Reputation Rhino is a New York SEO company specializing in SEO for Hotels. We will help your hotel or vacation rental business increase targeted traffic, achieve top rankings on relevant keywords, increase calls and generate online bookings.
When it comes to Hotel SEO, ranking at the top of the search results pages for the keywords relevant to your location and travel destination and local tourist attractions and information for business travel. Business owners and entrepreneurs already know how difficult it is to succeed online today, and search engine optimization must be part of your digital strategy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the travel and tourism industry. The US Travel Association’s 2020 year-end report confirmed a 48% drop in travel-related spending for December 2020 compared to 2019, and a year-long loss of $500 billion. The losses continued to mount in 2021 as international border closures continued through the summer travel season. Local travel and the “staycation” phenomenon were bright spots in an otherwise dismal year and a half.
The natural inclination is to reduce online marketing efforts until the world returns to “normal”. However, a successful vaccination program in many countries is well underway and people are online researching their next vacation destination (and the one after that).
91% of travelers look online first when searching for a place to stay, with the majority – more than four in five (81%) travelers choosing to search on Google.
Although online travel agencies (OTAs) like Travelocity, Expedia, Hotels.com, Priceline.com and Booking.com dominate hotel bookings, most hotel searches begin long before booking – on review sites, on a hotel website and travel forums. This is where SEO proves its value.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Hotels is the process used to enhance the online visibility of your business to increase targeted traffic, achieve top rankings on keywords that deliver a measurable ROI and increase calls, leads and online bookings and reservations from website visitors.
Keyword research, on-site optimization (optimized design, user experience, content quality / relevance, information architecture), technical SEO (structured data, meta tags, site speed), off-site optimization (link building and establishing authority), monitoring and measurement all must work together for SEO to work for your hotel Website.
Contact us today! Find out why Reputation Rhino should be your Hotel SEO company.
What is Hotel SEO?
Hotel SEO has evolved to become the powerful tool to drive relevant traffic and online bookings and reservations for your online business. Landing at the top of Google for your Website and converting traffic to revenue also means having a solid online review management strategy in place. You want to have as many 4-star and 5-star reviews as possible, which will provide customers the confidence to call or book online. The best Hotel SEO company will work to improve and optimize online content to rank higher on different search engines. SEO is not a “set it and forget it” project, it’s about continually optimizing your pages to provide the best user experience (UX). You want your website to be easy to use, while addressing the most important user intent metrics.
How Does SEO Work?
To improve the organic presence of your Hotel Website on Google and other search engines, our award-winning SEO company offers a range of services including the following:- On page optimization following ethical (white-hat) SEO techniques
- Targeting a combination of category, product/service and location related keywords
- Integrating relevant content on-page and off-page for targeted keywords
- Building your Hotel Website a brand online through offsite optimization
- Link building
On-Page Optimization
Top search engine rankings are achieved through a combination of on-page and off-page activities on an ongoing basis. On-page optimization refers to improvements by your Hotel SEO agency to your website to help Google and other search engines recognize your website for the most important keywords for your business. Examples of on-page activities include:- HTML code repair
- Improve Internal Linking
- Quote and Underline Keywords in content area.
- Review of content on page with proximity and prominence factors.
- Incorporate Title, Description and keywords to each important page.
- Sitemap creation and submission (ROR, XML, TXT)
- Check for broken links and repair them.
- Web page and Image Optimization
- Meta Tags analysis and Keyword density
- Integrate customer and user feedback form on website, etc.
Off-Page Optimization
Off-page optimization is how our NYC SEO company will improve the authority of your website through external activities to help Google and other search engines recognize your site as high quality and authoritative.
Examples of off-page optimization activities include:
- Local Submission
- Business Listings
- Search Engine submissions
- Directory Submissions
- Article submissions
- Blog post submissions
- Press release submissions
- Link building – one way, two way, three way
- Creation and Submission of RSS Feeds
- Bookmarking and tagging
- Create profile pages
Hotel SEO Analytics and Measurement
We use Google Analytics for monitoring website traffic and ranking position for our Hotel SEO activities. Google Analytics can track anything from referring source and referring keyword through lead conversion. Using Google Analytics we can determine the following:- Total number of unique visitors to the website
- The number of enquiries or leads generated by our activities
- Referring source for site visitors along with keyword identification
- User demographics
- Goal setting and tracking drilling down to conversion ratio.
- Average page views per unique user
- Cost Per Click against organic search generated visitor conversions
- Total number of inquiries and inbound emails originating from organic search
- Total number of unique visitors generated through organic search
SEO For Hotels – Why Does it Matter?
SEO as a more efficient and affordable way to advertise to your target market. Why? Because it’s organic and people trust organic search results more than advertising. Each SEO campaign requires a carefully thought-out initial setup and refining, but once you’ve reached optimal rankings you’re getting more leads to your business on a daily basis. Can paid ads give you the same results? Not without paying several dollars or more for each click. This is not to suggest there is not a place for PPC in your online advertising strategy, we are an award-winning PPC Management company, and we know how to make PPC deliver value for our clients, it simply means you should make room for search engine optimization to reduce the long-term costs and dependency on paid ads as your primary source for traffic.Benefits of SEO For Hotel Websites
The benefits of a long-term Hotel SEO strategy are clear. Higher rankings and a better organic web presence lead to more patient. 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. People are using Google to find what they want and what they need. Blogging and social media marketing allows hotels, inns, bed and breakfasts and vacation rentals to build a community, educate prospective visitors and share important travel information organically. Posts can move to the top of Google search results for some of the most important keywords in the hotel and vacation rental space.
Best Hotel SEO Tools
Here is a short list of some of the best Hotel SEO tools we use for our clients:- Ubersuggest is a free SEO tool that specializes in generating new keyword ideas to help inform your keyword optimization strategy. You can see volume, competition metrics, and even seasonal trends for each keyword.
- Ahrefs is a subscription service starting at $99 monthly that can help with site audits, track ranking across all of your keywords, and monitor site traffic and backlinks.
- The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop program (PC or Mac) which crawls websites’ links, images, CSS, script and apps sharing actionable insights from an SEO perspective. The basic program is free, and for most users, provides more than enough data, but a Hotel SEO consultant or marketing manager may want to upgrade to the premium version.
- MOZ starts at $99 monthly and offers detailed analytics to monitor site health, link building, and keyword performance and tons of resources to turbocharge your Hotel SEO strategy.
How is SEO for Hotels Different from Traditional Marketing?
In 2016, Google tried to make sense of search intent in the hotel and travel sector and found four pivotal micro-moments that helped to define the customer journey:- I want to get away moments (dreaming)
- Time to make a plan moments (planning)
- Let’s book it moments (booking)
- Can’t wait to explore moments (experiencing)
6 Tips for Your Hotel SEO Strategy
Improve your healthcare SEO with a straightforward, strategic process.- Add Relevant Keywords You have to determine the keywords you need to rank for, but how? Start by thinking about your location and unique features that distinguish your property from others and then determine what subtopics people might be asking questions about or looking for answers to.
- Start Blogging Blogging is a very effective online marketing strategy that allows you to establish authority and rankings by displaying your knowledge on a variety of topics. For example, if you are a hotel in Philadelphia, blog content highlighting local historical attractions, places to eat, and a local arts and cultural events calendar. Long-tail keywords, “concerts in Philadelphia” for example, could be used for expanding content and optimizing your blog. Websites that blog actively generate 67% more leads and 434% more indexed pages than those that don’t. You’ll be able to rank for additional keywords and long-tail keywords that will get more visitors to your website leading to more reservations.
- Boost Your Backlinks Create high-quality content that gets shared and reposted on social media and elsewhere. This will result in your website getting backlinks, which are a powerful ranking signal for Google. Backlinks are essentially a vote of confidence in the eyes of Google. They are important when building a brand and getting new pages to rank faster.
- The Need for Page Speed Web Pages need to load fast. As more and more online searches take place on mobile devices, consider implementing AMP pages (accelerated mobile pages) for fast mobile loading times.
- Structured Markups – Schema and Open Graph Protocol Google and other search engines prefer the Schema.org set of structured markup to make it easier for its crawlers to scan pages and deliver relevant search results for users. Google recommends the most is the JSON-LD format, this is included as a block of script in the head of your page. You might want to see if you could use JSON in combination with the structure of your current content. Another option is RDFa, and then Microdata both of which are expressed as in line properties in the body of your page. For hotels, there is a special Schema option available: https://schema.org/hotel There’s also Open Graph protocol favored by Facebook so if you want to better manage how Facebook views your site pages, you’ll want to include the Open Graph markup in your pages.
- Mobile First Google is favoring Websites that prioritize the user experience on mobile devices. When they visiting a mobile-friendly site, Google reports that 74% of people say they’re more likely to return to that site in the future and 67% of mobile users say that when they visit a mobile-friendly site, they’re more likely to buy a site’s product or service. Google will rank sites that are mobile-friendly higher than sites that are not. If you don’t know if your website is mobile-friendly, Google offers a free Mobile Friendly Test now.
The Importance of Hotel SEO
According to Search Engine Land, “49 percent of consumers reported that they rely on search to inform purchase decisions, and 19 percent of respondents identified search engines as the most influential source in driving their purchase decisions.” Although Social media marketing is a powerful tactic to grow site traffic and increase your overall brand footprint, search engine optimization is the fuel that powers your online bookings and reservations engine.Choose Reputation Rhino as the Best Hotel SEO Company to Increase Your Revenue
Landing on Page 1 for the keywords that matter is a lot easier when you have the best Hotel SEO company on your side. Increasing your search rankings will increase revenue for your business. Before we begin SEO for Hotel websites we need to first understand the current performance of your Website and the gap between your business and your top competitors.Contact us today to learn more about Reputation Rhino and our affordable Hotel SEO services designed to increase leads, grow your revenue and outrank your competitors.