Home > Services >SEO for Hotels, Resorts, Vacation Rentals & Motels – Hotel SEO Strategies
SEO For Hotels and Resorts: Tips to Boost Your Revenue
Hotels and resorts are spread online everywhere like wildfire. If anyone searches for hotels or resorts on Google, then thousands of hotels will show up. So it is really important for your hotel/resort business to start using SEO strategies to grow your business.
While everyone is using SEO for their businesses, then why would you want to be behind. SEO can grow your website, rank it on top of Google search results which will eventually help you get more bookings in your hotels/resorts.
Also, SEO is good for hotels and resorts because it is much cheaper than any other marketing methods, mainly traditional marketing methods. SEO can bring you sales(bookings in your hotels and resorts) just the same way billboards, television advertisements, and print advertisements can, and also in less investment. The money you will save here, you can use that in your hotels for other purposes.
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How to do SEO for hotel websites?
There are many hotel and resort SEO tips and tricks that already exist, but we will share the most important and effective SEO strategies that could help your hotel/resort’s website to grow online.
- Define your target audience for hotels/resorts
- Finding proper keywords to use for hotels/resorts
- Use proper page Titles and Meta Descriptions for for hotels/resorts
- Write valuable website content for hotels/resorts
- Add Alt text in images for hotels/resorts
- Technical SEO for hotels/resorts
- Local SEO for news websites
- Monitoring the work of your news websites
- Structure your hotel/resort’s website properly
- Use social media to spread your hotel/ resort’s business
Define your target audience for hotels/resorts
This is the first step to practice SEO for your hotel/resort’s website: Fix your target audience.
For example: A hotel that provides adventurous activities might attract families with kids, even bachelors. A resort that provides leisure activities might attract travel groups and families too. AirBNBs might attract travelers, could be solo travelers or backpackers. Well-furnished hotels might attract businessmen who travel for work.
Once you decide your target audience, think of the queries that they will search for whenever they are looking for any hotels or resorts, which takes us to our next topic which is finding SEO keywords for hotels and resorts.
Finding proper keywords to use for hotels/resorts
When you are running a hotel or resort’s website, you have to focus on keywords and phrases that you use in your website content. Keywords are the terms or phrases that your audience usually uses while searching for hotel or resort rooms.
For example: If you run an Airbnb in San Francisco, then your target audience might use search terms like these:
- Airbnbs in San Francisco
- Tops Airbnbs in San Francisco
- Affordable Airbnbs in San Francisco
If you run a hotel In San Francisco then your target audience might use search terms like these:
- Hotels in San Francisco
- Hotels near Golden Gate Beach
- Hotels in San Francisco airport
- Hotels in San Francisco Downtown
- Hotels in San Francisco City Center
- Hotels in San Francisco Bay Area
- Hotels in San Francisco Union Square
- Hotels in San Francisco California
- Cheap Hotels in San Francisco
- Hotels near Alcatraz island
- Hotels near Ferry building
- Hotels near PIER 39
How to do keyword research and planning for hotel or resort SEO?
The relevant SEO tips for hotels and resort are as follows:
- Remember to include names of famous places of that specific city your hotel is in so that even when someone tries to find tourist spots, your website might pop up.
- List down all the keywords that could be used, then include all those keywords in your content/blogs.
- There are a few tools available like Google Keyword Planner, SEmrush, and ahref for finding the appropriate and less-used keywords. All you have to do is mention the keywords of that topic, then you will be provided with many keyword inspiration.
- Put the phrase you want to search about on Google Search bar, you will see that theri are many suggestions comping up. SO if you type Hotels in San Francisco there will be many suggestions and you can use each one of them too.
Try to include those sentences/phrases/key terms in your blogs etc as those are the terms that are searched by people.
For example, here you can see Google is suggesting these search queries
- Hotels in san francisco
- Hotels in san francisco downtown
- Hotels in san francisco near airport
- Hotels in san francisco city center
- You can also use the keyphrases that are provided at the end of the page. (Refer to the picture attached below.)
- Use long-tail keywords for your hotel or resort website: Using long-tail keywords is important because most potential customers use them to find specific information. So keep in mind to use extremely specific long tail keywords.
People might search “hotels in San Francisco” only to have a look at the hotels, but someone who searches “hotels in San Francisco near the airport” is more likely interested in staying at a hotel because they are planning a trip.
Use proper page Titles and Meta Descriptions for for hotels/resorts
The Page Title is for your audience to know what your website is about. The part in the image attached below is called Page Title.
A meta description is a brief tag that tells the customers about your website. You will see the meta description under the Title tag. Using a proper title tag and meta description can make your website rank well in Search Engine Results.
This part, under the Title Tag, is a meta description.
Write valuable website content for hotels or resorts
Always include a target keyword in your headings. Then add the same targeted keyword to the article’s first paragraph. Also, try to use at least keywords synonyms of your keywords in your overall article.
You can write articles, blogs, etc to attract your customers. For example, you can write articles or blogs on these topics for hotel or resort SEO:
- Things to do in San Francisco
- 10 places to visit in San Francisco
- Best restaurants to visit in San Francisco
- Top 5 clubs to visit in San Francisco
- Top things to do in San Francisco
- Top 10-nightclubs in San Francisco
- Best tourist spots in San Francisco
- Top 5 restaurants in San Francisco
- Best bars in San Francisco
Include specific keywords in your content to increase our website ranking. And if your content is interesting then there is a chance that the users can turn into potential customers.
Add Alt text in images for hotels or resorts SEO
When you visit the image section of the Google search, you will see alt texts placed under the images. As images cannot be read by search engines, it is important to put alt text in images so that Google can analyze and rank them as well. Without alt text, your website photos may not leave your website and may not even be noticed by your target audience.
The text displayed below the images is called Alt text. For example: In the first image it is written: 21 Best Hotels in San Francisco.
Technical SEO for hotels and resorts
The first part of technical SEO for hotels and resorts is to optimize your website’s loading speed. Using compressed images is the first step to it, as it will make your website laid and run smoothly.
The second step is to make sure that your website is mobile friendly. It should get aligned properly regardless of the customer device: be it mobile(android or apple) or tablet. The alignment mismatch should never happen, as users immediately lose interest in surfing through your website when it’s wrongly aligned.
Local SEO for Hotels and Resorts websites
Local SEO for hotels or resorts is done so that local people can find you. This will mainly be suggested for resorts. Because local people live around, why would they want a hotel to stay in? But if you have a luxury resort with a spa and other facilities, people would want to visit your resort mostly for weekends.
Local SEO means utilizing SEO strategies in such a way that If a user searches “best resorts near me“, “top resorts near me“, or “cheap resorts around me“, then your website can come up on the search engine result page.
How can you do local SEO for your hotel or resort?
Let’s find out every step that we can use to rank your hotel or resort locally:
- Put your business on Google My Business: It would help people to find you, and know about your resort or hotel address, phone number, and location with just a tap.
- Be sure that the location of your hotel or resort is marked correctly on Google Maps.
- Provide all the information like – parking, smoking area, availability of WiFi, etc.
Use local keywords and phrases for your content so that people around you or people searching for the service in your location can find you. Plus, use proper Meta Descriptions in your website, we have already discussed this point previously in this article.
Monitoring the work of your news websites
Here are some of the tips and tricks to measure your hotel and resort SEO performance:
Keep a record of your website, keep track of website views, bounce rates, and every other minute details about your hotel or resort’s website.
There are a few terms you should keep in mind while tracking your hotel or resort website work on Google Analytics:
- Organic sessions of your hotel/resort website: You will get all the details about how much traffic you are getting on your website through SEO works.
- Bounce Rate of your hotel/resort website: Low bounce rates show that the audience is interested in and enjoying the content you are providing.
- Average session duration of your hotel/resort website: It gives details about how long users usually stay on your website. You ought to look for a long average session duration. A longer session shows that more people are interested, which could result in more bookings.
Structure your hotel/resort’s website properly
People would never like a website that does not provide full information about a hotel or resort it represents. So make sure you add everything to your website.
Let’s list out a few things that are a must to put on your hotel or resort’s website:
- Working phone number of your hotels or resorts or Airbnb.
- Address of your hotels or resorts or Airbnb.
- Description of your hotels or resorts or Airbnb(About your establishment).
- Star rating of your hotels or resorts or Airbnb(Include positive reviews of previous customers).
- Surroundings of your hotels or resorts or Airbnb, including the temperature of the area.
- Multiple photos of your hotels or resorts or Airbnb(That’s what people want to see first while booking a hotel online).
- Typical room rates/price range of your hotel/resort/Airbnb
- Reception opening hours/check-in hours of your hotel/resort/Airbnb
- Map URL of your hotels or resorts or Airbnb.
- Features and services, such as a gym, spa, restaurant or pool of your hotels or resorts or Airbnb
Social media to spread your hotel or resort’s business
Social media is one of the best ways to rank your website higher by redirecting the audience into your website. You can do it by:
- Spreading the word about your hotel. You can post pictures, and make videos of your hotel or resort.
- Post offers and discounts on your social media platforms. This might attract customers to look more into your hotel or resort.
- Don’t think of it as a promotional platform. Give value to your customers, interact with them, and create a bond with the audience.
- Post positive feedback from customers and discuss the pleasant hotel experience of previous guests. People will feel a sense of trust in your hotel and if in the future they plan to visit the city your hotel is in, they will definitely think of your hotel first.
Remember these simple but effective hotel or resort SEO strategies that can help your website rank well in search engine results. So keep using these suggestions to improve the website for our hotel or resort and aim for higher rankings globally.