Local SEO for restaurants

On three fronts. The first is your Google Business Profile: the right primary category, real kitchen hours, properly marked attributes (patio, gluten-free, pet-friendly), an up-to-date menu and recent photos of your dishes and dining room. The second is reviews: ask for them consistently and reply to all of them, bad ones included. The third is making sure your name, address and phone number say exactly the same thing wherever your restaurant appears. local brain brings all three together in one dashboard and alerts you to anything that's gone out of date.

Yes, and it usually gets more out of it than a big restaurant. Proximity carries a lot of weight on the local map: in “near me” searches you compete with the places on your street, not with the whole city. A bar with a well-set-up profile and recent reviews can come out ahead of a better-known place whose profile has been abandoned for two years.

It depends on your area and your competition, and anyone who gives you a specific date is selling you snake oil. What you can separate is what moves fast and what doesn't: fixing your profile's category, hours or attributes are changes Google processes in days. Building up reviews and gaining authority over places that have been on your street for years takes months of work. That's why it's worth starting with the former.

Those platforms are great for getting known, but they charge for every customer they bring you. Local SEO plays a different game: many people who discover you on an app then search for your restaurant's name on Google to see photos, the menu or the direct phone number. If your profile is in good shape, that booking comes through your channel, commission-free and with the customer's details in your hands.