Breweries and wineries compete for tap room visits, event bookings, and tour groups, all starting on Google. Learn the local SEO strategy that drives foot traffic and fills your event calendar.
A brewery owner in Nashville asked me last month: "Kevin, we have great beer, a killer taproom, and zero Google presence. Where do we even start?" Here's exactly what I told her.
Breweries and wineries are among the most visually compelling and community-driven local businesses in any market, and they're among the most underoptimized for local search. The businesses that consistently fill their tasting rooms and book their event spaces aren't necessarily the ones with the most awards. They're the ones that show up when someone searches "craft brewery near me" or "winery tour Nashville" on a Saturday afternoon.
If you operate in a different niche, our guide to local SEO for event venues is worth a read.
Brewery and winery searches come in two primary types:
Discovery searches: "Craft brewery near me," "winery with outdoor seating Nashville," "dog-friendly brewery Austin." These are people looking for their next experience, they have no specific brewery in mind.
Activity searches: "Brewery tours Nashville," "wine tasting events near me," "private event winery rental." These are higher intent, they know what activity they want and are looking for the right venue.
Both search types are valuable. Discovery searches drive immediate taproom visits. Activity searches drive event bookings, tours, and private events that are often higher-revenue visits.
Your local SEO strategy needs to be visible for both, which requires different content structures than a generic brewery service page.
📊 Flento Data: Breweries and wineries with experience-specific landing pages (tours, private events, outdoor seating) received 4.1x more weekend foot traffic inquiries from Google than those with a single homepage and no dedicated experience content.
Primary GBP category: "Brewery" or "Winery" depending on your primary product. If you're a retail wine store or bottle shop rather than a producer with a tasting room, use "Wine Store" as your primary category instead, the fundamentals in this guide still apply, but your category and content should reflect retail browsing rather than an on-site tasting experience.
Secondary categories to add: beer garden if you have outdoor seating, bar if your taproom functions as one, event venue if you host private events, and tourist attraction if tours are a major part of your business.
Your GBP description should reference the key decision factors for a taproom or tasting room visit: "Austin's award-winning craft brewery with 20 rotating taps, dog-friendly patio, and live music every Friday. Taproom open Wednesday through Sunday. Tours available weekends by reservation."
That description addresses the most common filtering criteria, what's on tap, outdoor seating, pet policy, entertainment, and hours, in 750 characters.
Photos are critical in this category. Customers making a "where should we go tonight?" decision are looking at photos intensely. Post taproom interior and bar setup shots, the outdoor patio or beer garden (especially important for dog-friendly and weather-dependent searches), close-up beer and wine shots that look genuinely appetizing, events and live music, tours in progress, and staff team photos.
Update GBP photos weekly, especially seasonal outdoor photos. A summer patio photo posted in February is still compelling; no outdoor photos at all tells customers you don't have outdoor seating.
🔥 Quick Win: Add your tap list or current wine flights to your GBP Posts section weekly. "What's on tap this week" posts generate high engagement, signal active management, and give Google fresh content to associate with your listing.
Create separate pages for each experience your taproom or tasting room offers:
Taproom / Tasting Room page: What's on tap or in flight, hours, seating options (indoor, outdoor, bar seating), pet policy, food options. This is your highest-traffic page, make it complete.
Tours page: Tour types offered (self-guided, guided, VIP), duration, reservation requirements, group size limits, what's included. Add a booking widget or clear reservation CTA.
Private Events page: Buyout options, capacity, catering partnerships, AV capabilities, deposit requirements. This page is for the corporate event planner and the couple looking for a rehearsal dinner venue.
Dog-friendly page (if applicable): This sounds niche, but "dog-friendly brewery [city]" is a high-volume search in every US metro area. A dedicated page targeting this search terms specifically captures visitors who filter for this attribute.
⚠️ Common Mistake: Listing all experiences in a bulleted list on the homepage. Each experience type has a different buyer with different questions, give each one the dedicated page depth it deserves.
Craft beverage businesses have a natural review request advantage: their customers are having positive social experiences in the taproom itself. The best review request is made before the customer leaves.
In-venue QR code approach: Place a small card or table tent with a QR code linking to your Google review page. A simple message: "Loved your visit? Tell Google about it, it helps us connect with more people like you." This passive approach generates reviews throughout the day without requiring staff to make individual requests.
Digital follow-up: If you capture email during events, tours, or via a loyalty program, send a review request within 24 hours. The window of enthusiasm is shorter for hospitality businesses than for service businesses, capitalize on it while the experience is fresh.
Ask reviewers to mention the specific beers or wines they enjoyed, the atmosphere (patio, live music, and so on), and the occasion, a date night, a birthday, a dog outing.
These mentions are keyword signals that improve your relevance for experience-type searches.
💡 Pro Tip: A table tent review request that says "Rate us on Google and we'll put your name on our Wall of Fame next visit" creates both a review incentive and a return visit reason, though confirm this approach is compliant with Google's review policies before implementing.
Events and tours represent a high-value, highly searchable segment of brewery and winery business. A dedicated content and schema strategy for your event programming can capture search demand that general taproom searches don't reach.
Event schema markup: Use Schema.org Event schema for every public event you host. This puts your events in Google's event search results, a separate search surface from local business results. Music events, trivia nights, beer releases, and wine pairing dinners are all eligible.
Tour page FAQ schema: Add FAQ schema to your tour page answering the questions prospects ask before booking: "How long are brewery tours?", "Do tours include beer samples?", "Can I book a private tour?", "What's the minimum group size?" These answers are prime candidates for AI Overview extraction for tour-related searches.
"Things to do" optimization: For wineries especially, positioning your tasting room as a weekend activity or date idea captures searches that aren't directly about wine. Pages with titles like "Best Wine Tasting Experience Near Nashville, Vineyard Tours Available" target the experiential intent that drives winery tourism.
🛠️ Action Step: Search "brewery tours [your city]" and "winery events near me [your city]." If you're not in the top results, create dedicated tour and events pages with appropriate schema markup, this is your fastest route into a search result type your competitors likely aren't targeting.
Brewery and winery citations extend into tourism, hospitality, and craft beverage industry platforms:
General: Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook Business Page, and TripAdvisor, especially for wineries in wine country regions.
Craft beverage specific: Untappd, a brewery check-in app with local search that's critical for craft breweries, Vivino for wineries, Beer Advocate, RateBeer, and your local tourism board directory (state and city tourism sites).
Tourism and hospitality: TripAdvisor, TripAdvisor Experiences and Viator for curated tour experiences, and local "things to do" guides.
Untappd deserves special attention for breweries: it has millions of active users who use it specifically to discover local breweries and check-in to taprooms. An optimized Untappd venue profile with accurate hours, tap list, and brewery information drives direct foot traffic from a dedicated craft beer audience.
Flento's Business Listing Management Software includes hospitality and tourism directories in its citation audit, so you can verify NAP consistency across Yelp, TripAdvisor, and craft beverage platforms alongside your standard local business citations.
The review management system works for taproom environments, the post-visit text review request, triggered by a loyalty app check-in or email capture, applies the same Review Velocity Method to hospitality businesses that drives rankings for service businesses.
✅ Done? Automate your post-visit review requests with Flento → [Try Flento free]
What are the most important keywords for brewery local SEO? "Craft brewery near me," "[city] brewery," "dog-friendly brewery [city]," and "brewery with outdoor seating [city]" are high-volume patterns. Tour and event searches ("brewery tours [city]") are lower volume but high conversion for bookable experiences.
How important is Untappd for brewery local SEO? Very important for craft beer-focused audiences. Untappd users actively search for local breweries within the app and on Google. An optimized Untappd venue profile drives both direct platform discovery and contributes to your citation footprint.
Should wineries list on TripAdvisor? Yes, especially in regions with winery tourism. TripAdvisor is where many visitors research wine country experiences before and during travel. A well-maintained TripAdvisor listing with recent reviews captures tourist traffic that Google Maps alone doesn't fully reach.
Can I use Event schema if I don't have a dedicated events page? Event schema can be added to any page where the event information lives. A dedicated events page is preferable, but even events listed in your GBP posts can have Event schema added to a corresponding website page.
How do I handle reviews from customers who drank too much and complained online? Respond professionally and briefly. "We're sorry your experience didn't meet expectations, we'd welcome a chance to make it right. Please reach out directly at [phone/email]." Don't argue with the specifics publicly, your response tone is what prospective customers evaluate.
