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ZOJAH Burger · Restaurant SEO · San Antonio
11,941 People Asked Google How to Get to the Counter.
In six months. From a restaurant that opened with a logo and nothing else. No website, no Google listing, not one review.
- Where they startedZOJAH Burger came to us before the doors opened. It opened on Google before it opened on Huebner Road, because there was no other way for a hungry person to find out the place existed.
- What we builtThe website, the Business Profile, and a restaurant SEO programme running from launch instead of bolted on afterwards. Plus the review engine that has been filling the profile ever since.
- Where it is now2,484 Google reviews at 4.7 stars, search clicks up 60 percent in six months, and 11,941 people asking Google for directions to the counter.
The site we built before opening night. Order online in the header, the burger doing the selling, the menu one tap from anywhere.
Google reviews at 4.7 stars, on a profile we created
Search clicks in six months, from 6,940
Google Business Profile interactions
People asking Google for directions to the door
01 / Where It Started
The Challenge
Most restaurant SEO starts with a business that already exists online. This one started with a logo and an opening date. Everything a hungry person uses to find a place had to be built before there was a place to find.
Problem 01
Nobody Was Searching for a Name That Did Not Exist
You cannot rank for a brand nobody has heard of. On day one there was no search demand for ZOJAH at all, so the only way in was through the searches people were already running: burgers near me, smash burger San Antonio.
Problem 02
And a Name Almost Nobody Spells Right
Zohan. Zoha. Zoja. Zojan. Zorah. Soja. Once word of mouth started, people would hear the name before they ever read it, and every wrong guess would land them on somebody else’s restaurant.
Problem 03
Zero Reviews, in the One Category Where Reviews Decide
Nobody drives to a restaurant with no ratings. A new profile with an empty star row loses to a mediocre place with four hundred reviews, every single time.
Problem 04
Invisible in the Neighbourhoods That Would Feed It
A burger decision happens inside a three mile radius. UTSA and the Medical Center are the two pockets that would keep the counter busy, and there was nothing pointing at either one.
Worth saying out loud
We did not make the burger.
- Restaurant SEO can put a hungry person at the door. What happens after that is the kitchen.
- The 4.7 held steady while the review count climbed into the thousands, and that is entirely on the food.
- Our job was the front door. Theirs was making people come back and tell somebody.
- That split is worth knowing before you hire anyone: no amount of search work saves a place people do not want to return to.
02 / What We Built
The Solution
A restaurant’s search demand splits three ways: people who know the name, people who are just hungry, and people already staring at a profile deciding in about four seconds. We built for all three, starting before opening night.
Own the name first
Claim Every Spelling Before Anyone Types One
Zojah, Zohan, Zoha, Zoja, Zojan, Zorah, Zonah, Soja. Every one of those is a real search a real person ran this year, and the site now averages position 1.1 on all of them. Nobody types a misspelling twice, so the first result has to be right the first time.
5,549 clicks from the brand name alone, at position 1.1
Build the counter
Create the Business Profile and Treat It as the Front Door
The profile did not exist, so we built it: menu, pickup, delivery, directions, hours, photos, all wired and matched to the site. For a restaurant the Google Business Profile is not a listing you claim once and forget. It is where the decision actually happens.
26,806 profile interactions in six months
Fill the star row
Put a Review Engine Behind the Counter
A new restaurant with no ratings loses to a mediocre one with four hundred. So asking for the review became part of how the place runs, not something anyone remembers to do on a slow Tuesday. 2,484 reviews later, the average is still 4.7.
2,484 Google reviews at 4.7, from an empty profile
Free the menu
Make the Menu Compete on Its Own
The menu got its own page, its own item names, its own descriptions and its own place in the sitemap. A build that buries the menu in a downloadable PDF throws away the second most valuable page on the entire site.
46,887 impressions and 1,263 clicks, from the menu page alone
Build the map, not the city
Pages for the Neighbourhoods That Actually Feed It
Dedicated pages for smash burgers in San Antonio, burgers near UTSA and burgers near the Medical Center. A burger decision is made inside a three mile radius, and a page written for one campus beats a page that lists twenty neighbourhoods.
03 / The Least Glamorous Win
The Name
A distinctive brand name is an asset and a liability at the same time. People hear it before they read it. These are live Search Console positions for the last six months.
| Search query | Clicks | Avg. position |
|---|---|---|
| zojah burger | 5,549 | 1.1 |
| zojah | 438 | 1.5 |
| zojah burger menu | 372 | 2.0 |
| zohan burger | 354 | 1.1 |
| zojah burger san antonio | 225 | 1.5 |
| zoha burger | 146 | 1.1 |
| zoja burger | 116 | 1.1 |
| zojan burger | 70 | 1.1 |
| soja burger | 67 | 1.5 |
| is zojah burger halal | 23 | 1.4 |
Eight different spellings, all landing on the right restaurant at the top of the page. That is restaurant SEO doing the least glamorous and most profitable job it has. None of it wins an award. All of it is somebody walking through the door.
The halal question at the bottom is the same principle pointed somewhere else. Somebody wanted an answer before they drove over, and the site is the thing that answers it at four in the afternoon.
04 / What Actually Happened
The Results
Every number below comes off a Google dashboard, not a report we typed up. Tap any chart to see the full screenshot, exactly as the client sees it.
Search Console, GA4 and Business Profile · pulled 7 September 2026 · six months against the six before
Google Search Console
Search clicks, from 6,940
On impressions that grew from 62,100 to 152,000, up 145 percent. The last three months beat the three before them, so the line is still climbing.
Google Analytics 4
Sessions, from 22,291
Organic is the biggest channel at 14,145 sessions. Direct rose 62 percent, which is what happens when people already know the name.
Google Business Profile
Interactions with the profile
7,945 clicks through to the site, 6,310 menu views on Google itself, and 610 phone calls straight out of search.
Google Business Profile
People asking for directions
The closest thing a restaurant has to counting feet through the door. Almost nobody asks Google to navigate somewhere they are not going.
The one number that went down
Why Click Through Rate Fell While Everything Else Rose
Average CTR moved from 11.2 percent to 7.3 percent and average position from 4.7 to 5.2. Both look like bad news until you see what changed underneath. The old traffic was overwhelmingly people typing the brand name, and branded searches convert at 20 percent and up. The new traffic includes thousands of discovery searches like burgers near me, where a good result still only earns three or four percent of the clicks.
Adding a large volume of lower converting discovery traffic pulls the blended average down while the total number of clicks goes up 60 percent. We would take that trade every time, and it is the normal shape of a restaurant widening out beyond its own name.
What we are not claiming
There is no order value or revenue tracking wired into GA4 on this account, and online orders run through third party platforms that do not report back into it. So this page reports actions, not sales: clicks, directions, calls, menu views. They are all real and all verifiable in Search Console, GA4 and the Business Profile, and none of them is a substitute for a till receipt. Connecting order tracking is the current priority on this account.
05 / What the Client Said
★★★★★“The FOG Digital Marketing team are amazing at creating websites and SEO. We have received many compliments about how professional our website looks.”
ZOJAH Burger
Huebner Road, San Antonio
The live profile today. 4.7 stars, 2,484 reviews, photos, hours, map and ordering all in place.
06 / How We Work
What a Restaurant SEO Engagement Actually Covers
Every item below ran on this account. None of it is a menu of extras.
- Brand and misspelling coverage
- Neighbourhood landing pages
- Menu page architecture
- Google Business Profile
- Review strategy
- Local structured data
- Ordering and delivery links
- Food photography on page
- Core Web Vitals
- Search Console monitoring
- GA4 and conversion tracking
- Monthly reporting
07 / Questions
What Restaurant Owners Ask Us First
Does a restaurant need a website when Google, Uber Eats and DoorDash exist?
Those platforms rent you an audience and take a cut of every order. Your own site and your own profile are the two surfaces you keep. On this account the menu page alone earned 46,887 impressions, and 7,945 people clicked from the profile through to the site. That is traffic nobody charges you a commission on.
Why does ranking for misspellings of the name matter so much?
Because a restaurant name is heard before it is read. Somebody at work says the name out loud, a coworker types their best guess that night, and whatever comes up first gets the visit. Zohan, Zoha, Zoja and Soja brought 683 clicks between them in six months. Every one of those was a person who nearly did not find the place.
What is the most useful metric when the orders happen offline?
Direction requests. Almost nobody asks Google to navigate somewhere they are not going, so it is the closest honest proxy a restaurant has for feet through the door. This account logged 11,941 of them in six months. Rankings and impressions are how you get there; directions are the thing that looks most like a customer.
How long does restaurant SEO take to show results?
The Business Profile can move in weeks because it is the fastest surface Google has. The website side takes longer, usually three to six months before the shape of it is clear, and it keeps compounding after that. On this account the most recent three months still beat the three before them, which is the point: it is not a campaign that peaks and stops.
Should the menu be a PDF or a web page?
A web page, always. A PDF is a dead end: hard to read on a phone, slow to open, and close to invisible in search. As a real page with real item names, this menu holds position 2.0 for its own search and pulls 1,263 clicks on its own. It is the second most valuable page a restaurant owns and a PDF throws it away.
Do reviews affect rankings, or just persuasion?
Both, and the persuasion half is the bigger one. Volume and recency feed into how Google ranks a local business, but the decisive moment is a person comparing two profiles side by side. A new place with nine reviews loses to a mediocre one with four hundred, every time. That is why asking for the review has to be built into how the restaurant runs, not left to whoever remembers.
What does a falling click through rate mean if clicks are going up?
Usually that you are being found by people who had never heard of you. Branded searches convert at 20 percent and up; a discovery search like burgers near me earns three or four percent even from a good position. Add thousands of those and the blended average drops while the total climbs. Here CTR fell from 11.2 to 7.3 percent and clicks rose 60 percent. That is a trade worth making.
Does any of this work outside restaurants?
The sequence is the same for a plumber, a landscaper or a moving company: own your name, build the pages the searches actually deserve, then let the Business Profile close. Restaurants just run it faster, because hunger is the shortest buying cycle there is.
Your Turn
Hungry People Are Searching Right Now. Are They Finding You?
We will audit your restaurant the same way we audited this one: brand coverage, the spellings people actually type, neighbourhood pages, menu visibility and your Business Profile. No charge, no obligation, and the findings are yours either way.
Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm CT. Or read how we handle Google Business Profile optimisation on its own.
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