People choose where to eat, stay and visit on their phones, often minutes before they go. For hospitality businesses, search is about being found for “near me” and location searches, showing the menu or facilities clearly, and loading fast on a mobile connection. I’ve carried out a technical SEO audit for Shake Shack UK and built the website for Barlows Caravan Park, a family-run park in North Wales.
The search challenges hospitality businesses face
Location pages do the heavy lifting. Each restaurant, site or venue needs a page that ranks for its area, with the details people check: address, opening hours, menu, booking and directions.
Mobile speed and stability. Image-heavy pages that load slowly or jump around as they load frustrate people deciding on the spot. Google measures this through Core Web Vitals.
Menus and structured data. Menus, locations and opening hours need accurate structured data so search engines read them correctly.
Indexing mistakes cost bookings. A page accidentally set to noindex, or an old location URL returning an error, quietly removes a venue from search.
Aggregators and review sites. Booking platforms, delivery apps and review sites often rank above the business’s own site for its name.
How I approach it
| Area | What it involves |
|---|---|
| Location pages | A strong page per venue, targeting local and “near me” searches, with a clear locations hub |
| Indexing | Making sure offers, menus and location pages can be found, and old URLs are handled |
| Page experience | Image compression, sizing and dimensions to fix slow loading and layout shift |
| Structured data | Valid markup for the business, locations and menus |
| Google Business Profile | Accurate details, hours and photos for every location |
| Verification | Checking fixes on the live site, not just marking them done |
Shake Shack UK
In January 2026 I audited Shake Shack UK’s website, crawling 972 URLs and prioritising the findings. High-priority issues included an offers page marked noindex, structured data errors on menu pages, legacy location URLs returning 404 errors, and failing mobile Core Web Vitals on the homepage, with Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.29 against Google’s threshold of 0.1 for a good score.
Most high-priority fixes were completed with the development team. When the layout shift fix was checked on the live homepage in May 2026, 166 of 294 images still lacked width and height attributes, mostly icons repeated once per location in a single template, so one template change would clear most of them. The Shake Shack UK case study covers the audit.
Barlows Caravan Park
Barlows’ new website launched in March 2026 and has earned 2,084 clicks from 14,436 impressions since, a 14.4% click-through rate from Google Search Console data to 14 September 2026. For a holiday and residential park with a focused, local audience, the job is making sure people searching for the park find the right information quickly on their phones. The Barlows case study covers the site.
Services for hospitality businesses
FAQ
How do restaurants rank for “near me” searches?
“Near me” searches depend heavily on location, so an accurate, complete Google Business Profile for each venue is essential. A strong location page for each restaurant, with its address, opening hours, menu and booking options, plus genuine reviews and a fast mobile site, gives each venue the best chance of appearing.
Why does my restaurant’s site rank below booking and review sites?
Booking platforms and review sites have huge authority and cover many venues, so they often rank for restaurant names. Your own site can still rank well for your name if it’s indexed, clearly titled and has accurate location pages. Linking your Business Profile to your site and keeping details consistent helps.
Does page speed matter for hospitality websites?
Yes. Hospitality searches are mostly made on phones, often when someone is deciding quickly. Slow pages and layouts that jump as images load make it harder to check menus or book. Image compression and setting image dimensions are often the biggest improvements on image-heavy restaurant and venue sites.
Running a restaurant, venue or holiday park?
Get in touch, or start with a free assessment. What an SEO audit covers walks through the Shake Shack UK audit in more detail.