So you hired the best developers in town and had them built a flashy website with all the latest widgets and whatnot. Now you expect people to visit and make bookings immediately like those people queuing to buy the latest iPhone.
If you expect that to happen, you’ve got another thing coming.
For your potential customers to discover your site via search engines it has to rank high for the keywords they use. So unless you have very low competition, ranking without optimising your website for search engines is difficult.
That is where SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) comes in. In a nutshell, SEO is a set of methodologies to increase your visibility in search engine result pages (SERP) for target search terms. Increased visibility helps generate quality and relevant traffic to your website and eventually make a conversion (Booking).
Did you know? Three-quarters of people never scroll past page one of their search results.
Optimising for Searcher intent
Google’s search box is the starting point of your potential customers’ journey. Identifying what the terms they use to find properties around your destination are of paramount importance.
Using a keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner, one can get a list of terms and average monthly search volume for that particular keyword.
In the old days, sprinkling target keywords in the pages of your website would do the trick. But those days are long gone. Practices like those could get your website purged from Google’s index.
Google now uses methodologies like the Rank brain, semantic search to serve the most relevant results for a given search query. What is important now is not just the keyword itself but the user intent. Properly optimising your pages for that searcher intent could push your ranking up in the SERPs.
Content Optimisation
The world is on the fast lane, there are millions of things to distract your potential customers. So your website content should concise and on point. Long essays of written using flowery and superlative tone wouldn’t be helpful. It doesn’t matter how awesome your photos or how sophisticated your website layout is, it all comes down to the content.
Having a blog section in your site is not an option now. People need to know what types of excursions are available around your hotel. Produce helpful content about those attractions and activities so that you’d rank for relevant searches about things to do in the area.
There is a high chance that they’d choose to stay in your hotel if they found your content was helpful. Besides, ranking for your destination related search term is beneficial for your brand’s exposure.
Optimising for Mobile
Following Google’s mobile-first paradigm, thus your website’s mobile friendliness is a top priority. This is not a surprise since the majority of searchers use mobile devices. Optimising for mobile is now a major part of SEO which put emphasize on speed optimisations, user-friendliness of your website.
Since mobile devices utilize low bandwidth and processing power, It is important to serve your web pages at a decent speed and with lightweight layouts. Technologies like AMP were built to serve pages lightning fast. Incorporating AMP into your website would be an advantage over your competitors.