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People looking for a bottle, a cellar visit or a supplier first find marketplaces, online wine merchants and activity booking platforms. These sites have huge catalogues and budgets I won't make you chase. They can't describe your terroir, your cellar or the way you work. Whether you run an estate, a château, a champagne house, a négociant house or a distillery, I make these things visible on Google. I do it with the restraint required by the rules on alcohol advertising.
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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Ingram MicroThe map, the day before a visit
Holidaymakers are staying in Beaune and looking for an estate to visit tomorrow. Google shows them three profiles on the map. Yours is in fourth place, listed under agriculture, with no opening hours. Yet your estate welcomes visitors every afternoon. Get it into the top three.
Fig. 1. A search for a visit in Beaune, three profiles, no family estate. (You welcomed visitors every afternoon. Your profile presented you as a farm closed to the public.)
What this means for you. I set up your profile to match what you really do: welcoming visitors, tours, sales at the estate, with opening hours that follow your seasons.
SEO for wines and spirits is the work that makes a producer's or a house's website and Google Business Profile appear in its buyers' searches. It covers estates, châteaux, champagne, cognac and armagnac houses, négociants, distilleries and specialist online wine merchants. It deals with the venue's Google Business Profile, the visit page, the shop's product pages, the craftsmanship pages, the trade area and the foreign-language versions. It is measured by direct orders, visit bookings and trade enquiries.
The problem
When someone types the name of one of your cuvées, a marketplace or an online wine merchant sometimes comes up before you. Their product page is more complete than yours. The sale happens on their site, with their margin, when the customer was looking for the producer. It happens to an estate in the Loire or the Rhône valley as much as to a château in Bordeaux or a champagne house.
Tourist activity platforms list dozens of cellars, wineries and distilleries. They take a commission on every booking. They are useful for being discovered. They must not become the only route to your gate.
Many websites in the sector show large photos and a few sentences. The visitor, the private buyer, the restaurateur and the importer are each looking for something different there. None of them finds their page.
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.
A family story
For several generations, a passion for the vine has been handed down at the heart of our terroir.
DiscoverFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Six possible searches for a house that welcomes visitors, sells direct and exports. These are illustrations. The audit draws up the list that matches your production, your region and your markets.
What works
Everyone who wants to come looks at it. I set the category, the visiting hours by season, the access, the photos of the place and the booking link. I also check that the pin on the map really leads to your gate, which is not a given in the countryside. A house that welcomes visitors at several sites has one profile per location open to the public.
Length, schedule, languages spoken, opening days, group size, price, coach access: everything a visitor or a travel agency wants to know before booking. This page lets people book with you, with no middleman. It works as well for a Champagne cellar as for a Bordeaux winery or an Armagnac distillery.
Each wine has its page, with information only the house holds: the plot, the blend, the ageing, the vintage, the year of bottling. Gift boxes and large formats have theirs too. The tone stays descriptive. Your mandatory notices appear on them, and I add no argument that encourages drinking.
Your history, your soils, your methods and your work calendar answer many searches. These pages also establish the house's legitimacy with Google and AI. I help you write them from what you already say during the visit.
An importer, a wine merchant or a restaurateur wants an introduction to the house, the range, the formats, the markets already served and a direct contact. I prepare this section separately, in the language of your markets. Google must read it as a real version, not as a copy. Allocations and en primeur sales have a page there explaining the process.
What costs dearly
A name, a photo and a price are not enough. Resellers write three paragraphs about your bottle, and Google prefers them. You know more than they do. You need to write it down.
A visitor who finds the gate closed leaves a harsh review. The hours on your profile and website must follow your seasons, your harvest and your closures.
Besides the risk under your legal framework, flattering phrases give nothing to someone searching. A precise fact about your method is worth more than an adjective.
They date from when the website was built, point to pages that no longer exist and show old vintages. An importer notices straight away. Four up-to-date pages in English are better than a whole website left to decay.
The method
Four steps. I start by setting with you what the website can say, so we can then write without having to backtrack.
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: 500 searches a month for a cellar or estate visit in your region, 3% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €90 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, vines cover the whole west of the département and support the cognac industry: growers, home distillers, négociant houses, coopers. Many estates sell their production to the négociants and keep a small share for sale at the estate. That share deserves to be found online. I co-founded my agency, Newp, near Cognac, and I live between Cognac and Paris.
The town draws travellers who want to understand how cognac is made. Many look for a family estate as well as the big tours. A precise Google Business Profile and a visit page in two languages let them choose you.
Around Segonzac, Jarnac or Rouillac, estates welcome visitors by appointment. That detail must be written everywhere, with a phone number and the possible days. Visitors won't drive twenty minutes unless they are sure to be received.
Charente residents themselves look for a producer to buy from or to take friends and family to. A page that clearly says where you are, when you are open and how to order speaks to them, half an hour from your door.
Beyond Google
Travellers and buyers now prepare their choice with an AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral. A couple writes, for example: “we're spending two days in Champagne in September, which family house should we visit to understand how it's made?”. A foreign wine merchant asks which producers in a region sell for export. The AI answers with a short list and sometimes names houses.
It picks the ones whose practical information it can read: visits by appointment, length, languages, opening season, type of production, countries delivered to. It cross-checks them with your Google Business Profile, tourism websites, guides and the press. A house that writes “family estate, winemaking on site, visits in French and English by appointment, shipping within Europe” is easy to cite. I stick to these facts, with no phrasing that would encourage drinking.
Question asked to an AIWe're spending two days in Champagne in September. Which family house should we visit to understand how it's made?
Three options for planning this visit:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
None of these three houses exists. I built them to show different priorities. Yours will be defined after the audit of your website and your profile.
It sold everything to négociants and is starting to welcome visitors.
Its bottles rank better on resellers' websites than on its own.
It is looking for importers and its website only exists in French.
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
On broad searches like a type of wine or spirit, no. On your name, your cuvées, your village, visits and sales at the estate, yes. These searches concern you directly, and they are the ones I work on.
I stick to descriptive writing: origin, method, place, visiting and sales conditions. You give me your mandatory notices. If I have doubts about a sentence, I put it to you and you decide, with your legal adviser if needed.
No. They introduce you to travellers who wouldn't have looked for you. The aim is that those who type your name or your village can book with you without going through them.
Yes, if you want to develop visits or sales at the estate, even on a small scale. The work is then light: a profile, a visit page, a history page, a page explaining how to get your bottles. I won't propose an oversized project.
You tell me about your work the way you do in front of your visitors. My team writes from that interview. You correct and approve, because a technical error about your trade is unforgivable.
Rarely. I start with the pages foreigners read: the visit, the range, the trade contact. I add a language when a market justifies it. A small, well-kept section does more good than a full translation nobody updates.
I'm not trying to make them disappear from the results. I want the producer to appear alongside them, with a more precise page. You remain free to say where to find your bottles near the buyer.
The Google Business Profile often responds within a few weeks, which matters before the tourist season. Product pages and in-depth pages take several months. I promise neither rankings nor volume.
Yes, in most cases. I first check whether the tool lets us enrich the product pages, set the titles and manage several languages. I run my own online shops, in France and internationally. So I know these constraints from the inside.
Because I have fifteen years in the trade, four co-written books, and an agency co-founded near Cognac. I can work in every wine region, remotely or on site. The winemaker, the cellar master or the distiller is you. My job is to make Google read what you already know how to explain.
See also
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Together we look at where you stand on Google and in AI, and what should change first.
