Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is crucial to the success of any hotel business. A good SEO ranking allows you to show up higher in search results, get more quality traffic and ultimately improve your direct bookings. A higher ranked position in Google’s SERP is important in achieving this goal. Websites that rank on the first page of Google attract more than 90% of all traffic for a given search. If your hotel’s website shows up on the second page, potential traffic is limited to around 5%, and hovers around 1% on the third page. With this in mind, a solid SEO strategy is crucial for every hotel to sell its rooms and venues.
If you’re looking to get started on SEO for your hotel, we’ve created a list of 4 easy hotel SEO tips to get you ahead.
If you are trying to rank a hotel microsite in Google, it would take a lot of time and effort to rank for popular and competitive keywords such as ‘hotel + city’ related terms, as you are competing with big OTAs, Metasearch, and Magazine websites with huge budgets for their digital marketing efforts. Where you can capitalise is targeting keywords that are location-specific that include attractions and services that showcase key highlights of your hotel the public might not be aware of without SEO in place. Though the search volume for these type of keywords are generally lower, they are less competitive and way easier to rank for.
Below are samples for location and attraction specific keywords that might highlight your hotel’s USP.
*Source: SEMRush, monthly search volume average
Having an optimised title and description for each page will encourage potential customers to click on your website over a competitor’s. The title is the first and most visible item listed, and the one you want standing out. Subsequently, a well-written meta description will have a higher Click-through rate (CTR) than a generic one.
What does your website’s home page look like? Are there plenty of images of hotel rooms and amenities? Is the location of your hotel listed and displayed? While important, these items could backfire unless optimised correctly. Excessive content means a slower load time, which hurts your SEO ranking. Google monitors server response time when a user attempts to load one of your pages. If there is content clutter, reducing or compressing media to encourage a faster load time is crucial. (Website Monitoring Tool)
Creating rich content enables hotels to boost SEO ranking. Articles, blogs, videos or other features attract and educate guests on what they can expect during their stay with you. Keyword optimisation is a must. The keywords you want to rank for should be optimised within your content. For instance, to achieve a higher ranking for the phrase “luxury hotels in Singapore,” you can publish a blog post on the topic and use that opportunity to incorporate those keywords.
If you would like to receive your free SEO audit, contact us today!
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