3 Items to Check for Your Hotel's SEO
Most people who work in hospitality marketing are well aware of the need for search engine optimization (SEO), but the actual value of SEO is easy to lose sight of. For a hotel, improving visibility in search results means more people (ideally the right people) are able to learn about your location and why it might be the right hotel for their stay. Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important tool that can help hotels do just that. SEO involves implementing various strategies on websites, blogs and other online content to ensure they are seen by the right people. By optimizing these materials, hotels can improve their rankings on search engines like Google, thus increasing their chances of attracting potential customers.
Getting started, there are 3 things that all hotel marketing teams must do:
Claim their local listings
Add alt text to their images
Create content that will enable guests to enjoy their stay
Claim & manage your hotel’s local listings
As a location-specific business, hotels are uniquely positioned to have some of the most useful, robust local listings. You can manually maintain and manage each local listing, or you can use a centralized local listing management tool such as Moz Local. Either way, make sure you have complete local listings on at least the following:
Google Business Profile
Facebook
Bing
Having optimized listings on each of those 3 listing websites for your hotel, and monitoring for comments/reviews and needed updates, will put your hotel in a great position to attract visitors to the coveted local listing space.
Add alt text for all of your images
Alt text is important to a website for 2 reasons:
Accessibility and website navigability using a screenreader
Explaining image content to web crawlers to better understand a page
Both are important, and the benefit of having alt text on all of your images is that you can improve both the experience of your website for your visitors and improve your SEO with a single concerted effort. It’s a win-win (and helps mitigate a potential future lose-lose as a result of an ADA-related lawsuit).
Adding alt text to your images will vary depending on the content management system you are using, but almost every system allows for an easy image-by-image management process for updating the alt text. Use these guidelines when creating alt text for your hotel’s website:
Write alt text as though you are speaking to someone
It is easy to get caught up and concerned about having the perfect optimized alt text for images of your hotel. Instead of worrying about perfection, worry about being understandable. For example:
Instead of: “dog, brown, fence”
Use: “There is a brown dog sitting near the fence at the Woodstock Inn & Resort in Woodstock, Vermont.”
Integrate the context of your page into the alt text to add additional clarity
An image may have many ways to be described, so describe it in a way that adds value to the page. For example, the following image on a page about the hotel pool:
Do not use this description:
“2 pillows on each chair, 1 with palm tress and 1 with stripes.”
Use this description:
“Two resort guests enjoying the pool at the Hotel Comfort, relaxing and enjoying the comforts of the space.”
Content to help people enjoy their experience at your hotel
Creating content to help your guests enjoy their experience at your hotel is another two-for-one website optimization benefit:
Create content that helps people fall in love with your hotel
Create optimized content that helps your website be visible for people searching for a hotel like yours
It is critical to remember that even though you may be writing content because you want to rank, at the end of the day it is your customers and guests who will experience your website content, and it needs to add value for them. You can use your content to build trust, to set expectations, and to encourage incredible experiences on your properties.
If this is your first time thinking about content for your website, start with your customers (or your friends and family who are visiting the properties during construction). They will ask questions, have ideas, do things on their own that you can share with the rest of your community. For example, take note if:
Your guests come back raving about a new restaurant they just tried
A new shop opens and they are offering your guests discounts
The nearby winery has a new release
Each of those items could be included in an aggregate page of information or as a standalone blog post (if you have an active blog). The goal is to be the one-stop location for all information about your hotel and the surrounding area.
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint
It is easy to check some boxes and feel like your SEO will be fine. Sometimes, it will be. But having a long-term approach to SEO helps you build the backbone of your digital marketing operation that helps buffer you from changes in the marketing landscape, including algorithm shifts, PR slowdowns, or new search tools. Using these 3 tips to make your website more present, more accessible, and more useful will help your guests and customers identify your hotel as the kind business they want to support.
