your products online, get a call from your next distributor, or an enquiry about your next tasting event, the best call to action (CTA) doesn't feel like an awkward sales pitch or an unappealing ‘learn more’ — it feels like the obvious next step for your website visitors. This ties in with both SEO and copywriting; don’t lose your customers just as they were getting to like you.
Do this: audit all of your CTAs on every page on your site, and make sure they take the customer swiftly to the place they should take action (within 2 steps is ideal). And remember, not everyone lands on the same page each time, so don’t just look at your home page for this.
Ready to make some changes to your brand website?
You might have already tried some of these and not carried on, such as posting to your Google Business Profile. Or maybe you knew you needed keywords but didn’t know how to find them. Perhaps it feels clearer to you know about why the words on your food or drink website shouldn’t be an afterthought or nice-to-have.
Whatever you’re feeling now, I hope you can make an hour each week to have a go at something new for your copy and SEO. If you do, you will see changes happen.
Want help putting any of this into practice?
I’m Kate, freelance SEO and copywriter for UK food and drink brands. Why not click the button below?