Before the Internet, any restaurant owner needed three good things: food, location, and reviews. Now, if you want to maintain an edge in the highly competitive world of dining, you may need good restaurant search engine marketing that uses the latest in search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. After all, your diners are all going online now: if you are not there, how will they find you?

Dining in the 21st century

The Internet changed many things when it became widespread at the turn of the century. The coming of mobile gadgets also allowed you to bring the Internet into the wider world.

For the public, this meant choices. For the dining public, this meant they did not have to choose blindly where to eat. With a gadget, people could search their craving and have recommendations in seconds.

This easy access to the Internet presents you and other restaurant owners with two challenges that are also opportunities. The first is the power traditional food critics had may have been broken. No more do you have to cater to people who claim to have discerning palettes. Your potential customers can just as easily patronize your restaurant based on Google Places rankings or blog posts than some critic’s article on the New York Times.

The second is being good simply may not be enough. You would be lucky if customers spread the word about you in Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. This is an ideal situation, though. A friend’s post about you in Facebook could be lost under other posts, the same with Twitter. Your customers might not follow the blogs that praise your menu.

Leading Them Via The Virtual Nose

This is where restaurant SEO can come into play. Despite the reach of social media networks and blogs, most Internet users – and therefore the bulk of your potential customers – will still go to a search engine to find out the best place to eat.

This is why you need a website. Not just any website, though. Yours must be search engine optimized, with content that is both readable to people and relevant to the search engines. Reputable restaurant reviewers and lists should link to your website. Without these, your website can get lost amongst the millions of websites in the Internet. Fortunately, restaurant search engine marketing can make your web presence attractive to search engines.

Restaurant SEO shines with locally targeted campaigns. Especially for people with cravings, knowing your place is near them through Google Places is all the difference between these people becoming your next regulars or someone else’s.

Hire a company that offers industry-specific SEO Services. This ensures your restaurant can have online visibility and reach potential diners, wherever they are.

Without a web presence backed up by good restaurant SEO, the mediocre diner down the block could be earning more than you do, no matter how heavenly your menu is.

Jessica Hammond recently signed up a restaurant SEO specialist. For a good restaurant search engine marketing service contact  Local Search Technologies LLC.