Hotels can leverage SEO by increasing their presence in search engines. A well-executed SEO strategy may lead to increased visitors and bookings.
Implementing an effective hotel SEO strategy can be challenging for multi-location brands. By following these 10 pillars of successful SEO strategies, hotels can increase online visibility and access a wider audience.
1. On-Page Optimization
Hotel chains are an excellent example of international businesses that can reap significant benefits from implementing SEO strategies across multiple locations. While most hotel digital marketing efforts focus on promoting local events, amenities, and services to attract and convert groups, SEO also plays a pivotal role in increasing search visibility and ranking across their entire chain.
On-page optimization is an integral component of any search engine optimization (SEO) campaign, as it involves tailoring individual pages on a website to ensure they both relevant and provide an enjoyable user experience. While keyword stuffing (repeatedly including keywords on a page) could reduce search engine ranking in the past, on-page optimization nowadays utilizes targeted keyword placement while still offering users meaningful experiences.
One of the key on-page optimization strategies involves conducting keyword research to learn which terms your target audience uses when searching for hotels in your region, then optimizing title tags and meta descriptions with those terms. User journey is also key, so make sure your guests can easily navigate from page to page within your website.
Implement a clear measurement plan so you can effectively track the success of your SEO efforts. Traffic is one obvious metric; however, it is also essential to monitor metrics like Conversion Rate (CRT) and Average Order Value (AOV) so as to gauge whether that traffic is meeting group business KPIs.
2. Content Marketing
Content written for hotel websites and blogs should be tailored specifically for their target audience, with local search terms in mind. SEO plays a huge role in multi-location hotel brands; even when using similar interior layout, each location might use different keywords when marketing to attract customers, since search terms often include localized results first.
Travelers need as much information about a new destination before booking, so it’s crucial that your website provides useful content about local attractions, walking tours, historic sites and events that attracts travelers while also increasing organic visibility online. This will increase bookings while simultaneously increasing organic visibility online.
Keep quality over quantity in mind. Google algorithms reward websites that possess in-depth insight into a topic, which means you should avoid publishing too many blogs every month but make sure the ones you do create are of superior quality.
Setting clear, SMART goals will add clarity to your content marketing strategy and give each piece of content you publish an objective purpose.
Outranking is a content planner designed to make content planning more efficient. You can set priority for SEO content so you can focus on producing the most impactful pieces at any given time, keeping you on track and ensuring your strategies produce results. In addition, Outranking’s planner features predefined workflow statuses you can customize according to your needs, Kanban views, and an integrated tool for creating SEO content briefs – everything needed for an efficient content planning process!
3. Link Building
Link building is one of the best hotel SEO strategies, as it involves gathering links from other websites back to your own, which in turn increases search engine ranking. Success with link building depends on various factors including competition and content quality.
To build links, there are various techniques you can employ such as guest blogging, social media marketing and content marketing. The goal should be to produce original and shareable content that draws both search engines and humans to your site – something other websites will want to link back to!
SEO keyword research can be time consuming, yet essential for producing content that answers traveller queries and draws traffic to your hotel website. Outranking’s priority-setting feature can make this process faster and more efficient while making sure your content meets both target audiences and business objectives.
As mentioned previously, intent trumps volume when it comes to selecting keywords most relevant for your hotel or resort. Even low-volume keywords with high intent might still be worth investing time in even though they won’t generate as many clicks as more popular options.
Technical SEO strategies for hotels and resorts ultimately revolve around improving search engine rankings to better reach group booking customers you desire. By making simple modifications to your hotel website, you’ll attract more relevant traffic while expanding visibility among event planners. To learn more, sign up for our FREE training course: SEO 101 for Hotels & Resorts!
4. Social Media Marketing
Hotels know it is essential to be active on social media channels in order to effectively market their business. Social media allows them to build brand recognition cost-effectively while simultaneously staying in contact with existing customers while reaching out to attract new ones.
Social media marketing’s key advantage for hotels is that it allows them to target specific demographic cohorts. For example, this allows them to target age groups, travel dates or any other criteria which would impact a guest’s decision about staying there – preventing unwelcome visits that have no interest in booking and thus potentially decreasing conversion rate.
As mentioned previously, having a social media strategy that considers seasonal trends can have a tremendously positive effect on how a hotel performs in terms of bookings. It’s key that it positions the hotel well during peak times to increase bookings and stay ahead of competition.
Utilizing SEO as a marketing channel for a multi-location hotel is also beneficial, as it helps improve website visibility on search engines, leading to increased organic traffic and conversion rates, ultimately increasing overall hotel revenue.
SEO can also enhance the user experience of hotel websites by making it easier for visitors to find information they are seeking. This can be achieved using keyword research to identify popular search queries and incorporate them into site design; other techniques that can enhance this journey include canonical tags and maintaining a clean URL structure.
5. Mobile Optimization
As more than half of all searches now take place on mobile devices, it’s essential that hotel websites and blogs optimize content for search engine algorithms using outranking’s SEO content optimization and writing platform. With outranking’s platform you can ensure pages optimized with search terms specific to target audiences and search engine algorithms are present on each of your pages.
Add keywords to image alt text is another effective way of increasing SEO at your hotel. Just ensure the balance is struck between keyword density and natural-sounding text as overusing keywords could harm SEO efforts.
Implementing an SEO strategy can help hotels and resorts draw relevant traffic, increase visibility online, and ultimately boost their bottom line. Unlike traditional forms of marketing, SEO provides tangible results that can be tracked.
Hotel chains with multiple locations must take special care when it comes to local SEO to ensure each location receives equal search traffic. One effective strategy for accomplishing this goal is creating a URL structure that makes it simple for visitors to identify which location each page corresponds with; CubeSmart does this well by including each location within its slug URL for its pages.
Implementing an SEO plan is crucial to keeping up with competition in any business, be it in-house or outsourcing SEO to an agency. When selecting an agency to work with, choose one with experience in hospitality as well as flexible contract durations to suit changing needs and creative strategies that set your hotel apart from others. A good agency should also offer creative strategies which drive more traffic and bookings to increase the bottom line.