If a customer was to search your hotel on Google (or on any other search engine), how long would it take them to find your site? Would you be the top result or would they need to work their way through a few pages?
If it’s the latter, then you’ve got some work to do.
In order to stand out from competition, and to bring in customers, you need to make sure your hotel is ranking well on search engines, which requires action.
When we talk about SEO, we mean search engine optimisation, which focuses on the organic positioning of your brand and website on Google and other search engines.
For hotels, it’s crucial that attention is given to SEO.
The more visible your website is to others, the more likely you are to attract customers and get bookings. So, boosting your SEO means boosting the position of your website on search engines and being easily findable.
It might sound daunting to some, but SEO doesn’t need to be hard work. To help you boost your hotel’s SEO, here are 5 tips you need to follow.
The first thing we need to focus on is keywords. These are the words of phrases that people use to find what they need online.
When people search keywords like 'hotels in X location' where does your hotel appear in the rankings? If you’re not the top result it means you need to add specific keywords or phrases within your website pages. Once these keywords are added to your page title, URL, or within the body of the copy, you have a better chance of appearing on Google's search results.
But let's go back a step - how can you find out which keywords to use? This calls for keyword research. Use free SEO tools like Google Trends or paid tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to help you find the keywords that have the highest and lowest search volume.
Don’t forget though, the higher the search volume, the higher the competition (because everyone will want to be the top result for the most popular search term) so it’s sometimes best to start with the middle ground.
A backlink is a link created when one website links to another.
If your hotel is mentioned in a blog post by partners or someone else, make sure that your website is linked within the copy. This means more people will be visiting your website, which then means more customers.
Google’s algorithm also considers backlinks very important when it comes to SEO ranking. The more backlinks your website has, the more desirable your website seems, which improves your ranking.
No one likes reading old, outdated content, especially not search engines.
Fresh content is favoured over older content, so you should make sure the copy on your website stands the test of time. It's okay to create evergreen content sometimes, but you should try to regularly update other content on your website. You can do this by rewording content slightly to include popular keywords, updating any links and adding updated research or stats where needed.
Another way to boost your hotel's SEO is by making sure your content is structured properly.
Search engines want to be able to read your content easily, so it's helpful to break it up with headers.
You've got the H1 which is the main title of your page, then H2 is a sub header. H3 and H4 etc are also sub headers that fit under H2.
Fitting information under the relevant headers will help search engines favour your website, which could boost your ranking.
The last quick tip to help you boost your SEO is about speed.
How long does it currently take for your website to load up the homepage? Does it take a good few seconds at least?
If your site doesn’t load quickly, your SEO ranking will be affected – search engines prefer sites where pages load quickly and rank them positively as a result.
Find out what your load times actually are and what you want them to be. You can then focus on speeding up loading time by reducing the file size of pages or compressing any images on your site. But don't worry - you can get a web designer to do this work for you as they'll know best.
Once you've implemented these steps, you should start seeing a difference in your SEO ranking. But don't forget it also takes time to get to where you want to be, so always be proactive.
