How To Do SEO For Hotels
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a hotelier’s digital best friend. It exposes your brand to more event planners, corporate travel managers and group bookers. It also helps you maintain a competitive edge and brings in more business.
Although SEO is not complex, it does comprise several moving parts and ever-evolving trends. So you’d be forgiven if you’ve found it hard to keep up.
Read on and we’ll answer some of the key questions around SEO practices and how to ensure you’re maximising the opportunity.
Short for time? Scroll to the bottom to discover the key takeaways.
What is SEO?
Whenever you search for something on Google, how often do you click through to the second page of search results? Likely, you don’t even look past the top few results.
SEO is important because it helps your property’s website rank higher in search engines such as Google. It increases discoverability and generates more traffic to your site.
What’s the difference between organic SEO and SEM?
Organic SEO refers to Search that isn’t paid for and doesn’t involve pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or boosted/promoted posts on social media.
It’s a long game and will take you a few months of consistent efforts and some trial and
error to figure out what resonates with your audience before you start to see the results you want.
However, when your website is organically optimised, it’ll appear higher on the first page of relevant search terms, attracting more click-throughs, building brand awareness and developing digital leads.
Paid search (or Search Engine Marketing (SEM)) can help you see more instant results with sponsored (PPC) ads on search engine results pages (SERP).
This strategy benefits hoteliers with a budget who wish to target certain audiences or reach specific goals within a shorter period.
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Understanding PPC
When you search for something on Google, the first few results will likely say ‘Ad’ before them—these are PPC search ads or ‘pay-per-click.’
When you set up PPC ads to appear alongside relevant search terms, you will agree on a price to pay each time someone clicks your ad.
Google Ads is the most popular PPC ad platform in the world. Every time someone searches for something on Google, it selects from its pool of advertisers which ones get to appear on the page. Factors affecting placement include keyword relevance and the bid amount you agreed.
For a successful PPC advertising campaign, set your total budget, choose the most relevant search terms and craft creative, interesting, and clear ad copy. You’ll also need to create associated optimised landing pages to track how your campaign is performing.
How to maximise organic SEO with content
To organically optimise your website for free so that it appears on the first page of Google, ensure that every page loads quickly on both mobile and desktop and is optimised with content containing relevant, three-word phrases such as ‘hybrid event facilities’, ‘outdoor event space’, ‘luxury meeting rooms’ etc.
Next, build authority by creating original content that generates referral links, otherwise known as backlinks. These are links from other sites, back to your content because it’s considered reliable, useful or interesting.
While you can use paid marketing channels to help amplify the availability of your content, you can’t buy authority. Google sees these backlinks as votes of confidence in your digital presence.
So how do you get these backlinks and build your authority in the eyes of Google?
The answer: By gaining coverage in local, national and trade media, and by working with business tourism industry partners such as DMOs, DMCs and convention bureaux.
For example, if your hotel issues a press release that gets picked up by a trade magazine website, ask the journalist to include your links within the story. Plus, every listing your hotel has on venue sourcing or business tourism partner websites will add a backlink and help improve your SEO.
Alternatively, if you're creating regular site content about local attractions or recommending restaurants, ask the businesses you’re writing about to link to your articles.
Finally, the more relevant your content is to search queries, the higher your ranking will be—and the more visible it will be to planners, sourcing according to different criteria.
For example, do you want planners to see your hotel when they search for ‘incentive travel ideas’, ‘event planning tips’ or ‘meeting spaces near me’? If so, you’ll need to create relevant and regular content for these keywords and ensure it’s informative, helpful and enjoyable to read.
Website actions that will improve your SEO
Image optimisation
Include images with your content but ensure they’re optimised for search engine bots. They should be either jpeg or png formats and smaller file sizes so that the web page loads quicker.
Image alt text is important, too. The Alt text field in your website’s CMS asks for a description of the image. It gives search engine bots context about what the picture is. Use natural language and refrain from keyword stuffing.
Internal links
Include links to other pages on your website. This helps search engines crawl your site. Use sparingly though - having too many links on a page can overwhelm and create a poor user experience. Only include a link if it adds value to the reader and helps them to navigate your website.
Clear URLs
Check all your URLs to ensure they include a description of the content or page they’re directing users to. For instance, hotelname.com/events/outdoor-event-spaces is better than hotelname.com/events/45?=33xjcf90
Meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are the descriptive text that appears below the link on Google. They’re added to the CMS each time you publish a piece of content. Short, punchy descriptions will increase the click-through rates for each article.
Tagging
Tags are HTML elements used to denote certain parts of a webpage. Header tags should include a keyword and describe what the article is about. Title tags should be unique and relevant as they form the link preview and show in the browser tab. Article tags should be used to group content into different topics and to make your website more searchable.
Hoteliers must meet planners and bookers where they are - searching online. While an effective organic or paid SEO strategy requires ongoing effort, the rewards of increased brand awareness, higher website traffic and more group bookings make it worth the investment. Get the perfect blend of organic SEO and PPC, and your digital Search strategy will be.
Key takeaways
- SEO is essential for boosting your hotel's visibility to event planners and corporate travel managers, increasing brand awareness and driving more group bookings.
- Understand the distinction between organic SEO and SEM: Organic SEO builds long-term visibility without paid ads, while SEM provides quicker results through pay-per-click advertising.
- Maximize SEO effectiveness by optimizing website content with relevant keywords, improving site speed, using internal links, and ensuring clear URLs and meta descriptions.
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