An effective hotel website can showcase your hotel’s personality and encourage prospective guests to book stays. However, simply having one is not enough; content must also be SEO-friendly for maximum exposure.
Optimizing content to be search engine-friendly doesn’t need to be time-consuming or challenging – here are a few pointers for getting started.
1. Guest Blog Posts
Hotel SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an increasingly sophisticated field that involves optimizing multiple aspects of a hotel’s online presence and reputation. Cvent has noted: “Hotel SEO can be defined as the strategic optimization of all these areas.”
Blog content is one of the best ways to drive visitors to your hotel website and provide valuable information to potential customers. Your hotel blog also serves as an engaging space where you can tell your brand story in an engaging manner and demonstrate what makes your hotel special.
Quality over quantity is key when it comes to hotel blogging; guest blogging just for the sake of it won’t do any good unless you make the time and effort to curate high-quality articles that provide readers with value. Furthermore, focus on topics your guests care about by targeting popular search terms related to experiences you provide them.
By adding internal links to your blog posts, adding internal links can help your hotel website gain greater SEO rankings. Internal links indicate contextual relations between two web pages and allow search engines to better comprehend your site structure.
Reaching out to influencers passionate about your hotel can be an effective way to promote it and generate more engagement among your audience. Partnering with influencers who share your brand can bring new qualified leads that ultimately boost sales and revenue.
Your hotel blog is an invaluable way to showcase local attractions and events that your guests will love. For example, if your hotel is situated in Manhattan, an engaging blog post on top independent bookstores would help bring in guests searching for things to do while giving your hotel an edge for relevant search queries.
2. Articles
As a hotelier, you have an incredible opportunity to create evergreen content that will drive bookings over time. Your website, social media and blog posts all represent avenues through which this kind of traffic may arrive; examples might include everything from room descriptions and local events or attractions happening nearby to blog posts that provide more than one angle of coverage of them all.
Finding keywords people are searching for and creating content around those searches is key to marketing a hotel effectively. Think about why people might be searching for particular things – for instance, they could be near an event or festival that attracts specific types of travelers (e.g. college reunions and alumni events), so plan accordingly in order to attract those guests that need your hotel.
Make your content mobile-friendly a top priority of hotel SEO to capitalize on people using mobile devices for most of their online activity, and Google prioritizes sites that adapt to meet users’ needs and screen sizes. A mobile-friendly site will rank better in search engine results while increasing the number of visits to your site.
Writing an effective blog post can be daunting for newer bloggers. A helpful starting point would be an outline with headline and keyword research included, and an eye-catching headline to accurately reflect the content of your post. Headings also play an essential role, helping Google’s web crawlers recognize different sections. H1 headings should provide a general overview, followed by H2, H3, or H4 subtopic headings as necessary; photos will make sure that your hotel content stands out from search engine results.
3. Press Releases
Use SEO press releases effectively and you’ll increase brand recognition and website traffic. A press release can highlight new products or services, events that are happening soon or any newsworthy information that’s pertinent to your target audience. Integrating keywords naturally while optimizing headlines, meta descriptions and adding visual media are critical elements in unlocking its true SEO potential.
Press releases can be an effective way to attract local attention from journalists and influencers who will then promote your hotel to their audiences. When properly written and distributed, press releases also generate high-quality backlinks – an integral component of successful search engine optimization strategies.
Google gives priority to businesses listed in its business directory, so having a complete and accurate listing on your website is of vital importance in local search. Furthermore, all contact and other data that appears on other online directories – like Google My Business and others – must be consistent with what appears on your own site to send a clear signal that your business can be trusted.
Your press releases’ success ultimately depends on their appeal to readers, so craft content that embodies your hotel’s personality for optimal results in creating an effective PR strategy.
4. Social Media Posts
Social media plays an integral part in providing SEO-friendly content for hotel websites, providing opportunities to increase engagement and conversions while raising brand awareness. By strategically posting relevant tweets or Facebook updates on these networks, hotels can utilize them to expand brand recognition while simultaneously increasing website conversions and engagement rates.
Posts about local food and activities are an effective way to engage your audience and show that you care about their opinions. Try posting images from Instagrammable spots around town, as well as architectural features with visually-interesting designs. A popular type of post involves asking a question and answering it; this allows for engagement while simultaneously showing respect.
Social media posts for hotels should focus on being repurposed across channels, to avoid creating unique posts for each channel and potentially leading to less than ideal results.
Attract engagement by posting content that features calls-to-action such as inviting users to book accommodations, sign up for your newsletter, or explore special offers. Calls to action play an integral role in increasing visibility and driving bookings for hotels.
Make sure that all social media posts include keyword-rich alt text. This text appears when no images are visible and allows search engines to read your content more effectively.
Optimization is a key part of an effective SEO strategy and should be included in all social media posts from your hotel. Luckily, optimising content with plugins or tools that specifically cater to hotels makes the task easy; alternatively, consider investing in a hotel website builder specifically tailored for hotels to automate this process.
5. Video
Content strategy for hotel websites is key to making them stand out online. Thankfully, there are various SEO-friendly strategies you can employ to boost rankings and expand visibility.
One of the most effective strategies is creating visual content. Utilizing images, videos and virtual tours on your site to showcase what makes your hotel special can build trust with potential guests and lead to more bookings.
An effective way to optimize your website is through building internal links. These internal links connect pages on your site and demonstrate their importance to search engines. To build high-quality inbound links, reach out to local businesses and organizations that your target audience might find attractive such as restaurants, tourist spots or events.
Link building is an integral component of any SEO strategy and especially important for hotels. In order to obtain high-quality backlinks from credible sites with strong domain authority, which are more likely to drive traffic and improve rankings than low-quality links such as blog comments, PBNs and spammy article directories.
Optimizing your website’s speed is of utmost importance, which requires decreasing image file sizes and making sure web pages load swiftly. A slow website can frustrate visitors while adversely affecting its search engine ranking.
Implementing hotel SEO best practices will give your website the edge it needs to succeed in this highly competitive landscape. By adhering to these tips, you can optimize your hotel website and increase its chances of claiming the top spot on Google search result pages.