6 SEO Tips For Hotels And Resorts
Despite what some self proclaimed gurus say, SEO for hotels and resorts isn’t easy. Getting on the first page of Google is crucial if you want to generate visitors, depending on the research you read, over 90% of visitors won’t search beyond the first page.
We are going to assume you have your basic website up and running and you’re getting some SEO traffic, but nothing significant.
Here are a few SEO tips you should implement help your hotels and/or resort website increase traffic (and bookings) from Google.
Get Listed on All of The Services Google Offer
If you search for ‘hotels in New York’ on Google, you’ll see ads from Google (Google AdWords) and a Google Map with a select few hotels listed. By getting your hotel and/or resort set up on Google Plus and Google My Business you’re helping the search engines know you exist and therefore are more likely to appear in these results.
Get Rid of Duplicate Title Pages & Meta Descriptions
Find the photo above confusing? I would say yes because you don't know which "one way" is correct. The same goes for web pages!
Having duplicate Title Tags and Meta Descriptions on your web pages is also "confusing" for search engines (and people). If your page titles or descriptions are the same does that mean the content or "themes" of all of these pages are the same as well?
When you’re creating hotel web pages, many of the pages are going to be similar in terms of content, yet vague with their title and page descriptions by default. Google doesn’t like duplicate content so will not rank the majority of these pages.
You can get around this issue by manual editing the title and descriptions in your content management system. This creates more content indexed on Google and if you use some keywords in the title, you may find yourself ranking for some extra keywords.
We use various tools including the Screaming Frog SEO Spider app to keep track of any duplicate Title Tags or Meta Descriptions that may be on our clients' websites.
With your titles, people aren’t going to know your brand most likely so put that at the end of the description as seen below.
e.g. London Hotel Near Big Ben | Your Hotel Name
Interlink Logically Between Your Pages
When people land on your website, they want a site that is easy to understand and guides them through the website in a logical manner from gathering information about the hotel to being able to make a booking.
When the Google spiders crawl your website, they want an equally pleasing experience of being guided from page to page in a logical manner.
Every page on your website you want indexed on Google should link to other pages on your website, in a logical fashion.
It is also a good idea to link to other websites where appropriate too. As long as it’s helpful to the reader, this will not harm your rankings. It’s not a good idea to link to competitor websites as they are earning a backlink from you which we discuss later.
Optimise Your Image Files
If your website doesn’t load quickly, visitors will leave before you have a chance to hook them in with your well designed website showing your hotel in a positive way.
Photos are going to play an important part in the marketing of your hotel, so you need to optimise them probably. Large photo files can slow down a site significantly.
The best way to reduce the file size of a photo is by:
- Resizing all images to the appropriate size for your website (ask your webmaster for this info).
- Follow this up by compressing the photos with software like Lightroom or a plugin such as ShortPixel if you’re using Wordpress.
When you upload the photos to your website after these two steps, the loading time for each time will be reduced. The flow on effect meaning people are going to engage with your site longer, which is a good sign when Google looks at your site.
Target Long Tail Keywords With A Blog
Content marketing is a mainstream word now within the SEO world. In the simplest form, content marketing for SEO purposes is in the form of a blog. Before you start writing a blog, realise that if you want people to find your post via Google you want your article to be found.
Therefore, write content relevant to your destination and help people with good quality information. Once they are on your website, you have a chance to convert them into people coming to your destination and choosing to stay at your hotel or resort.
Long tail keywords have lower search volumes, but the customers are more likely to be further into the hotel booking process. For example, you probably won’t rank highly for ‘London Hotel’ as the budget for ranking for such a keyword is exorbitant. But, you may be able to rank for ‘boutique hotel in London near Twickenham’, assuming you are in fact near Twickenham.
You can also focus on keywords like ‘is London worth visiting’, or ‘things to do in London for kids’. Both keywords people are searching during the trip planning process.
Build Links To Your Website
Google has never (never will) released the algorithm they use for determining how they rank websites. But it is well known that links play a significant role in rankings. Getting links to your website isn’t easy, especially for hotels and resorts. There are plenty of link building strategies, you just need to find out the strategy that works for you the best. Here are three that can work.
Guest Posting: Reach out to other websites and asking if you could contribute a blog post to their website. You might write the ultimate guide to your city, a restaurant guide or something similar. Whatever you write, make the blog content awesome so the website owner wants to promote the piece.
Choose the website you are guest posting on carefully as you want readers who are potential customers coming to your website. Not randoms who have zero interest in your hotel.
Getting PR: This isn’t easy but possible if you have a captivating story the media will want to cover the story. Anything that establishes a feel good record of some description can work. Maybe you could hold a competition between your staff and a few members of the public to have a race to make a bed from scratch the fastest. You’ll need to get creative, then go out of your way to create buzz about your idea. Once one media outlet covers your story, the potential of others jumping on board is real.
Directories: Directories are a quick way to gain links, but not all directories are valuable with Google punishing some. There are plenty you can get on though. If you’re a London-based eco hotel, start searching for all directories related to London businesses and eco businesses. If the directory is relevant to your hotel in an obvious fashion, it’s a good place for you to be.
Wrapping Everything Up
Some of these SEO tips for hotels and resorts can be implemented within minutes, some days, and others like link building will be on going
The key is to realise that results from Google won’t happen overnight. When you have Google Analytics and Google Search Console setup (do this if you haven’t), you can track your progress which will help you figure out what is and isn’t working.
By Roy McClean