Hotel & Accommodation SEO Services

Digital Marketing for Hotel Industry

Considering a new digital marketing strategy? While it’s well worth your time, SEO is only one piece of the puzzle. Whether they’re travelling from overseas, interstate or two towns over, people are always on the hunt for the best hotel.

If you operate in the Australian hotel industry, there’s no shortage of competition for guests and visitors. However, this doesn’t mean that you can‘t separate yourself from the pack.

Let’s cover some of the best digital marketing strategies available today

• PPC/Adwords: When people search for “hotels in Sydney” or “hotels on the Gold Coast”, pay-per-click marketing can propel your hotel to the top of the results. What’s more, this approach allows you to target these ads to certain demographics, locations, and audiences.
• Email and mobile marketing: Unlike the long-term approach of SEO, these methods market your hotel directly to the user’s device, whether it’s a computer, a tablet or a phone. This is also a great way to encourage previous visitors to return back and stay again.
• Social media: Social media is now ingrained in the fabric of our society, and travel related posts really cut through and connect with users. From short-form content to visuals and targeted ads, there’s a world of digital marketing opportunities for your hotel.
• YouTube SEO: Travellers love to be able to visualise their hotel experience, and YouTube is the perfect platform to showcase the best elements of your hotel or accommodation service.

What are Hotel & Accommodation SEO Services?

Regardless of the location you have in mind for your next trip, there are plenty of hotels, motels, lodges or even rental properties that are vying for your attention. Considering the cutthroat competition online, hotels need to have a well-optimised website, with engaging content and exceptional user experience.

These aspects will ensure that your website visitors find the right information necessary to make informed purchase decisions. After all, in this journey of converting a visitor into a customer, you will need to focus on having the right amount of quality content so that you can outcompete other hotels in the vicinity, and get as many online bookings as possible.

All of this can be accomplished with the help of an effective and well-designed hotel SEO strategy.

Hotel & Accommodation SEO services include a wide array of SEO tasks and activities targeted specifically at boosting the traffic and online visibility of your hotel website. It will include different kinds of activities that you will be carrying out on and off your website that could impact your position on the SERPs.

Common SEO Challenges in the Hotel Industry

The hotel sector faces unique SEO hurdles, including evolving consumer expectations and frequent changes in Google’s algorithm. Effective Call-to-Actions (CTAs), adapting to the latest SEO trends, and staying ahead of the competition are vital. We address these challenges:

• Inconsistent CTAs: A lack of clear, compelling calls-to-action can result in missed opportunities for guest engagement and bookings.
• Pandemic-Related Search Trends: Understanding and adapting to changing search trends related to travel safety, hygiene standards, and flexible booking options during and post-pandemic are key to staying relevant.
• Google Algorithm Changes: Regular updates to Google’s algorithm mean hotels must continuously adapt their SEO strategies to maintain rankings.
• High Competition: With many hotels vying for the top spots in search results, distinguishing your brand is more important than ever.
• Mobile Responsiveness: As more guests book via mobile devices, a mobile-friendly website is essential for effective SEO.
• Local SEO Optimisation: Hotels need to capitalise on local searches, requiring specific strategies to attract local and international guests.

5 Tips to Boost Your Hotel & Accommodation SEO

Now that you know why hotels and rental accommodations require SEO, and the various benefits that you stand to gain from the strategy, let’s get more actionable.

While we could always go into detail about “how to do hotel SEO”, we will now focus on some of the most important SEO tips for hotels. These are easy tips and best practices that you can implement to get the best out of your SEO strategy.

#1 Optimise the User-Friendliness of Your Hotel Website

Improving the user experience of your hotel website is truly one of the best things you can do for its performance. And relax, it does not necessarily need to involve HTML and coding or require a developer.

If you are hotel is a part of a major hotel chain, maybe you need more control over your website design. But even then, you can always take care of certain aspects that can improve your search engine ranking and performance, while elevating your user experience.

This is the time to ask yourself some very pertinent questions such as

• Does my website load quickly enough?
• Are all my pages getting indexed and attracting traffic?
• Does my website function well on a mobile device?
• Is my website easy to navigate and get information from?
• Are all the elements of my website performing as expected?

To ensure that these aspects are taken care of, you should ensure that your website is formatted correctly and that all your HTML tags are defined correctly. You should also consider compressing image and video files, which can otherwise slow down your website.

#2 Create High-Quality and Valuable Content

Your website can have one of the most functional and user-friendly designs possible, but that will still not be enough to make your website perform if you do not have the right content. Your website content can make or break your performance and should go hand-in-hand with your other SEO efforts.

Since Google assigns so much importance to content, it is only natural that you should prioritise it along with your SEO efforts. While your hotel may not require detailed blog posts at regular intervals, you will still need effective landing pages and web pages to convince potential customers.

Invest into making your content as high-quality as possible, and focus on providing all the information that a potential customer would be seeking before booking a room.

Here, you want to ask yourself questions like:

• What are the primary factors that a customer would consider for booking a room?
• What questions might potential customers ask?
• What are the biggest concerns or pain points that my customers may have?
• Do we have enough information on our website to empower their booking decision?

You will need to specifically publish information about the amenities you offer, the location of your hotel, and how you can help them with their travel itinerary.

#3 Focus on Your Off-Page SEO Efforts

What you do outside of your website and how well you do it, is just as important as what you do on your website. These are important considerations, especially for hospitality businesses. It is a vital part of your hotel website SEO.

For starters, you will need to ensure that your Google Business Profile is completely updated and optimised. It may sound like a simple thing that will make a huge difference to your website’s performance.

Your Google Business Profile is a free online business listing that every business should create and optimise — regardless of your industry. So, if you have not already done so, you should set up your Google Business Profile, completely fill it out and optimise it with high-quality pictures. You should also consider digital PR even though that is completely different from SEO.

Link building is another thing that should absolutely be in your arsenal when you are implementing an off-page SEO strategy. Your backlink profile will go a long way in building your online reputation, as well as convincing search engines to rank your website higher.

You can also register on popular online directories to get access to more customers, and generate more booking for your hotel.

#4 Be Smart About Your Keywords

Finding relevant keywords may be important for your website performance, however, conducting smart keyword research trumps conducting a comprehensive one.

If you end up focusing your keyword research and all your efforts on generic terms such as “sydney hotel” or “hotel in adelaide”, the chances of getting your Magento website ranking high just based on it are slim to none. You will need to complement these keywords with highly targeted long-tail keywords, and other keywords with different kinds of search intent.

Remember that you are also competing with online travel agencies and hotel booking websites such as Expedia, TripAdvisor and Booking.com. So, you will need to use a lot of keywords while not losing sight of the importance that readability holds for your content.

Avoid using generic SEO keywords for hotels, and use the right combination of generic keywords with highly specific ones.

#5 Leverage Highly Effective Landing Pages

You should never underestimate the power of a well-optimised and highly conversion-worthy landing page. If you get it right, you can ensure that customers who land on your website do not have to look too much for necessary information and find everything they need to make booking decisions.

Landing page optimisation can generate positive results for hotel businesses as they depend on online transactions and bookings. Getting the right kind of information to the customers, while being transparent about your hotel policies and amenities will help them compare and make booking decisions easily.

You will also want to include more transactional and high-performing keywords in these pages so that customers can find this page easily and proceed with their booking.

Climb Up The SERPs With Hotel SEO

Regardless of whether your hotel is a small bread and breakfast, or a five-star hotel looking for online prominence, you will need SEO to empower your marketing efforts. Nothing will boost your online presence, visibility and performance, the way an effective SEO strategy will.

Availing of hotel SEO services from a reputed agency can ensure that you can consistently build your online presence and reputation, while you keep your focus on your business. Supple Digital has an experienced team of professionals who can come up with a tailored SEO strategy for your hotel business. Get in touch with us.