How Your Hotel SEO Can Increase Bookings

Your Hotel SEO is so often underestimated, but now it could be the key to increase your guest bookings in our post-pandemic hospitality climate.

Despite the increasing list of greek-lettered variants of Covid-19 appearing, your hotel will inevitably need new strategies in place to increase guest bookings. 

What Is Hotel SEO?

Right now it is your best friend.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and it covers a broad variety of tools and tricks that hoteliers can make use of. But at the most basic level it is a way to make your hotel appear at the top of Google searches.

You have used Google before of course. You may even be familiar with promoting your hotel on Google. Well, the last time you searched for something, anything at all, you produced a list of results.

Did you bother scrolling to the second page? What about those results on the ninth page?

You didn’t even get a chance to see them, and that is what SEO is all about – putting you at the top.

How Does Hotel SEO Work?

Those results that you didn’t look at before were low down on the list for a reason. Either Google decided that they weren’t what you were looking for, or they forgot to improve their SEO. 

If your hotel SEO isn’t up-to-scratch, then Google misunderstands what your hotel represents.

That means that your hotel’s online footprint must be relevant and produce content.

Relevance

It is no surprise that you need to represent your hotel accurately. If you are a mountain resort you shouldn’t be including “beach holiday packages” in your SEO. You may increase traffic to your hotel website, but there would be no point. 

That is why it is more important than ever to identify your hotel guest. 

• What does your Hotel offer?
• What is your unique selling point (USP)?
• Are there valuable tourist attractions nearby?

These are just a few of the vital questions that you need to answer. From these, you can then build a highly relevant Hotel SEO that brings in guests by the dozen.

Produce Content

We live in a digital world where information can be uploaded and read by potential guests at every moment and Google understands this. That is why part of SEO is staying up-to-date.

It is also why a blog is the perfect way to keep your SEO up and running.

There is a reason why even the giant tech companies keep pushing out blog posts. It is because even the best performing blogs have a time limit. They can become replaced with newer, more accurate ones.

As a hotel you do not need long, in-depth posts to stay current. You can even upload short reviews of your hotel that show potential guests the experiences that they will discover when they book with you.

Short but sweet posts will do the job perfectly well and increase traffic to your hotel website.

What Else Can Help Hotel SEO?

There are many facets to SEO, it isn’t just building a website with a strong online profile. It also extends to other platforms and other businesses. 

Tourism

Tourism is a brilliant selling point no matter where you are. You have attractions or events nearby that will help bring in hotel guests, so work your SEO with that in mind.

For example, once you have created a (short but sweet) article on a local event or attraction, make sure to share it with that organisation or your local tourist board. They will appreciate the promotion and share it on their social media or even their own website.

This creates something called inbound links to your website. This is just another metric that Google uses to rate your entire hotel website and place you higher up in search results!

Social Media

Thanks to the integration of technology, social media is so much more than funny cat videos now – it is another avenue of SEO.

Not only does engaging with guests via social media increase their connection with your hotel and make it more likely for them to return, but it also affects your SEO. Google’s search engine results page (SERP) also provides results for hotel social media profiles thanks to a combination of keyword tracking and hashtags.

Our Hotel SEO Side-note

Whatever you do – make sure that your hotel website is mobile-friendly.

According to Google’s own research, nearly 70% of visitors to your hotel website are looking at it from a mobile device. That many can be a waste of potential guests if your website is not optimised for mobiles.

We will do a section on optimising hotel websites for mobile devices in the future, but first and foremost, make sure that you improve your hotel website page load speed!

Regent Marketing Are Here To Help

As a hotelier you have an enormous workload to deal with, and part of that is knowing when to do something yourself and when to delegate.

Optimising Hotel SEO is something that is difficult, time-consuming and can take a while to see the results. Our partners at HubSpot prove that SEO is far cheaper than pay-per-click (PPC) adverts and also provides a greater return on investment than any other alternative.

So get in touch with a member of our team today – we will offer a completely free audit of your hotel marketing and identify your weak points. You should also check out our array of blog posts (hooray for SEO!) and read up on hotelier tips and tricks to optimise your hotel’s marketing strategy.