SEO for Hospitality: Your Complete Guide to SEO

Andre wants to book a vacation getaway for himself and his wife. He decides to search online and see if he can find a place to stay that’s within their budget but offers everything they need for their trip. He searches on Google, finds a hotel, and books his stay.

This scenario happens every day on platforms like Google, so if you’re not investing in search engine optimization (SEO), you’re missing a prime opportunity to drive guests to visit your establishment and book their stay with you.

By investing in SEO for hospitality, you help your establishment drive more visitors to book and stay with you.

In this guide, we’ll provide you with everything you need to know about SEO for hospitality, including:

• What is SEO for hospitality?
• Why should I invest in SEO for hospitality businesses?
• SEO best practices for hospitality

Keep reading to learn more!

What is SEO for hospitality?

SEO for hospitality businesses involves optimizing your website to help it rank higher in search results. Ranking higher in search results is critical for driving qualified leads to your website instead of your competition.

Why should I invest in SEO for hospitality businesses?

Now that you know what hospitality SEO is, you may wonder why you need to invest in it. What’s the benefit of investing in SEO for hospitality businesses?

1. You increase your hospitality business’s brand recognition

One of the most important aspects of your business is your brand. You want people to get familiar with your business and remember your brand so they ultimately choose you when they’re ready to find a place to stay.

With SEO for hospitality, you help build your brand recognition. When you rank higher in relevant search results, people are more likely to click on your listing and learn more about your location.

While those visitors may not convert immediately, they’ll know your establishment and choose you when they’re reading to book their stay.

2. You earn new leads for your hospitality business

With hospitality SEO, you reap the benefit of earning new leads for your business. For your business to keep growing, you need to earn new leads interested in staying at your establishment.

SEO helps you rank higher in relevant search results. When you rank higher, you drive more traffic to your website, which provides you with more opportunities to capture leads.

By earning new leads, you help drive new visitors to your location.

3. You boost revenue for your establishment

Your hospitality business wants to increase revenue so you can continue to grow. With hospitality SEO, you continually drive new leads to your website to learn about what you offer. Many of those people will stay with you when they book their trip.

As a result, you continually have new guests staying at your establishment, which ultimately drives more revenue for your company.

3 SEO best practices for hospitality

Now that you know the benefits of SEO, it’s time to look at SEO best practices for hospitality. Here are three tactics that will help you do SEO effectively:

1. Focus on building a positive user experience on your website

If you want to see success with hospitality SEO, start by focusing on building a positive user experience. Google wants to deliver search results with websites that provide information users need and give them a positive experience.

Metrics like dwell time and bounce rate can impact your ranking in search results. If people spend a long time on your website (dwell time), it indicates to Google that your page provides relevant and helpful information.

On the other hand, if people visit your website and bounce, it may indicate you don’t provide the best experience or the right information.

To help you boost your SEO ranking, focus on creating a positive user experience by:

• Ensuring your website loads quickly
• Ensuring your keyword and page information align (relevancy)
• Integrating photos and videos to break up text
• Creating an easy-to-use navigation

By focusing on the user experience, you’ll increase dwell time and decrease bounce rate, which helps improve your ranking in search results.

2. Optimize your website for relevant key terms

One of the SEO best practices for hospitality is optimizing your website for relevant keywords. When someone searches for a place to stay, they turn to search engines like Google to help them find the right place in their budget.

You must optimize your pages for relevant keywords to ensure you rank in search results and drive qualified leads.

So, how do you find the right keywords?

Start by conducting keyword research using a keyword research tool. You can use a tool like KeywordsFX to help you find relevant terms for your website. You just enter your starting term or phrase into the search bar and generate a list of related and relevant key terms.

As you look at your list of keyword options, narrow your focus to long-tail keywords, which contain three or more words. These terms work best for your website because they are specific, so you know the person searching them is looking for what you offer.

Once you identify key terms for your website, you can integrate those keywords into your pages. You’ll want to integrate them throughout the page, in headings, and more.

When you identify relevant keywords for your website, you help your hospitality business rank in relevant search results and drive more qualified leads.

3. Focus on building links

A key component of hospitality SEO is building links. Link building helps you increase time spent on your pages, increase page authority, and get more pages indexed by Google.

There are two main types of links you’ll want to focus on:

1. Internal links

When you do SEO for hospitality, you’ll focus on increasing the internal links on your website. Internal links are links you put on your pages that lead to other pages on your website.

Internal links are critical for helping Google discover pages on your website. For you to rank in search results, Google needs to crawl and index your pages. Placing internal links helps Google find new and old pages, so it can rank them in appropriate search results.

When you place internal links on your page, make sure you use them with relevant keywords. If you’re linking to a page on “best hotel amenities,” you would want the text on your page to be similar to the topic, so Google knows the relevancy.

Additionally, internal links help keep visitors on your website longer too. If they see you have a link to a topic of interest to them, they’ll click on that link and learn more. It’s a great method for increasing dwell time on your website.

2. Backlinks

The other type of link you’ll want to build is backlinks. Backlinks are links back to your website on others’ websites. These links are valuable to your business because they help build your hospitality website’s authority.

For example, if you write an article on the top vacation destinations and a website like TripAdvisor links to your article on their website, that’s a great benefit to your business. It shows Google that high authority sites, like TripAdvisor, find you to be an authority and trustworthy source in your industry.

So, how do you earn backlinks?

One way to earn backlinks is to find broken links on others’ websites and point it out to them. Since broken links negatively impact the user experience and therefore Google ranking, people will want to fix them right away. You can point out the broken link to them and provide alternative replacements, including a link to a relevant page on your website.

Since you made the effort to point out the broken link, they will likely replace the link with one to your page, as long as it’s relevant.

Earning backlinks is a great way for you to help build your website’s trust and authority, so you can rank better in search results.

Need help with SEO for hospitality businesses?

Investing in hospitality SEO is the key to helping you earn new visitors to your hospitality business. If you’re feeling overwhelmed trying to implement all the SEO best practices for hospitality, WebFX is here to help.

We have a team of over 500 SEO experts ready to help you create your custom SEO campaign. Our team of experts will craft a custom strategy that helps drive results –– we’ve already driven $10 billion in revenue for our clients.

Ready to start with SEO for hospitality businesses? Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our SEO services!

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