SEO For Hotels

When planning a trip, one of the first things many tourists do is look up hotels using search engines like Google or Bing. Your hotel might not show up high in the search results if you don’t have a solid SEO plan.

You may raise your search engine position and show up ahead of your local competitors by implementing effective SEO strategies.

This post will take you on a thorough exploration of SEO for Hotels, outlining what Hotel SEO is, why it matters, and the many useful tactics you can employ to improve your efforts and set yourself apart in the cutthroat industry.

What is SEO for Hotels?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the technique of improving a website’s position on search engine result pages (SERPs) for major search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing).

Hotel SEO is a combination of strategies and techniques intended to improve your hotel’s exposure in search engine results pages, or SERPs. In addition, SEO is a certain way to outperform your competitors. The goal is to increase the number of people who visit your hotel’s website through organic search engine results.

Why is Hotel SEO Important?

Search engines provide a list of results to your viewers whenever they conduct a search. The majority of the time, individuals will click the website that appears first because they think it will provide the greatest solutions to their questions. Backlinko survey data indicates that the top Google result receives 31.7% of all searches while only 2.2% of clicks are made to the bottom result on the first page.

Benefits of a good Hotel SEO

It is imperative to have an SEO plan that can propel you to the top of Google results pages, as these websites receive over 90% of all traffic:

• Organic traffic generated by SEO is free and constant.
• SEO works well for attracting customers with “high” intent; if they are looking for nearby hotels, activities, or destinations, it is likely that they plan to travel to your city and book a room there.
• According to statistics, searches for hotels and resorts are higher currently than they have been for the previous ten years, suggesting that SEO may be more crucial than ever.
• Travelers who find your website through Google can make commission-free reservations thanks to SEO.
• When weighed against more conventional forms of promotion, such as print or television, SEO can be a more affordable option for hotels looking to expand their customer base.
• SEO enables a hotel to focus on keywords that complement its features, services, and products.
• Local SEO makes a website more visible to users who are looking in a particular area. Hotels can especially benefit from this since it enables them to target travelers looking for lodging in their neighborhood.
• By offering excellent, relevant content, SEO may assist a hotel website in gaining the respect and authority of search engines as well as prospective visitors. Additionally, it might help your hotel establish a solid reputation in the neighborhood and draw in new clients.

How to Conduct SEO for Hotel Website the right way

Identify Your Target Audience

To optimize your hotel website for search engines, you must first identify your target audience’s characteristics, interests, and booking habits. For instance, if business or corporate travelers were your ideal target audience, they would love serviced apartments.

They could search online for ‘the best service apartment in your city’. Such is referred to as search phrases. Choose a few and define a main term that members of your audience frequently search for.

Conduct keywords research

Keywords are terms or searches that users enter in search engines to find your hotel. Make a list of the different search terms your target audience might use to find your hotel online.

There are many keyword research tools available like Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest. They are easy to get started with. All you must do is search by typing a keyword (or list of keywords).

There are typically two categories of keywords:

• Short-tail keywords: Short-tail keywords are brief. Because they are more generic, they typically have a large search volume. But because they are at a higher level, they may also face greater competition (e.g., Phoenix hotel).
• Long-tail keywords: These are better since they are more precise and provide more specific information about the user’s real search query. Since these are more specialized and so easier to rank for, they may have a smaller search volume but also be less competitive. (e.g., Phoenix hotel with airport shuttle and pool). You can also look up the terms that your rivals are using.

Optimize the URL, title, and meta description

URL

This is the address of your hotel’s website or a particular page within it. It is important because well-written URLs are memorable and can be retrieved by users via memory. Additionally, URLs containing keywords increase the site’s exposure in search results.

Title Tag/Meta Title

One of the most important on-page SEO ranking elements is the title tag. A title tag informs users about the purpose of your website or webpage and is the text that can be clicked in Google search results.

More importantly, the title tag helps search engines comprehend the content on your page so they may choose the most relevant result for the search term they are typing in.

How to make the most of your title tag:

• Include your focus keyword in the title tag.
• Simplify the content to ensure that both users and web crawlers can grasp it.
• The ideal length is between 50 – 60 characters.

Meta description

A meta description is the brief text that appears beneath your title tag and provides a synopsis of the information on the page. Because it offers more details about the page’s contents, it significantly affects clicks and the user experience even though it has no effect on rankings. It should include your main keyword and contain between 155 – 160 characters.

Optimize images and videos

A hotel’s SEO strategy cannot succeed without images.

Make use of high-quality photos.

Make sure every image on your website has an alt text.

Steer clear of large image sizes since they will slow down the loading speed of your page.

Create relevant content and incorporate keywords

Content is an essential part of any hotel SEO plan since it provides an excellent place to put the keywords you want to target. If you want to target a term like “airport hotel with shuttle in Phoenix,” for example, you might publish a blog post that repeats that phrase a few times or you could incorporate the phrases into your homepage or any other relevant page.

Always write content with the possibility of a potential customer in mind, and make sure each page is optimized for a single, distinct keyword. If the content aligns with the intended audience, it will propel your website to the top of search engine results pages.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website and server to make it easier for search engines to index and crawl your website, which will enhance organic ranks.

The ranking of a website might be harmed by technical faults. There might be a lot of errors, but the following are a few of the most frequent ones that, if corrected, will have the greatest effects:

• 404 errors
• Broken backlinks
• Poor URL structure
• Duplicate/thin content
• Poor internal linking
• Poor website architecture
• Missing metadata (page titles & meta descriptions)
• Missing H1 tags

Schema markup

Schema, often known as structured data, is a set of codes that makes it easier for search engines to comprehend certain information on your website. Schema is a crucial component of your SEO tactics and one of the greatest techniques to optimize a hotel website. It provides users with more ordered and relevant information.

You can include a lot of information in the schema markup of your website:

• Description
• An image of your hotel
• Features of the hotel
• Address
• Average room costs and/or range
• Hours of operation
• Telephone number
• Rating and review
• Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Sustaining an SEO strategy that is optimized is essential to sustaining the flow of reservations and attracting travelers to your hotel.

For hotel SEO services that will give you a competitive advantage over competitors, get in touch with us at Nvent Marketing for our customized, tested SEO solutions.