In this blog post, we will discuss how SEO is the perfect strategy to invest in for your catering business to experience long-term growth and success. Creating an effective SEO for catering companies campaign will help you establish a stronger online presence to achieve long-term results that will drive clicks and organic traffic to your catering website, and it will bring you more new customers, increasing your revenue.
1. What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the website and the contents of your catering business to help it rank high on SERP or search engine results pages. By creating an effective SEO for catering companies campaign, you are guaranteed to show up at the top of SERP when users actively search for catering services. This will then translate to more organic traffic towards your catering website, because of the increased visibility towards your target audience, as well as an increase in revenue.
2. How does SEO work?
Search engine optimization works by applying different on-page, off-page, and technical strategies to your SEO campaign to ultimately rank high on SERP, which will also depend on the authority and importance of your website.
On-page SEO revolves around optimizing your web pages to rank higher on search engines. These include optimizing the URL structure, the title tag and meta description, relevant keywords, and internal and external links.
Off-page SEO is more about making efforts to help your website rank high but from the outside. These elements could be backlink building, guest posts, content marketing, video marketing, and online forums.
Technical SEO is about implementing technical strategies for your catering website to allow search engines to crawl, index, and rank your site. Other technical SEO strategies to consider would be ensuring website security, keyword cannibalization, and mobile-friendliness.
When a user enters a search query, the algorithm will choose the most relevant pages, and these are then ranked on SERP with the most authoritative or most popular ones at the top. When you implement your SEO strategies, don’t forget to consider the following elements to ensure your catering website will rank high on search queries:
- What is the meaning and intent behind a user’s search query?
- How relevant is the search query to the contents of your webpage?
- The content quality on your web pages should signal expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
- Are your pages discoverable and user-friendly for elements like page speed and mobile friendliness?
- The context will rely on the user’s past search behavior and settings, for example, location.
To further support your SEO efforts for SEO for catering companies, you can use the E-E-A-T framework to ensure quality content, which will help determine its relevance and authority on search engines.
- Expertise signals that you are an expert on the topic.
- Experience indicates that you have personal experience regarding the content you write about.
- Authoritativeness is when others use your web pages as sources, which indicates the credibility and trustworthiness of your website.
- Trustworthiness signals that your catering website and its content are credible and up-to-date.
Don’t know how to get started with SEO for catering companies?
3. Local SEO
In addition to the SEO strategies mentioned, you will want to include local SEO as part of your strategy. This would be advantageous for your catering business, especially if you have one or more than one physical store.
Optimizing your local SEO will ensure that your catering website appears at the top of local search results, for example, “wedding catering service near me”. To support your local SEO efforts for SEO for catering companies, you can encourage customers to leave feedback, online reviews, or testimonials further to attract your target audience in your local area and establish trust and credibility.
Optimize local SEO by focusing on the following ranking factors:
- Focus on only appearing for searches with a local intent like “catering services near me” or “catering service in California”.
- Make sure results are specific to a relevant location.
- Use the right keywords when replying to reviews.
- Include specific information for users to keep them from going to your competitors.
- Target smartphone users for local searches since these search queries happen more often on mobile devices.
4. Why SEO for Catering Companies?
Creating SEO for catering companies is one of the best marketing strategies for your catering business to improve your digital marketing ROI, whilst decreasing advertising costs. You will be able to gain long-term results and advertise your catering business every day with SEO, and it will improve your visibility on SERP, which will drive more organic traffic to your website, increase CTR (click-through rate), and overall gain more new customers.
SEO will also help your catering brand build credibility since ranking on the first page on SERP indicates to users that search engines trust your catering website and its content.
When optimizing your catering website pages, make sure you include on your site the different types of catering services your business offers, for example, the different types of food menus or catering specialties you offer, the different types of occasions you can cater to, and the different catering specialties you offer.
Let’s look at search examples for “wedding catering service” query:
Here are some results examples for “catering service” search query:
5. On-Page SEO Strategies
5.1 URL Slugs, Meta Descriptions, and Title Tags
URL slugs can be found at the last part of the URL address, for example, “https://example.com/URL“. URL slugs serve as unique identifiers of a webpage, and for these URL slugs to be effective, they need to be user-friendly and include the primary keyword of the specific webpage, for instance:
- Example A: https://cacateringcompany.com/menu/
- Example B: https://www.jayscatering.com/about/our-history
Example A uses “menu” as the URL slug, indicating to the website visitor that they can view all the food options or menu packages from their catering services. Example B uses a longer URL slug consisting of “about/our-history” which is a more detailed slug using the primary keyword for the web page to indicate to the website visitor that they can learn all about the catering business and its success story.
How to optimize URL slugs:
- Use your target keyword and be descriptive.
- Ensure it is user-friendly.
- Avoid keyword stuffing.
- Make your URL concise and easy to read.
- Try to use less than 5 words.
- Use hyphens and not underscores.
- Don’t use URL slugs that already belong to other pages.
- Avoid special characters.
- Use lowercase characters to avoid any case-sensitive issues.
- Don’t use numbers that will need to be changed in the future, for example, the publishing date.
A Meta Description is an HTML tag that is unique, descriptive, and relevant to the web page. These elements help the user understand what the content of a web page is about and how it’s relevant to their search query. Using an effective meta description can convince users to click on your website on search engine results pages, and increase your CTR or click-through rate.
How to optimize meta descriptions:
- Keep meta descriptions between 155 and 160 characters.
- Include the primary target keyword.
- Satisfy the user’s search query (Understand user search intent for an effective meta description)
- Encourage the user to click on your page.
Title Tags are similar to meta descriptions. A title tag is also an HTML tag, but the difference is that these are used to set a web page’s title, which you can see in the browser and search results. It supports your on-page SEO efforts such as helping with keyword ranking, and should make it exciting for the user to read.
How to optimize title tags:
- Use between 50 to 60 characters only.
- Avoid keyword stuffing.
- Target one primary keyword.
- These should be unique for your website and the SERP.
- Ensure the <title> element is present in your page’s HTML.
- It should accurately describe your page.
5.2 Alt Tags
Alt tags are also known as alternative text, alt attributes, or alt descriptions and they describe the appearance or purpose of an image used on a page. These add context to the images used on your catering blog posts which help screen reading tools describe the images to visually impaired readers.
You want to ensure that your alt tags are being used correctly since these allow bots and users to understand the content on your pages, and because it allows search engines to crawl and rank your catering website.
How to optimize alt tags:
- Describe the image being used. It should be relevant to the content on the web page.
- Keep your descriptions to 125 characters or less.
- Avoid keyword stuffing.
- Include your target or primary keywords.
- Don’t include “image of” or “picture of”.
- Avoid copying the image caption.
After optimizing your alt tags, consider optimizing your headings to boost the rank of your posts. You can achieve this by using relevant headings to increase the chance of your page showing up on Google’s featured snippets, which can also increase your CTR.
How to rank on Google’s Featured Snippets:
- Have well-written content.
- Understand searcher intent.
- Create and update content outline.
- Your content should match the user’s search intent.
- Include relevant infographics and organized lists.
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5.3 Internal and External Links
Internal Links are the hyperlinks or relevant pages on your catering website and should provide additional information for the reader or website visitor, that is relevant and useful.
How to optimize internal links:
- Use plenty of internal links throughout your catering website.
- Link high authority and quality, relevant pages to improve your ranking on SERP and the user’s experience.
- Avoid phrases like “click here”. Replace these with anchor texts instead.
- Include at least 3 to 5 internal links.
External Links are also hyperlinks, but unlike internal links, these are outbound links, or relevant pages that can be found outside your catering website that point the reader to a different domain.
Using external links can also help search engines and users better understand the topic of these web pages, which can help with your ranking and reputation. To support your on-page SEO with external links, ensure that the external links being used on your catering website are authoritative and relevant sources.
How to optimize external links:
- Only use external links from credible and professional sources.
- Don’t link your competitor’s website.
- Use keyword anchor texts.
- Link relevant sources that add value to your page and for your readers.
- Set your external links to open to a new tag.
5.4 Update Blog Posts
On-page SEO for catering companies also involves optimizing existing blog posts on your catering website. Updating these posts will help your catering website rank higher on relevant searches and it will help maximize the reach and engagement of your posts.
How to update old blog posts?
- Check for outdated features or trends. You will want to update these or completely remove them if they are not applicable at present.
- Check all internal and external links. Make sure these links are not dead or broken.
- Promote your blog post using other formats, for example, infographics.
- Share them on social media platforms like Pinterest.
6. Keyword Research
Keyword research is a critical step when implementing your SEO for catering companies campaign. It’s important to understand which keywords will work for your catering campaign, and which keywords are high intent. Conducting thorough keyword research will help you understand the terms and search queries users actively use to find your products and services, and it will help you understand their search intent.
When choosing your keywords, consider the following factors to help with your keyword research for your SEO for catering companies.
- Monthly search volume data – How popular or in demand is that specific keyword?
- Keyword difficulty data – How difficult is it for that keyword to rank organically?
- Relevance to your business data – Is the keyword relevant to your catering business?
- Search intent – These can be informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial.
7. Understanding Search Intent
Understanding search intent will help you choose the right target keywords for your SEO for catering companies, which will have a positive effect on your website’s rank in SERP:
- Informational intent is when a user needs more information about a topic, product, or service. These search queries will usually include terms like “how”, “why”, “tips” and “solution”.
- Navigational intent is when a user already knows what they are looking for, for instance, “wedding catering service for 200 pax”.
- Commercial intent is usually when a user intends to make a purchase. A user will usually search intent after gaining enough information and research about a product or service. Commercial intent searches can also look like searches for testimonials or feedback from a product or service, like “best catering company near me x reviews”
- Transactional intent is when a user is determined to make a purchase, avail of a service or product, or any other conversion action, for example, “catering for corporate events” or “Mediterranean-inspired catering service”.
Unsure which keywords will be most effective for your SEO for catering companies?
8. Keyword Tools for Keyword Research
Now that we understand the importance of keyword research, let’s discuss some of the tools we recommend using to help with your keyword research for SEO for catering companies.
Google Autocomplete Predictions is a feature within Google’s search engine that provides real and trending search predictions based on your location, by using an automated system.
Google’s related searches is another feature that can help with your keyword research. It uses Google’s algorithm to generate SEO-related searches which can help better understand the search intent of your target audience.
The third Google feature we recommend using is Keyword Planner. This is a free tool that will help you discover new keywords by entering terms like “catering service” or “catering company near me“. These results using keyword planner will then provide you with data insights for each keyword, like its competition level, top-of-page bids, and overall how high-intent the keyword is.
Browser Extensions: Whatsmyserp
Using browser extensions like whatsmyserp is one of the tools we recommend to help with your keyword research and support your SEO for catering companies. Whatsmyserp is a free browser extension that will provide you with related keywords, data insight on these keywords, and it offers a free search engine results page checker tool.
Let’s look at an example result for the search “catering service near me”:
Another browser extension you can use for your keyword research is Keywords Everywhere. This specific browser extension won’t require you to sign up or log in. It offers a “freemium” plan that will give you enough data on related keywords, like volume searches, CPC, relevant keywords, and long-tail keywords.
Let’s look at an example result for the search “catering service near me California”:
9. Off-Page SEO Strategies
9.1 Guest Posting
Guest posting (or guest blogging) can be a very effective off-page SEO tactic for link-building, which will positively help your SEO for catering companies campaign.
Link-building is the process of getting other websites to link specific pages of your catering website. It is a key element in guest posting since it can help boost the authority of your site on Google, which can increase the rank of your pages and drive more traffic as a result. Link-building can also help you gain high-quality backlinks, which will indicate to search engines that you are an industry expert.
To find guest posting opportunities, simply enter “write for us+catering services” or “catering service + guest blog“. Search results will provide you with websites accepting guest posts for catering services, including specific guidelines you must follow.
Tips for writing guest posts:
- Strictly follow guest post guidelines.
- Ensure you meet the requirements and terms and conditions of the website.
- Follow with their style of writing.
- Include internal links from their website.
- Proofread for grammar and spelling mistakes.
- Work on your author’s bio, like your expertise and the social channels where users can reach you.
9.2 Content Marketing
If you want your SEO for catering companies to be effective, then you need to implement content marketing in your strategy. Content marketing can help nurture and covert leads, but only with content on your catering website that provides a solution for the reader, and is enjoyable for your target audience to read.
You can also consider the 4 stages of the content marketing funnel to visualize and better understand the customer journey of your potential leads:
- Awareness – The content will educate your target audience.
- Evaluation – Potential leads will determine if they need your product or service.
- Conversion – This is the stage where a lead will consider the reasons to buy your product or service.
- Delight – The content should keep your target audience engaged.
By implementing content marketing as part of your SEO strategy, it will help in attracting and retaining your target audience which will drive profitable customer action. Consider using different channels to distribute your content, which will help boost off-page signals:
- Podcasts
- Newsletter
- Email Marketing
- Press Releases
- Social Media
- Video Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
- Content Syndication
- Forums
- Ebooks
- Social Media Marketing
Are you unsure which content marketing channel will be the best for your catering business?
9.3 Social Media Marketing
One of the channels we recommend distributing your content to support your off-page optimization for SEO for catering companies is social media marketing. This strategy involves engaging with your target audience on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest.
Social media marketing is one of the most effective off-page SEO strategies because, with effective social media marketing, you will be able to increase organic clicks, establish authority, drive on-site engagement, improve local ranking, gather insights from your social media metrics, and generate backlinks.
Best practices for social media marketing:
- Identify your target goals.
- Plan your content and objectives for the month.
- Use a content calendar tool to stay organized and on track with postings.
- Use social media marketing tools to create visual and engaging posts.
- Publish authentic and relevant posts that create an emotional or personal response from your target audience.
- Collaborate with influencers to promote your catering company (This is very effective if you want to improve brand awareness).
- Share customer feedback. It will help convince potential customers to trust your catering services.
- Share on social media groups like Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups. Make sure these are relevant to your niche or industry.
9.4 Video Marketing
Around 100 million internet users watch videos online every day and the total time spent watching videos keeps increasing as years go by, hence why you should consider video marketing as part of your SEO for catering companies campaign. Many businesses are incorporating videos to promote their brand, their products, and their services, which can increase reach, grab the attention of your target audience, and find new potential customers.
With video marketing, it’s important to take note that it can be time-consuming if you are doing this yourself and aren’t fully versed in video creation since it will involve steps like preproduction, production shoots, and post-production. Before video marketing, you will need to research and plan before posting your videos for your catering business.
Best practices for video marketing:
- Set goals for your video marketing.
- Decide which platforms to use.
- Plan content production.
- Understand current trends for promotional videos.
- Research what keywords to use.
- Schedule and promote videos.
- Understand and analyze metrics.
9.5 Online Forums
Another off-page SEO strategy you can consider for your SEO for catering companies is online forums. Participating in online forums like Reddit, Quora, and LinkedIn groups, will help make your catering website more popular. This will improve your rank on SERP, and you will be able to establish your expertise in your niche and industry.
When joining online forums, you will want to link relevant blog posts from your catering website that support your answers. This tactic will help build website authority, which in return will result in more backlinks, site traffic, and more new customers for your catering business.
Consider these factors when joining online forum discussions:
- Follow the platform policies.
- Use links from your website that are relevant to the topic being discussed.
- Don’t spam the comment section just to get more links. It will make you lose credibility and ruin your reputation.
- Don’t add links to every single answer you provide.
- Provide accurate answers.
10. Technical SEO Strategies
As mentioned earlier in this article, technical SEO focuses on the technical aspects of your catering website and ensures there are no technical issues that might prevent your site from ranking on SERP.
10.1 Website Security
Ensuring website security for your catering website is one of the many technical SEO aspects you need to optimize, to earn the trust of your potential clients and to ensure that your web pages rank on SERP. Without website security, you will signal search engines to rank your site low due to the risk of personal information from website visitors getting stolen, read, or modified by hackers.
To avoid these risks and to avoid negatively impacting your SEO for catering companies campaign, you want to use a “secure encrypted connection” like HTTPS, which will protect sensitive information from being compromised.
Best practices for website security:
- Choose a reliable hosting provider.
- Schedule regular website backups.
- Update your website to the latest version.
- Install an SSL certificate. This will authenticate the identity of your site and establish a secure connection.
- Use anti-malware software.
- Use a web application firewall.
10.2 Single Website Version
When optimizing website security, you should also ensure that there is only one accessible version of your catering website. This will support your technical SEO efforts for SEO for catering companies, and it avoid duplicate errors and issues.
Let’s have a look at the example below:
- Example A: https://calicateringcompany.com
- Example B: https://www.calicateringcompany.com
Example A and Example B both show a different version of a single website, but these two examples would be considered as 2 different versions on SERP. You will want to avoid and fix this technical aspect since having more than one single website version can confuse search engines on which version to rank, and it can also reduce the effectiveness of your backlinking profile.
10.3 Page Speed
Page speed can affect a user’s experience on your catering website if it loads too slowly. This is because, according to Facebook, 40 percent of users or website visitors abandon a webpage if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load hence why you should optimize your catering website to seamlessly load fast enough from the moment a user clicks on your web page.
Don’t forget to also optimize your website’s page speed for both mobile and desktop devices, to avoid giving the user a negative experience and to avoid hurting your SEO efforts for SEO for catering companies
Best practices for page speed:
- Compress all images on your page.
- Minimize the use of JavaScript files.
- Use a CDN or content distribution network. This will allow requested files to travel less by using the nearest server.
10.4 Mobile Friendly Website
Many users use their smartphones to browse the internet, so it’s important to make sure that your catering website is accessible on both desktop and mobile devices. In addition, your catering website should also be mobile-friendly because Google uses mobile-first indexing.
To check if your catering website is mobile-friendly and compatible with different mobile devices in the market, you can use free tools like Mobile-Friendly Test on Google Search Console.
10.5 Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization is one technical aspect you need to avoid, to prevent harming your SEO for catering companies campaign.
Keyword cannibalization can happen when multiple pages from your catering website have been optimized for the same target keyword, which can cause your web pages to rank poorly on SERP.
How to fix keyword cannibalization:
- Track the ranking and performance of your keywords.
- Schedule regular content audits.
- Use a targeted keyword strategy.
- Organize all URLs and target keywords from your catering website using tools like spreadsheets.
- Reduce the number of times a keyword is used. (If this is not effective, remove the keyword completely).
- Improve the content quality of your pages.
- Check if any pages cannibalize each other and why.
10.6 Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is something you want to avoid for your catering website but can happen when you have the same content on different pages of your website. If this case applies to you, make sure you fix it by using tools like Semrush to avoid backlink dilution and wasted crawling spending. In addition, tools like Semrush will provide you with real-time performance reports to identify your rank on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and YouTube.
Keep in mind that if you don’t fix duplicate content on your site, it will make it very difficult for bots or search engine crawlers to determine which page should rank high, negatively affecting your rank on SERP and your SEO efforts for SEO for catering companies.
10.7 Broken links
Broken links can happen when a link on a webpage cannot be accessed due to the page being fully removed, or due to a change in the URL. This can also happen if you have forgotten to redirect the URL to its new domain.
Make sure to check if your web pages contain broken or dead links since keeping these can hurt your SEO efforts for SEO for catering services, and can discourage users or website visitors from converting. To check for broken or dead links on your catering website pages, use tools like Google Search Console or Ahrefs’ Broken Link Checker.
11. Key Takeaways
SEO for catering companies is one of the most effective strategies that will help your catering business rank high organically on SERP. Since more potential customers rely on search engines to search for catering services, investing in SEO for your catering business will help you establish a stronger online presence, which will increase your brand visibility and attract the right customers for your catering company. It will also help you gain a competitive advantage over your local competitors and experience your ROI growing exponentially once your SEO campaign gains traction.
Here at YoYoFuMedia, we have successfully run over a thousand SEO campaigns for our clients and successfully helped them achieve their advertising goals. If you want to experience faster results, consider Google Ads for Catering Companies, or visit YoYoFuMedia’s page to learn more about our successful SEO and Google Ads stories.
If you want to invest in SEO for catering companies but are too occupied with your catering business, feel free to Schedule A Free Consultation with our team of experts.
