Basic Building Blocks of Hotel Website SEO

Lodging operators must find ways to increase bookings while decreasing costs. The goal is to get more organic (unpaid) traffic to your hotel website and generate direct bookings. How? SEO (search engine optimization).

SEO is critical to improving your website’s ranking in organic search engine results for increased visibility. Search engine algorithms and SEO tactics are always evolving, and it’s important to keep up with the latest changes as they affect your website’s ranking.

But there are also fundamental SEO practices that stand the test of time. Think of them as the basic building blocks of hotel website SEO to make sure your property is found online.

SEO begins with good design. A search-engine-friendly design is a user-friendly design, which means an attractive, easy-to-use website that results in clicks and conversions.

An important factor of a well-designed website that significantly impacts both SEO and user experience is mobile friendliness. In fact, Google uses mobile-first indexing and ranking, which means the mobile version of the site is considered the main version. Start with a responsive design that automatically detects and adapts to the user’s device to set your website off on the right foot.

Intuitive navigation is another key element of a user-friendly and search-engine-friendly website. Make sure your website is easy to navigate with simple, well-organized menus and content and relevant CTAs on every page that lead users to the next step. An up-to-date HTML sitemap of all currently active pages can be useful to users too, and an XML sitemap makes it easier for search engine bots to explore your website. Structured data/schema markup assists the search engine as well (it’s basically code added to the site for that purpose). Your content management system should help with this. For instance, WordPress has multiple plugins to get your schema up and running.

Yes, keywords are important for SEO (more on that below), but quality, purposeful content that resonates with your customers generates conversions and improves your ranking too.

Get to know your target audience—what kind of experience are they looking for? What’s important to them? What do they want to know? Hint: Use the guest data in your property management system to help identify your key guest segments. Then, provide value to website visitors with complete, high-quality content that answers their questions and speaks to their emotions. Think about your unique selling proposition as well. What content can you create that your competition doesn’t have? Don’t neglect the basics either. Things like pricing and hotel policies may not be as exciting, but viewers still need them (this is where your FAQ page comes in). Focus on creating customer-centric content for your property, and the keywords happen naturally.

Your blog or activities page can be an especially good place to include information about your local area and put those keywords on your site in an organic way. Eighty-seven percent of customers have researched local businesses on Google as of 2022, up six percent since 2021, so this information matters. Guests care about more than just what’s inside your four walls!

Maintaining up-to-date content (seasonal content, information about specials and packages, your hotel blog, local activities/event information) is important to the user experience and tells both users and search engines that your site is current.

Lastly, don’t copy and paste from other websites. That’s plagiarism, and Google frowns on it.

As mentioned above, if your content gives users what they are looking for, chances are your copy already includes relevant keywords. However, it’s still a good idea to do keyword research to make sure every page of your website is optimized to meet searcher intent.

The goal is to identify one or two primary keywords and phrases for each topic (or page) of your website that travel consumers are using to conduct searches and include those keywords naturally in your copy. The key word (mind the pun!) is naturally; it’s important not to overuse keywords as this results in badly-written content that puts both users and search engines off.

Start by brainstorming relevant keywords and phrases for each page of your website, then use a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner for keyword suggestions. You can also type keywords directly into Google search to see which search term suggestions come up for insight into searcher intent. Long-tail keywords (or key phrases), which are more niche focused, get less search traffic but are easier to rank on and can be used to capture searchers with specific goals. Pro tip: Include your neighborhood and/or city name in your keywords to boost that local SEO.

Don’t waste your time on popular keywords that aren’t relevant to you. “Luxury resort” may be a popular keyword, but you shouldn’t use it for a highway motel (even an especially nice one). Using keywords that don’t apply results in searchers who click and leave quickly without taking action (which, in turn, may negatively affect your SEO).

Including your property’s contact information (address, phone number, email address) on every page of your website is a local SEO must. A good way to do this is by putting it in the header or footer.

Using an embedded Google map on your website’s location or contact page is also effective for local SEO and provides a great user experience too, allowing website visitors to interact with the map to get a better idea of your property’s location and see what’s nearby.

Nobody likes a slow-loading website and neither do search engines because of the bad user experience. The longer your pages take to load, the higher your bounce rate and the lower your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). Consider the load-speed for your mobile site version as well; remember it’s not all about desktop anymore.

If your website is running a bit slow, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights for suggestions on how to make it faster. (Start by compressing your images.)

Page URLs and titles are very important. Displaying on SERPs, they identify your business to online users and convey what your webpage is about. Your URLs (webpage addresses) and page titles should be specific to your business (include your property’s name) and descriptive of page content. Let’s start with URLs.

Essentially forming the structure of a website, URLs organize and locate a website’s pages, like folders on your computer. Every URL for your website should follow a top-down structure, starting with the domain name, for example, myhotel.com > myhotel.com/specials-and-packages > myhotel.com/specials-and-packages/wine-and-dine. URLs should be short and to-the-point and use hyphens instead of underscores to separate words. Put your keywords into your URLs if you can.

Page titles and meta-descriptions describe webpages and are read by both users and search engines. The page title displays in Google search results as the big blue link for searchers to click. The meta-description is the short description of webpage content that appears below the page title on SERPs. The more relevant your page titles and meta-descriptions, the more likely users will click through to your website. Aim for concise and descriptive page titles and meta-descriptions and try to include the main query keyword for each page.

Be aware, there are character constraints. To ensure your content doesn’t get cut off, you should stick with under 60-70 characters for the title and under 120-158 characters for the meta-description.

The headings and subheadings on your webpages (once viewers get there) are also important both for breaking content down and emphasizing keywords. Give them tags such as H1, H2, and H3 to help search engines understand the topic of each page.

Image ALT text (alternative text) is an element of website accessibility and is read by screen readers to help visually impaired users access website content. Image ALT text is also read by search engine bots and can help websites rank in image search results, which is important for hotels.

Image ALT text should say the appearance and function of the image specifically, contain a keyword or key phrase, and should be no longer than 125 characters. Think about how you would describe the picture to someone who can’t see it. Hint: The ALT text isn’t the only description where SEO needs to be considered. Pay attention to your file names too.

Images should be sized and compressed so that they add as little as possible to your site speed (see above). With an expansive color palette and easy optimization, JPEG and PNG files are a great choice for website photos. Ensure images are appropriately sized according to your website theme’s recommendations, and compress images using a compression app (like Optimizilla or TinyPNG) that doesn’t reduce the image quality too much.

Search engines favor secure websites because they offer users a safe browsing experience. Make sure your property’s website has that security by implementing a valid SSL (secure sockets layer) or TLS (transport layer security) certificate to protect the privacy and integrity of data passed between your website and a user’s computer. Secure sites display HTTPS and/or a padlock icon (depending on the browser) alongside the URL, signifying to users that the site is safe.

There are also things you can do outside your website to improve your site’s ranking in search results.

Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile is crucial to local SEO. If you haven’t yet, claim your listing and make sure all hotel details are complete and up to date, including contact information, amenities, highlights, and booking links. Google offers free booking links here to take users directly to your website. All you need is an integration with your property management system so that pricing and availability stay accurate and up-to-date.

NAP+W Consistency

In addition to your Google Business Profile, it’s important to make sure your property’s name, address, phone number, and website (NAP+W) are accurate and consistent across all of your property’s listings online, including other search engine business listings and listings on online directories and destination marketing sites, as well as your listings on review websites like Tripadvisor and Yelp.

Quality Backlinks

Speaking of listings, aim to get your property’s website listed on relevant, reputable directories and destination marketing sites, linking back to your property’s website. Consider collaborating with local businesses for cross-marketing opportunities too. For instance, you could write a guest post on another company’s blog. And of course, quality content leads to quality backlinks.

Social Media

You can and should link to your website from your social media accounts. Promoting special deals and amenities and sharing blog posts on social media are great opportunities for linking to website content and landing pages.

Online Reviews

The more positive online reviews your property has, the better your organic visibility on SERPs. Travel consumers rely on reviews to help them choose places to stay, which is why Google’s hotel search results include a guest rating filter and a reviews tab.

Managing your hotel’s online reputation starts with providing a great guest experience and continues with post-stay communications.

SEO is key to increasing organic traffic to your hotel website and boosting direct bookings. The steps above will build a solid SEO foundation for your property’s website, but it’s not a set and forget type of deal. Because search engine algorithms are always evolving to provide the best user experience, there are always ways to improve your SEO. Be aware, results take time.

Keep a close eye on your website’s analytics (such as site traffic, time on site, pages per visit, conversions, bounce rates) to identify what’s working and what’s not and adjust your strategy accordingly. Also, perform regular website maintenance and check for errors—testing links, sign-up forms, and your online booking engine, as well as searching for formatting errors and broken media files, etc. Even on the best of websites things break, but the sooner issues are corrected, the better for your website’s visitors and SEO.

Do you need a search-engine-friendly website for your property? Get in touch for a free, no-obligation chat with one of our helpful designers.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published August 2020 and last updated May 2024.