Home / Industries / Bakery and patisserie
Nobody compares ten bakeries online. People look for the one that is open now, on their way, and they go. So everything is decided on your Google Business Profile: opening hours, closing day, photos, rating. The website is only useful for what is ordered in advance: a birthday cake, a wedding cake, platters for a meeting. I'll put it simply: for many bakeries, SEO comes down to a profile kept up to date, and that can be learnt in a few hours.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
200+ sites tracked every day
1M / month visits to my e-commerce site
They trusted me with their visibility
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Eurofins
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Ingram MicroOpen on Mondays, but Google doesn't know it
On Mondays, many bakeries are closed. Someone in Angoulême is looking for one that isn't. The Google map offers three addresses with their opening hours filled in. You are open, a few streets away, but your hours have never been entered. Get your profile onto the map.
Fig. 1. A search made on a Monday, three profiles shown, yours in fourth place. (The oven had been running since dawn. The profile didn't say you were open.)
What this means for you. I update your opening hours everywhere, then show you how to keep them right, holidays and bank holidays included.
SEO for a bakery or patisserie is the work that makes you appear when someone looks for bread, a cake or a sandwich near them. It rests first on the Google Business Profile: exact opening hours, closing day, holidays, photos of the shop window and products, reviews. Add to that an order page for cakes and large quantities. It is measured by the calls received and the orders placed in advance.
The problem
You close on Wednesdays, you open on Sunday mornings, you take your holiday in August. If the profile says something else, the customer finds the shutter down. They don't call you to complain. They switch bakeries and sometimes leave a review.
For a birthday or a christening, people search online for “cake to order”. If nothing shows your cakes, your sizes and the ordering lead time, the person turns to a supermarket or to a pastry chef who displays them.
Baking, selling, deliveries: there's no time left for a complicated website. That's normal. What's needed comes down to a few simple actions, which you or the person on the till can do from a phone.
An audit, for real
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
The taste of tradition
Artisan craftsmanship handed down from generation to generation.
Find out moreFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Six plausible searches for a bakery and patisserie, given as examples. I note yours during the profile audit.
What works
That's the first thing to set. Usual hours, afternoon break if you have one, closing day, bank holidays, summer holidays: I check that the profile, the website and the directories all say the same thing.
Google lets you announce special opening hours several weeks ahead. I show you how to do it once. You then repeat it before each closure, in a few moments, from your phone.
The shop window in the morning, loaves on the rack, weekend pastries, the galette in January. Customers choose with their eyes. One sharp photo a week keeps the profile alive better than twenty photos posted all at once.
Cakes, wedding cakes, platters, speciality breads: the page shows the designs, the sizes, the ordering lead time and how to reach you. It's often the only page a bakery really needs.
A bakery sees a lot of people come through and gets few reviews, because nobody thinks of it. A small card by the till with the link is enough. I also prepare short replies for you, for thank-yous and for criticism.
What costs dearly
Google or a customer created it for you. The phone number is the previous owner's, the opening hours are approximate. Until you are its manager, you can't correct anything. It's the first thing I sort out.
The notice is useful for regulars. Someone coming from the other side of town only reads it when they arrive. Announce the closure on the profile at the same time as in the window.
A home page with a slogan and a gallery sells neither bread nor cake. If you have a website, it must give the opening hours, show the products and allow ordering. Otherwise the profile alone does just as well.
Many pastry chefs don't dare display them. The customer then doesn't call, for fear of the price. A price by number of portions, even as a guide, reassures and filters out requests that don't suit you.
The method
Four steps, and the first already covers the essentials. We stop as soon as you have what you need.
One-minute test
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 400 searches a month for a cake to order in your town, 5% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €40 per client. Click-through rates by position are orders of magnitude, and they have been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Redo the calculation with your figures
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
In Charente, the bakery is still the shop people visit every day, in town and in the countryside alike. In Angoulême and Cognac, people choose between several bakeries a few streets apart. In the villages, some drive several kilometres for their bread. I live between Cognac and Paris, and my agency, Newp, is based near Cognac.
In Angoulême as in Cognac, customers pick up their bread between the office and home. They type “bakery” and look at the one that's open on their route. Your evening and Sunday hours, properly filled in, set you apart from the shop next door.
If you deliver to neighbouring villages or supply a drop-off point, your profile should say so. One line per village is enough. Listing the villages you serve and your delivery days helps new residents, who search online before asking the neighbours.
Holidaymakers in rentals and day trippers don't know any addresses. They search for a bakery open on Sunday or on a bank holiday Monday. A profile kept up to date during the season brings you those customers with no extra effort.
Beyond Google
Your customers are starting to ask full questions to an AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral. For example: “which patisserie in Angoulême can make me a chocolate birthday cake for twelve people on Saturday?”. The AI gives a few addresses and says what it knows about each one.
It only knows what's written down. If your order page lists sizes, flavours and lead times, it can repeat them. If your cakes only exist in the shop window, it cites someone else. For everyday bread, this changes almost nothing: the Google Business Profile remains the source. For orders, a single well-written page does the job.
Question asked to an AIWhich patisserie in Angoulême can make a birthday cake for twelve people on Saturday?
Three shops can handle this request:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
I made up these three shops to illustrate my formats. They aren't clients. The first format suits a lot of bakeries.
What I suggest: a Google Business Profile audit, and that's it.
What I suggest: a few hours of coaching, at your own pace.
What I suggest: a short training session for the team, then ongoing support if online ordering takes off.
In practice
Pricing
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
Fancy a game?
Clickbait titles, fake reviews, copied pages: your market is a jungle. Grab the piece and slide it into the slot.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds. Ten snakes for one spot, as usual.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
In many cases, no, not in the sense of a monthly service. Your location, your bread and word of mouth do the work. What you need is an accurate Google Business Profile. I'd rather tell you that than sell you ongoing support you don't need.
When you sell something other than the day's bread: cakes to order, wedding cakes, platters for businesses, products shipped by post. These purchases are planned online. One or two well-written pages are enough to show up.
No. A complete profile does that job for bread and everyday sales. I only recommend a website if you take orders in advance. In that case, a simple order page is enough to start with.
You, your partner or the person on the counter. You need someone who knows the opening hours and has a phone. I train that person in one session. Afterwards, they know how to change an opening time, post a photo and reply to a review.
On the profile, with special opening hours, as soon as your dates are set. Add a short post, and a line on the website if you have one. Do it at the same time as the notice on the door, not the day before you leave.
Not necessarily. It requires a tool, up-to-date products and someone to prepare the orders. For many bakeries, the phone and a form work just as well. We'll talk about it again if requests become too many to handle by hand.
Reply in two sentences, calmly: what happened, what you're offering. Don't get into an argument. Readers judge your tone as much as the criticism. A few recent reviews from happy customers then put things back in perspective.
I reuse what you already display in the shop, word for word, and I don't add any wording of my own. Allergen information is subject to specific legal requirements. Have it checked by your trade body before publishing.
No. A recent phone, morning light and a clean shop window are enough. I give you a few simple rules during the coaching: frame tightly, avoid the flash, show one product at a time. Regularity matters more than technique.
I've co-written four books on SEO, and two of them are entirely about the Google Business Profile. It's a tool I know in detail, and it's the one a bakery needs. I pass on the method, then you run it yourself.
See also
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