Today, when people want a caterer and don’t have a recommendation from friends or family, they head online. With catering SEO strategies, you can put your mouth-watering dishes and professional service at the forefront of the search results. Here’s how.
On-Site SEO Factors for Catering Companies
First, make sure your website is search-engine friendly. For caterers, you’re often tempted to focus on the visual aspects of your site, adding pictures and videos of events to showcase what you can do. While this is helpful once people get to your site, it doesn’t help people find you. Here are the on-page elements you’ll want to help boost your SEO.
Quality Content With Local Keyword Focus
The words on your website’s pages are what the search engines will search. Make sure you have properly included target keywords in your:
- Title tags
- Section headers
- Body text
In addition, consider adding the following to your content:
- Structured data
- Video transcripts
- Image alt tags
In each of these content elements, use keywords with a local search focus. Partner with a catering SEO firm to perform keyword analysis so you can use keywords that balance search intent with lower competition.
Mobile-Friendly Design
You will want to make the site mobile-friendly because the majority of your prospects most likely will search on mobile devices. Mobile-friendly sites also rank higher in Google’s mobile search results.
Technical Aspects
Your catering SEO company should help you improve your site to better communicate credibility to the search engines. Here are some of the things you will want to focus on:
- Short page load times
- HTTPS enabled
- Fixing broken internal links
- Properly implemented 301 redirects
- Auto-updating XML site map
Off-Site SEO Factors for Catering Companies
Surprisingly, the majority of the work of a catering SEO agency takes place away from your website. Here are the off-site strategies to focus on as you optimize for the search engines.
Linking to Your Site
Inbound links are still one of the most powerful ways to show the search engines that your catering company is legitimate. This is read by Google as an endorsement of your business. Work with your SEO company to build a strong list of backlinks from relevant, authoritative and local websites. Create more backlink opportunities by publishing link-worthy content on your website or blog.
Business Reviews
People won’t hire a caterer that doesn’t have good reviews. Building reviews through Google My Business will not only help people trust you, but will also increase your traffic through better local search engine rankings. Elicit reviews from satisfied customers with every catering job you complete.
Business Listings
Finally, take advantage of business profile and local directories sites that allow you to list your business name, address and phone number (NAP). Business listings need to be accurate and should be fully populated. Increasing the amount local citations on quality sites will help increase your ranking in Google’s local search results. This, in turn, will help you reach your target local market.
Straight North has helped many catering companies build a solid SEO strategy. We know what it takes to stand out from a crowded local market place through better keyword analysis, solid link building strategies and quality local citation acquisition.