The occasion is the search
Brunch, BYO, dog friendly, kid friendly, private dining, Christmas lunch. Each is a search made by somebody with a date in mind, and each needs its own page with the menu, the hours and the booking link for that occasion.
Australia
SEO for restaurants in Australia
Somebody deciding where to eat in Australia searches once, on a phone: "restaurants near me", "best brunch [suburb]", "byo restaurants [suburb]", "dog friendly cafe [suburb]", "book a table". The whole decision happens on the map before the website opens, which is why the Business Profile does more for a restaurant than any page.
Broadsheet, Urban List, Google and the booking platforms hold the organic slots in the cities. They cannot enter the map pack, and they cannot keep your menu, your hours and your brunch page current the way you can.
The booking link that works from the map is worth more than any ranking, and the menu in a form Google can read is what lets "best [dish] [suburb]" find you.
The searches in Australia
The shapes restaurants are found by in Australia. The words in brackets are whatever the searcher puts there: the town, the suburb, the matter, the treatment.
- restaurants near me
- best brunch [suburb]
- byo restaurants [suburb]
- book a table [restaurant name]
What is different in Australia
A menu Google can read
A PDF menu is invisible to search. Dish names and descriptions in plain text on the site and in the profile’s menu section let "best [dish] [suburb]" and "[cuisine] near me" match what you serve. Keep it current: last season’s menu reads as a closed restaurant.
Hours, holidays and the platforms
Public holidays, a kitchen that closes before the bar and the surcharge day are marked in advance. The details on Uber Eats, DoorDash, the booking platform and the guides match the profile, because a different phone number on a delivery app is a crack that costs map ranking.
What a month of work covers for restaurants in Australia
- The profile first: menu, dishes, attributes, hours including holidays, photographs added weekly, every review replied to
- A page each month for a search you want to own: brunch, private dining, a cuisine, an occasion
- The menu kept as readable text with dish markup, updated when the kitchen changes it
- Citations on the food and local directories, identical everywhere
- Technical fixes: a booking link that works on a phone, speed, restaurant markup, accessibility
- A monthly Search Console report of the dining searches you now appear for, and the bookings behind them
The industry page, SEO for restaurants, has the problems and the questions in full; the country page, SEO services in Australia, has the search landscape in Australia for every trade.
The search landscape in Australia
Suburb is the unit, not the city
Sydney and Melbourne are too large to be a catchment. Pages written for the suburbs you actually serve outrank a single city page in every one of them.
Regional terms are often uncontested
Outside the capitals the same search has a fraction of the competition and frequently the same commercial value per enquiry.
Licence numbers belong on the page
Australian buyers look for a licence number for regulated trades. It belongs on the page because it converts, not because it ranks.
Cities in Australia with their own page
Each is written for the way that city searches and for the trades that search there most.
Working with us from Australia
SEO happens in your accounts and on your website, so nobody needs to visit. We scope the work on a video call in your hours, send a written quote, and then work month by month with a call whenever you want one. The result is judged on the enquiries in your own records, never on a ranking report.
If you would rather do the first part yourself, the Local SEO for restaurants guide is the list we start from.
Results from real clients
Every number below is from the client’s own Google Search Console, for the period shown. Impressions are how often the site appeared; clicks are people who arrived. What each visit is worth is your sales process, not ours, so these are the visits we can prove rather than a conversion figure we cannot.
- 52,993clicksUp and Running Physical TherapyPhysical therapy · 1 Mar 2023 to 14 Mar 2024
- Impressions
- 2,238,155
- CTR
- 2.4%
- Avg. position
- 13.49
+139,355% clicks against the previous period of the same length.
- 12,285clicksBackcountry Physical TherapyPhysical therapy · 6 Jul 2023 to 31 May 2024
- Impressions
- 601,822
- CTR
- 2.0%
- Avg. position
- 19.3
+2,059% clicks against the previous period of the same length.
Questions restaurants in Australia ask us
Do we need a website at all?
A small one, yes. The profile wins the map; the site is where the occasion, menu and function searches are won and where the booking happens if the profile button is not enough.
Can you help with reviews?
With the process: asking at the bill, on the profile, and replying to every one. The reviews come from your diners and nothing is invented.
How long until it works?
Profile changes show within weeks, sometimes days. Occasion pages take a season. Watch the reservation clicks and direction requests rather than a ranking.
Book a call with us
A 30-minute call in your working hours. Tell us what you sell and where, and we will tell you what we would do first and what it involves. Prefer email? Send your website through the form and the Passieon Team will reply within two working days.