The hotel niche has been one of the most competitive for some time, with individual hotels and hotel chains competing with OTAs (online travel aggregators) and price comparison booking sites.
Since then, Google has grown its own property in the market, and over the past year has made many changes to how hotels are displayed within Search.
So do new search features and special content result blocks such as Google Hotels.
Many hotels are listed on comparison sites as a necessary evil due to the amount of traffic and bookings these websites generate, which comes at a significant cost.
I know that one bed and breakfast in the English seaside town of Whitby paid over £8,000 for bookings made through travel comparison sites. .
Also, there are differences between leisure travelers and business travelers, and not all processes from research to booking are linear, but search engines (such as Google) still play a big role in this process. I’m here.
Screenshot from Google’s 2014 Travelers Road to Decision ReportThis is why attracting users and getting direct bookings is invaluable in a competitive market.
But it’s not a lost cause. There are many local SEO tactics and strategies that hotels can use.
- Stand out in search results at different stages of the user cycle.
- Increase traffic.
- It ultimately converts traffic into bookings.
First, let’s see how you can improve your ranking and traffic for relevant search phrases.
Optimize website content and structure
Start with Keyword Research
Naturally, your hotel website will likely rank organically for many terms through location and naturally-created content, but it’s important to understand what your target audience is searching for. Knowing exactly what you are doing can take your website to the next level when it comes to generating traffic and bookings.
Create better local content
Once your keyword research is complete, create local content to promote your rooms and hotel services, as well as non-commercial support content to make your hotel website more relevant to your hotel as a hotel. is important. geographical area.
How often should support content be created?
Honestly, it doesn’t matter as long as your strategy and implementation are consistent.
There are many different opinions on this. Some believe that content should be created monthly, weekly, or even more frequently.
Whatever you choose, consistency is key.
Optimize title tags and meta descriptions
Unless your hotel is a well-known brand that has invested in omnichannel marketing campaigns, it’s unlikely that many people are searching for your hotel brand.
Experience and testing show a strong correlation that the title tag still carries significant weight in determining how well Google ranks your content. This is why it’s important to ask questions. Does my brand matter?
Since title tags are limited in pixel width (easier to measure in characters), as a result the brand/hotel name takes up valuable real estate that can be better used with targeted keywords, You can add the end of the title. If you have space, tag it with your brand name.
Meta descriptions, on the other hand, behave differently than title tags. Although it doesn’t directly affect rankings, meta descriptions can affect clickthroughs.
Get the most out of Google My Business
From keyword research, we can see that people use some form of hotel search phrases and modifiers, as well as your location (e.g. [cheap hotels in whitby]).
This sends Google a clear localized intent that the user wants results related to a specific geographic location. As part of this, Google may use the map pack results feature within the results list.
Optimized Google My Business listings are more likely to appear in map pack results and will be regular blue link listings on the results page.
Through Google My Business, you can:
- Include your hotel name, address, and phone number (aka NAP).
- Make sure the Google Maps marker is in the correct location so that users can find your hotel.
- View unique photos of hotels, rooms and facilities.
- View guest reviews and reply to guest reviews (both positive and negative).
- Provide additional details relevant to travelers looking for information, such as Wi-Fi, accessible access, etc.
If you operate multiple hotels in different locations, you must create verified Google My Business listings for each hotel and manage them under one account.
Optimize user journeys and booking processes
With SERP real estate competing against Google’s own assets and bringing more relevant and quality traffic to your website, it’s time to optimize the user journey and booking process on your website.
Below are some ways to optimize your user’s booking/inquiry process to maximize your website’s potential.
Clarify your CTA
This goes without saying, but too many websites have contact links in the footer and lack a clear call to action (CTA) on the main landing page.
Here are 20 ways to create a killer call to action.
Streamline contact forms and payment gateways
Websites should only collect absolutely necessary information through online forms.
A Koddi study found that forms with fewer fields can lead to 65% higher conversion rates on mobile devices.
It’s also important to keep the number of pages and clicks in the booking process and form as low as possible. The same study also revealed that a user is 14% more likely to complete a booking if the number of clicks between user and satisfaction is less than his 4.6.
It’s also important to monitor your form’s performance. This can be done for free through Yandex Metrica.
Yandex Metrica form analysisYandex Metrica is a great tool that runs alongside your regular Google Analytics installation and is GDPR compliant. Features such as form analytics, heatmaps, and user session recordings are standard features of Metrica.
With this data, you can quickly see where users are abandoning the form so you can test if the field itself is the problem, or if the field label is not displaying properly.
Make sure your pages load fast
The page should load fast. There are countless studies and findings showing a strong correlation between page load speed and user abandonment rates.
Some of the headline stats from Google research include the fact that 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load.
Common causes of slow loading speeds are images that are not in an optimized format or have uncompressed file sizes.
Opportunities from new technologies
Moving away from traditional search, voice search and artificial intelligence offer new opportunities in both customer acquisition and customer acquisition.
A good example of this is the Clarion Hotel in Stockholm. Clarion is one of the first hotels to utilize an AI-enabled chatbot “butler” as an in-room assistant via an Amazon Echo device.
The AI assistant has many core functions, such as the ability for hotel guests to order taxis, order room service, access online information, and perform other hotel and concierge related actions. is also installed.
By creating different touchpoints for users that are different from traditional search, you can compete against some of Google’s new features and own the property to attract customers directly outside of OTA.
Voice search and AI offer many opportunities beyond integration with applications, as demonstrated by the Hilton Honors app. Many think this kind of technology is still years away, but in the travel sector it’s progressing much faster than people think.
Another example of technology advancing in this area is the Henn na Hotel in Tokyo. This hotel is his one of the first hotels in the world to use robots and minimal human staff. It’s still a bit gimmicky, with a robotic Velociraptor serving receptionists, but it’s a big step in the direction of more autonomous robots and AI performing basic customer service jobs.
Other resources:
image credit
All screenshots taken by the author in February 2019
