Hotel SEO refers to the search engine optimization of hotel websites. Hotel SEO intends to ignite a surge in ranking on a search engine results page (SERPs) to intensify the number of people that search engines like Google and Yahoo tend to send towards your hotel’s website.
The ultimate goal of SEO for hotels is for your hotel’s website to achieve number 1 ranking on Google search’s first page. The top-most result in Google receives 33% of the clicks, subsequently, the results are worth the investment.
Importance of SEO for hotels
Why does your hotel need SEO? SEO is important for any organisational body that entails dealing with people. If you desire to get straight bookings by the means of your website, you need more people to visit it and the best way to gain more traffic to your website is to achieve a high ranking on the search engines. Websites that appear on the first page of Google acquires 90% of the traffic, so, it is important to invest in an effective SEO plan which will not only help your website achieve a high ranking.
A full-proof SEO will also benefit you by:
- SEO can lead your website to have huge traffic all across the world.
- SEO targets high-intent users who are searching for hotels in your location, things to do, places to visit, this clears the fact that they are anticipating visiting your city and staying at a hotel.
- Hotel SEO services are now vital for everyone in the travel industry as searches for resorts and hotels are higher than ever in the past decade.
- SEO brings you bookings at zero commission as travellers visit your website directly from Google.
A good hotel SEO strategy will not only save your money spent on marketing but will also facilitate more bookings. You can finally say goodbye to your competitors.
How to perform SEO for hotels
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Identify the target audience
Identification of your target audience is the first step you take towards the execution of your Hotel SEO. You need to know your target audience – who are they? What do they like? and what is their booking pattern? Different hotels might have different target audiences.
For example, hostels may tackle audiences like solo travellers, budget travellers etc. whereas, resort 5-star hotels may tackle leisure travellers and families.
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Keyword research
Keywords are the most important components of SEO. Hotel SEO keywords are the phrases and terms your target audience uses to find hotel websites like yours.
If the location of your hotel’s location is in New York, your target audience is expected to search for these keywords such as “hotels in New York” “best hotels in New York” “cheap hotels in New York” and “hotels near New York airport”.
You can use many keywords research tools available such as Google keyword planner and Ubersuggest.
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Enhance website components (meta, title, URL)
The title, meta description and URL play a highly influential role in the SEO of your hotel website because only these 3 elements are exhibited on the search engine results page.
Page title
The page title is the caption displayed on your web browser tab that designates what your website/webpage is about.
The page title of your website should be SEO-friendly meaning;
- It should contain SEO keywords for hotels.
- Should be easy to understand.
- And should not exceed 50-60 characters.
Meta description
The meta description is the HTML tag that summarises your web page's contents. A meta description is shown right below the page title in the SERPs.
Ensure your meta description is SEO-friendly and must illustrate a precise depiction of your website. It must also contain a relevant keyword.
Webpage URL
URL is also a fundamental part of SEO hotel strategy. The URL of your webpage should be in relevance to your keyword and should be easy to understand.
Easy to understand URL: http://www.hotelname.com/king-rooms
Confusing URL: http://www.hotelname.com/rooms.php?pageid=12
Include targeted keywords in the URL but do not put in extra keywords.
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Step up your content game
The approach “content is KING” is a sure shot SEO strategy. When you have more relevant and well-expressed content the chances of ranking higher in the search engine increase. The reason is, with such content, searches are equipped with all the requisite information and create an engagement among your website and the target audience.
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Add Alt texts to your images
Alt image texts are alternate texts that emerge if an image is not able to show up. Adding alt texts to each image is very important because:
- Alt text provides context to your images so they can be indexed accordingly in the search engines.
- There are image search engines that are vitally important for the SEO of hotels. Image search engines are highly influential when it comes to ranking in the SERPs.
- Your image alt text should be SEO-friendly and should describe the image accordingly.
- Alt text should not start with “image of…” or “picture of...”
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Improve your website experience
Your website is paramount to your business. In other words, the quality of your website reflects on your online reputation. An impressive website to the eyes of the audience represents the foundation of your business.
Enhancing your website experience by improving the loading speed and making a mobile-friendly website is critically important. Writing and uploading high-quality content will be of no use if your website is taking ages to load.
Building an attractive and faster website is of utmost importance in hotel SEO. If you wish to focus on a better user experience for your audience, investing in your website will pay off.
Eventually, you can conclude that when you are executing SEO for your hotel, you are also consecutively doing hotel marketing.