More hotel guests choose their hotel based on results via Google than they ever have before. Subsequently, it is important for hotels to optimize their website and other online platforms within Google’s search rankings. This can be done through hotel search engine optimization services, which are most notably offered by digital marketing agencies. This review discusses hotel search engine optimization in greater detail, highlighting the importance of SEO for hotels and the type of results that you can expect.
Hotel Search Engine Optimization Explained
Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is a way to improve your hotel’s website ranking within Google and other search engines. This can lead to increased visibility with prospective hotel guests who search for terms such as “best hotel near me” or “pet-friendly hotel in [city]”.
Hotel search engine optimization is a broader term that includes a range of services. Most notably, hotel SEO services include (but are not limited to) technical SEO audit and cleanup, backlink acquisition, content marketing, and website development.
Technical SEO Audit and Cleanup
An extensive technical SEO audit shows you the overall SEO health of your hotel’s website, revealing any issues with your site health that should be addressed. After the audit process, your SEO agency can clean up the issues within your site (as well as external factors) to improve your ranking within search engine results pages (SERPs). Examples of technical SEO cleanup tasks include:
- Upload or update XML sitemaps
- Improve or add meta descriptions
- Optimize your headers (H1-H6)
- Remove duplicate content that affects site health
- Improve the loading speed of your website
- Optimize text to HTML ratios
- Fix pages that have uncached CSS
- Check for 404 errors and remove broken links
Of course, the above list includes examples of types of technical SEO tasks that your hotel’s website may need. Every website is unique, and the SEO cleanup process should be personalized. Subsequently, it is important to stay away from SEO agencies that offer cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approaches to technical SEO.
Backlink Acquisition
Google determines where to rank your website based on a variety of factors, not the least of which is how legitimate they find your website to be. One of the primary factors that are used to determine the legitimacy of your website is the number of reputable websites and blogs that mention your website, specifically in the form of a backlink. A backlink is a hyperlink that points to a specific webpage.
Subsequently, a common service that is offered by SEO agencies is backlink acquisition. This involves backlink outreach to gather more hyperlinks on other websites within your industry that point to your website. It is important that these backlinks are reputable and “white-hat,” meaning they are obtained by organic and natural methods such as guest posts and registration with directories, rather than paying for links or spamming forums (for example).
Content Marketing
Content is the king as it pertains to search engine optimization; content is essentially the currency of the internet. This can be in the form of blog posts, service pages, infographics, paid content, guest posts, social media promotions, and more. SEO efforts typically involve some form of content marketing to help improve rank positions and overall traffic from organic Google searches.
Website Development
Web design and development can play a role in hotel search engine optimization as well. The fact is a website that is poorly designed with hard-to-read text and slow load times leads to higher bounce rates, fewer clicks on the site, and other measurable SEO factors that can affect rank positions. Subsequently, website improvements are most often involved with hotel SEO campaigns.
The Importance of Hotel Search Engine Optimization
Hotel search engine optimization is important as it provides you with an advantage over your local hotel competitors, especially when you choose a reputable hotel SEO agency or take the time to learn and perform effective SEO efforts yourself. As mentioned, more guests than ever before are finding the hotel of their choice via Google search, and having visibility on Google search rankings is essential in 2022.
Additionally, local SEO is particularly important for hotels. Unlike an eCommerce store that sells their products throughout the United States and abroad, hotels rely upon in-person guests, which are usually from out of town. Local SEO focuses on the optimization of your website to rank for local search terms rather than broader search terms.
Get Started With Hotel Search Engine Optimization With a Free SEO Audit
Tunl Agency offers hotel search optimization services to help hotel owners and marketing managers optimize the way their website and other online platforms rank within Google. To learn more about hotel search engine optimization and to determine if Tunl Agency is the right marketing agency for you, call us or send us a message today to schedule a consultation.
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