LOCAL SEO / RESTAURANTS
Zomato switched off in Australia in 2023 and TheFork followed in 2024, so discovery has collapsed onto Google Maps, social and your own site. Your Google Business Profile is effectively your homepage now, and the venues treating it that way are filling covers without paying a commission for the privilege.
Hours that are never wrong, a current menu with prices, photos that look like tonight rather than the opening party. The open-now filter only shows venues whose listed hours say so, which makes stale hours the cheapest ranking loss in hospitality.
Best brunch, dumplings near me, private dining for twenty. Pages and profile signals tuned to how diners actually phrase it, grounded in search volume rather than guesswork.
Australian research puts 95% of diners discovering venues online. The win is landing them on your own booking and ordering pages rather than an app taking up to 30% of the ticket on delivery.
Diners expect fresher reviews and faster replies in food than in any other sector. A steady ask inside Google's rules, and responses that read like the owner wrote them, because they should.
Most younger diners find venues on social first, then check Google before booking. Profile, site and socials tell one story, so the Instagram find survives the Google check that follows.
FOR RESTAURANTS
Australia's restaurant discovery map has been redrawn twice in two years. Zomato switched off locally in 2023 and took a decade of saved lists with it. TheFork closed in 2024 after roughly fifteen years in the market. Diners did not stop searching; they consolidated onto Google Maps, onto social, and onto venues' own sites. Australian research now puts 95% of diners discovering restaurants online, with about a third finding them through Google itself.
That concentration is the opportunity. There is no directory left standing between you and the diner searching your cuisine in your suburb tonight. The venues winning are the ones running the Google Business Profile like a homepage and treating search, social and the booking page as one system, because for the diner they already are.
FOR RESTAURANTS
The delivery apps charge to the point of deciding whether an order was worth taking: the big platforms take up to 30% on delivery orders in Australia, against margins that rarely survive it. They also keep the customer. The person who ordered through an app is the app's customer, complete with their history and habits, not yours.
Search flips the economics. A diner who finds you on Maps and books direct costs nothing per cover. A direct order from your own page keeps the margin the app would have taken. The SEO work here is unglamorous and decisive: the profile immaculate, the menu on the page as text, the booking link one tap away, and cuisine and suburb searches answered by pages that actually rank.
THE FIRST 90 DAYS
Start with the profile and the funnels: what a diner sees when they search your cuisine in your suburb, whether your hours and menu are telling the truth, and how many taps sit between discovery and a booking. The 90 days runs from there, measured in bookings and direct orders.
Book the callHours, menu, photos, attributes and booking links fixed on the Google Business Profile, because it is the highest-traffic page you own.
Menu as text, fast pages for cuisine and suburb searches, and booking and direct-order paths one tap from everywhere.
A steady review ask at the table and after booking, owner replies at hospitality speed, and socials matched to what search says about you.
Occasion pages where demand is proven, seasonal pushes around what fills the quiet nights, and the numbers deciding what gets built next.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ENQUIRE
Pick a time and bring one workflow. Nothing is charged, and there is no form maze or sales script to sit through.
We look at your real figures, work out what the issue is costing you and pick the first thing worth fixing. If it does not stack up, we say so.
One workflow examined and one honest recommendation, whether or not you hire SevenLens. No obligation and no follow-up pressure.
CLIENT REFERENCE
Every project has solved a real business problem and saved a huge amount of manual work. We own everything we paid for, and we stay because we like working with Stuart, not because we are locked in.
WHO YOU WORK WITH
SevenLens is founder-led. Stuart Asta designs, builds and stands behind every engagement, with no account managers and no handovers.
You own everything: the code, the accounts, the data and the documentation. Another provider could take over tomorrow. Clients stay because the work earns its place, not because they are locked in.
About SevenLensHOW PRICING WORKS
SevenLens does not sell packages off a shelf. Every engagement starts with a dollar figure on the problem it solves, so you see the return before you commit. If the maths does not stack up, we tell you before you spend, not after.
COMMON QUESTIONS
The apps bring orders and take their cut, up to 30% on delivery in Australia. They do not build your ranking, your list or your repeat trade, and their customers are theirs, not yours. Local SEO fills the channel you own, and the margin difference per order is the whole argument.
The Google Business Profile: exact hours, a current menu, recent photos, review replies. It is the highest-traffic page you own, and most venues treat it as a formality. After that, a fast site with the menu as text on the page rather than a PDF.
Often not. If the site is fast and the menu is text on a page, most of the early gains come from the profile and the reviews. Where the site is slow or the menu lives in a PDF, a focused fix is usually cheaper than fighting it, and we will tell you which case you are in on the first call.
They are discovery channels, and for younger diners the first one. But the social find gets verified on Google before anyone books, so the play is one story across all three: the profile, the site and the socials agreeing with each other about hours, menu and what kind of night you are selling.
Google Business Profile changes can show within weeks. Organic rankings for competitive local terms usually build over two to four months, which is why we track calls and enquiries from the start rather than waiting on rankings alone.
Yes, all of it. The code, accounts, data and documentation are yours from day one. There is no lock-in, and another provider could take over if you ever wanted.
Stuart Asta, the founder. The person on your first call designs the work and stands behind it, with no account managers, no handovers and no offshore team you never meet.
We will tell you on the first call. A clear no is more useful than the wrong project, and it costs you nothing to find out where you stand.
WHERE TO START
Bring the searches you want to win. On a short call we will check how you rank for them now, what is holding the position back and whether local SEO is the fastest way to more bookings, or whether something else pays back sooner.
Book a call