How To See What Your Hotel's Competition Is Doing For SEO
In the highly competitive hospitality industry, it's essential for hotels to stay ahead of the curve in terms of SEO. After all, if you want your website to be seen by potential customers, it needs to rank well on search engine results pages (SERPs). But how can hotels do research to understand what their competitors are doing for SEO?
The good news is that hoteliers can get an overview of their competition’s SEO efforts in several ways, including website tracking tools and using your competitor’s own website to reveal their content secrets. These strategies will help give you a better understanding of what other businesses are doing with their online presence.
In this blog post, we'll discuss three ways hotels can do research into their competition's SEO so they can make informed decisions about how best to optimize their own sites.
1. Use tools like Semrush or Ahrefs
Navigating the competitive landscape of digital marketing can be daunting, but employing tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs can help businesses better understand their competition's online trafficking and performance. These powerful platforms enable professionals to analyze critical data, including:
Revealing key insights about their rivals' organic search visibility
Identifying popular pages
Sharing demographics of their target audiences.
Armed with this knowledge, businesses can now strategize more effectively, optimizing for high-traffic keywords and taking advantage of underutilized niche markets.
Following a competitor's successful pages may shed light on the content that resonates with the shared target audience, helping businesses to craft better, more relevant content that drives engagement and conversion rates. Overall, tools like Semrush or Ahrefs allow businesses to make informed, data-driven decisions to boost their competitive edge and achieve success in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing.
2. Review The Content Of Your Competitors' Websites
Another way to gain insight into your competitors’ SEO efforts is to review the content on their websites. This gives you an idea of the overall experience they’re trying to create for their customers, as well as what kind of content they’re creating and how it’s presented.
Consider how their content and experience are mapped (Information Architecture) and how you could navigate and experience their content while on your booking journey.
4. Compare Their Key Features
It is important to compare the features offered by each of your competitors so that you can understand what sets you apart from them. Make sure to note details, including:
Number and type of rooms they offer
Amenities they provide or upsell
Pricing options available
Cancellation and customer service policies
You can also look at any reviews or feedback left by past customers for additional insights into how people perceive their services – both positive and negative feedback can be valuable when it comes to improving your own website content and hotel services offerings.
5. Evaluate User-Friendliness
One key factor in determining how successful a website is going to be is its user-friendliness. If a website is difficult for people to navigate or if there are too many steps involved in completing a simple task then it will likely deter users from returning or making a purchase from that site.
It shouldn’t be difficult to complete the booking journey, and the more roadblocks that a potential guest encounters will decrease their likelihood to complete their booking.
6. Review Images Used
Images are one of the most powerful tools when creating an online experience for users because they can evoke emotion and create an atmosphere around a product or service that words alone cannot do justice. Spend time reviewing the images used on each site and take note of which ones make an impact on visitors versus which ones fall flat. This will give you insights into which images work best when trying to attract potential customers and how you can use those same techniques on your own site.
7. Look For Newly Updated Content on the sitemap file
The last way to stay aware of what your competitors are doing is by checking competitor websites for any newly updated content on their sitemap.xml files – these contain instructions for search engines about which pages should be indexed, so changes here could indicate that a website has been optimizing its SEO strategy or experimenting with different approaches. By monitoring these updates, you can uncover new tactics that may work better than the ones you’re currently using and adjust accordingly.
What is the sitemap File?
A sitemap lays out the pages on a website in a structured format to make it easier for a crawler, such as Google, to identify and scan. The file contains important information, such as when the page was created or updated.
How Can sitemap Help You Find New Content?
Looking through a sitemap can allow you to identify content that has been most recently created or updated, allowing you insights into how your competitors are investing their marketing dollars. If you’re able to find content that is newly created or updated, you can identify potential marketing campaigns before they are live and public, giving you an opportunity to strategize against those efforts.
Final Thoughts
Researching your competitors' SEO strategies isn't always a simple task, but it's one that pays off if done correctly. By using tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs, reviewing content quality on competitor websites and keeping an eye out for sitemap updates, hotel owners will be able to get a better understanding of what strategies are working best within their industry and adjust their own approach accordingly – helping them stay ahead of the competition while generating more visibility online!
Whatever your needs might be, you can count on Bend to provide effective and reliable solutions for your hotel's digital marketing needs.
Need help with your business? Contact Bend for SEO support today - we’re ready to create the perfect online environment for your hotel so it can reach its full potential.