Local SEO Tips for Hotels

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There’s cut-throat competition in the hospitality sector. It’s important to market your property well. It will help you to stay ahead in your business.
What better place to start than the internet?
It’s easy to promote your business online. But, you should know how to drive traffic to your hotel’s website. And for that, you need to master the art of cracking SEOs.

1. Defining the Target Audience Helps in Building Local SEO

Whom does your property cater to depends a lot on what kind of property you own?

• A resort is often sought after by families that are traveling for pleasure.
• Corporate travelers prefer a hotel with business centers and conference rooms.
• Breakfast and beds and hostels are the go-to options for budget travelers and backpackers.

Once you know who your target audience is, it becomes easy to build a good SEO. It can drive traffic organically to your hotel’s website. Also, it will convert them into a business.

2. Keywords Are Important for Hotel Websites

Get your keywords right. It is the best way to get your hotel business rank at the top of search engines.

• What do customers look forward to?
• What are the unique services and comfort that you are offering your patrons?
• What is the USP of your business?

Do thorough research on these before building the website or remodeling it.

• List all the possible words that best describe your hotel.
• Include the destination, mention if it’s a luxury or budget property.
• Identify all the landmarks near it.
• Map out your property’s distance from the city center, among others.
• After all, the right keywords can make or break a website. So, draft all such keywords that reflect and define your hotel.

3. Optimize The Keywords to Drive Organic Traffic to the Hotel’s Website

Optimizing keywords is as important as researching them. You have narrowed down all the possible search terms that could divert traffic to your website.
But how do you extract the maximum from those terms?
That’s where Google’s My Business page helps. It describes your hotel in a nutshell. It gives people an overview of what you offer.
All you have to do is:

• type out your hotel’s name
• address and phone number
• fill out other details
• add images to boot

Make sure you fill in the homepage and all the service pages. (separate pages for the services you provide, like spa, restaurant, and tourism add-ons).
Use the right meta details and keywords. This optimization helps in earning your website high rankings.

4. An On-Point Page Title Is Important to Increase Visibility

You know what your property offers. But, how will your possible consumers know that?
That’s why it’s important to get the title of the webpage and description right.
These are the two main aspects of your hotel that will be displayed on the search engine. These determine if the user will click on your website or not.
Make sure to use your focus keyword. But keep it simple when working on a title that best describes your property. The title shouldn’t be more than 50 characters.
The same goes for the description – use the keyword and describe what your hotel is.
For instance, if you own a business hotel near the airport, your title should read:
Business Hotel Near XXX Airport | Name of the hotel
And the description should mention:
the facilities available on your property, like conference room, WI-FI services, restaurants, and boutique services.

5. Clean URLs Are SEO-friendly

A URL is the address of your website. Be clear with it, like how you’d be with your home address when writing it down for communication.
Like the title and description, the URL should also have a keyword. It should be precise and not have conjunctions and connectors. It’s good to use a hyphen instead of an underscore. But keep them to a minimum.
A good URL should end with the description of your hotel (like, https://XXX.com/king-rooms, and not have extra fluff beyond that).
If you have multiple pages for every service and facility your hotel provides, put them into separate folders. Do not dump them on the main page link.

6. Optimize Website Content to Boost Its Reach

Now that your website’s skeleton is ready, it’s time to fill it up with meaningful content. Remember, good content can boost your SEO ratings. Also, it will push the reach of your website.
Start by writing a synopsis of your hotel:–

• What kind of property is it?
• What amenities are available?
• What are the various room categories and charges, its USP, the neighborhood, the weather?

Add everything else that can help a guest decide that he wants to book with you.
The content has to be relevant, in-depth, localized, and user-friendly.
Your articles, blogs, promotional features, and other materials should most definitely include your keywords.
For instance, let’s suppose you have a property in Bali. Then, generate blogs on things to do in Bali and other related content.
Even if someone is searching the internet to find more information about Bali, they can land on our property’s site.

7. Structure Your Content for Better SEO

Headlines and subheads are as important as the page title because they help your customers search for what they want on your website. They make traveling through your website easier.
While finalizing headings and subheadings, keep the focus on the keywords.
The next thing you need to pay attention to is the schema. An important part of SEO strategy, structured data like:

• The description of your hotel on the website
• Address
• Contact information
• Photos
• Price range
• Front desk details
• Ratings and reviews
• List of frequently asked questions (FAQ)
• Details of your brand

It gives guests all the relevant details they need to help them make a booking. When it reflects on a browser, a well-structured schema boosts organic traffic to the website. Also, it increases credibility and improves its ranking.

8. Pay Attention to Images on Your Hotel’s Website

A picture is indeed worth a thousand words. Add images that best describe your property so that it attracts eyeballs.
Use good clarity, high definition pictures in the right format (you can choose to use JPEG, PNG, or GIF formats according to your needs). But remember to rename them appropriately.
The file name should contain your keyword and also be descriptive. Remember to use intelligent and definitive alt text to images. This is what the browser displays if problems are loading your website. So, by default, the alt text has to be a well-written tag.
The next important thing is to resize the image and place them on appropriate pages.
For instance, You should align photos of your hotel rooms on the page where you are talking about your property’s layout. And, not where you are talking about your in-house restaurants.
Photo-heavy websites should adopt the lazy loading technique. It helps the image to render themselves when primary content has finished loading. This doesn’t slow down the website.

9. Build Links to Boost the Credibility of Your Website

Nothing boosts customer reach and Google rankings better than citations and links.
You can register yourself with:

• Online yellow pages
• Hotel associations like AHLA
• Directories, or
• Facebook for starters

The citations are your hotel’s name, address, and number. It will give you more visibility on search engines. Google uses this to evaluate the legitimacy of your website.

Relevant : Importance of Citations on Local SEO

Then come the external links. You can connect with websites and blogs, asking them to link to pages on your site.
While it can happen naturally – if your articles are relevant and on most searched topics about a place, others may want to link to it.

• You can also reach out to such service providers manually or via email campaigns.
• You can also create your external links by commenting on forums, blogs, and other popular pages.

Social signals increase your visibility on social media through tweets, posts, and comments. They are also helpful in building SEO.

10. Work on the Loading Speed of Your Hotel’s Website

Let’s assume that you have done a wonderful job on your website. But if it doesn’t load fast enough, your audience will not have the patience to check it out. You will end up losing out on possible customers.
Not just that, Google also tends to rank a fast website than a slow one. It means you will end up losing a lot of organic traffic.
So, how do you determine if your page is loading fast enough?
For starters, you can use Google’s Page Speed Insight to analyze the speed. It will not only show you the score but also point out problem areas.
To ensure a fast-loading website, start by building it on lighter frameworks. You can:

• combine files
• use optimally compressed images
• reduce redirects to optimize speed.

Certain plugins help reduce the loading time.

11. Make Your Hotel’s Website Mobile-Friendly

Today, bookings happen on mobile phones. If your website doesn’t support a mobile interface, you will lose out on valuable customers.
You can do a test online to find out if your website is optimized for mobile phones.
To ensure the interface is perfect on phones:

• Make the call-to-action buttons a tad bigger
• Use large font sizes and easy-on-the-eye fonts
• Resize images in line with your site’s dimensions

12. CTAs Should Be Obvious and Payment Gateways Easier

It’s important to make the booking process seamless. After all, you don’t want your customer to abandon their booking midway after putting in all the effort to build your website.
Start by keeping the contact form short. Ask for necessary information. Remember that most of your guests will be searching for hotels on mobile phones. So, having to fill multiple columns in the form may annoy them.
Keep the CTA (call to action) straight and at a place where guests will likely spot them easily.
Keep the payment options simple and smooth. Give them all the options available:-

• Credit/debit card
• Apple Pay
• PayPal
• cash
• Stripe

13. Get Security Configuration for Your Website

Is your website secure? Yes?
How will the public believe you?
That’s where an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate comes into play.
A simple HTTP:// URL indicates to your guests that your website is safe, secure and encrypts the information they submit to your site.
Not just that, even Google prioritizes websites that are secure when it comes to rankings. They also mark and flag websites that don’t have SSL certificates as ‘not safe.’
Moreover, secure websites tend to give better Google Analytics data because invariably, they achieve their CTA.

14. Reach Out for Customer Reviews

Nothing can boost your local SEO, like genuine reviews from customers. So, reach out to your patrons and ask them to provide reviews about your hotel online.
You can ask them either on your Google My Business page, other hotel reservation sites, or social media.
They can either fill out a pre-set questionnaire or write something on their own. Ask the users to mention what they liked about the property and services and where there is scope for improvement.
Alternatively, you can have a questionnaire/feedback form at the hotel’s reception or send it to them via email, which they can fill out.
These reviews will convince others to choose your property. Also, it will assure Google and other search engines that your business is legitimate. These business reviews also help boost your Google rankings and increase your website’s visibility and brand.
Are you looking to attract a local audience to your hotel website?
This is the right time to optimize your website as the hotel booking statistics predict a growth in the number of bookings to more than 700 million by 2023.
We can help your hotel website to zoom past your competitors. Please speak with our local SEO expert today.