SEO for Hotels: A Complete Guide for 2024 [FREE Checklist Inside]

In this digital age, not having your own hotel website is one of the fastest ways to lose credibility and business.

But then, is having a well-designed website enough to attract those guests?

Not really!

It’s no hidden fact that your visitors land on the website from search engines. 

This means, your hotel website should rank higher on search engines to drive leads and eventually turn them into your guests.

This is where Hotel SEO comes into the frame.

This is article is going to be your one-stop guide to understanding the ins and outs of hotel SEO and standing out in this competitive landscape.

What is SEO for Hotels?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process to optimize and improve the ranking of a hotel website on search engines (like Google, Yahoo, and Bing) result pages (SERP). 

It enables you to strengthen your online presence, drive traffic to your website, and enhance your hotel’s bookings. 

To mention, SEO is an inseparable part of hotel digital marketing and is one of the assured strategies to win over your competitors. 

Why is Hotel SEO Important?

Whenever your audience searches for anything, they get a list of results from the search engines. 

Most of the time, their immediate action would be, to click the webpage that ranks first; because they believe it will give answers to their questions in the best way. 

A very few of them will click on second, third, or fourth results.

As per survey, the #1 result in Google gets 31.7% of all clicks.

Backlinko

This percentage decreases to 2.2% for the last result on the first page. So you can gauge, there are barely any chances to go to the second page. (Even you won’t!)

If you are not visible to your audience on the first page, then odds are, they won’t discover you. And, you will lose potential direct bookings through your website.

How to Do SEO for Hotel Website the Right Way

There are various hotel SEO tips available; however, it’s important to know which ones are more effective. This is why, to help you learn the most imperative ones and do SEO for hotels on the right foot, I got 15 actionable steps.

1. Define your target audience

This is step zero to perform SEO of your hotel website. You need to define your target audience – who they are, what they like, and their booking patterns.

Let me explain to you through some examples:

Disclaimer: This example is based on my observation and assumption. However, the target audience can differ as per various accommodation types and sizes. 

Once you know your audience, think of what they will search for whenever they are exploring accommodations options.

For example:
If you are a resort, your ideal audience might search for the terms like

• Resort in “your city”
• Best/Top resorts in “your city”

These are called search terms. Find some and define one primary term your audience commonly searches for.

Important: What your visitors search for is the SEARCH TERMS and their purpose of search is the SEARCH INTENT.

By the way, these search terms are nothing but KEYWORDS. Let’s dig deeper and explore the what, how, and why of keywords.

2. Start with keyword research

When you are creating a robust hotel SEO strategy, keyword research cannot be overlooked. Keywords are words and phrases that people are using to find websites like yours.

As I said, list down all possible search terms your audience will type in the search bar. Best keywords for hotels in the Maldives can be:

• Hotels in Male, Maldives
• Cheap hotels in Male
• Best hotels in Male
• Hotels near Meeru island
• Hotels near Maldives airport

This tells you about how you can get the common keywords. But, you will need more such terms to rank your hotel’s website higher on Google.

There are many keyword research tools available like Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest.

They are easy to get started with. All you have to do is search by typing a keyword (or list of keywords).

How to find keywords on UberSuggest?

1. Head over to Ubersuggest
2. Type in your term decided in the earlier step. Let’s type: Hotels in Male, Maldives.
3. You will see the search volume, SEO difficulty, CPC. Scrolling down you can see other related keywords.
4. Next, check the keywords that have more search volume and higher CPC value.

Consider search volume

Search volume is the number of searches for a particular keyword or term in a month. Your ideal hospitality keywords would be those which have more search volume and higher CPC value.

For example, The search volume of ‘Hotels in Male’ is 1000/month.

(This means, 1000 searchers are searching on Google for this keyword per month.)

How to find keywords on Google?

Another way to find related keywords for your targeted audience is from the search engine itself. Let’s take the example of Google.

Go to Google > Search for your targeted keywords.

When you will start typing, Google will suggest some related terms in the search bar (refer to the following image)

It will also show related keywords at the end of the search results.

You have to include these hotel SEO keywords on your list as well. It is one of the surefire strategies that will help you in ranking your website.

Next is,

Consider long-tail variations of keywords

The benefit of using long-tail keywords is, they’re easy to include and convert the audience better.

For example, a person searching for “hotels in New York” is probably just browsing. On the other hand, someone searching in the following way is very much specific:

• Beach resort in Maldives
• Hotel in Maldives near Meeru Island

This reminds me of a joke:

Why do SEOs love monkeys? Because they have longtails. 😃

Consider the keywords used by your competitors

You can even search for the keywords your competitors are targeting.

Again, go to Ubersuggest > Type in your competitor’s URL

Let’s say: maldivespalmbeach.com is your competitor.

1. You will see details of your competitor viz. Domain overview, domain scores, number of organic keywords, and so on.
2. As you scroll down, you can check top pages from their website and estimated traffic.
3. You can even find the SEO keywords as well. Look for search terms relevant to your audience and then, add them to your list.

Basically, you can find the keywords relevant to your hotel website in several ways.

Lastly, make a final list of all the keywords that you want to target. Keyword selection is one of the key practices in hotel SEO strategies. Out of all the keywords, select one keyword as a focus keyword (targeted keyword).

Ensure that you add the keywords naturally. Search engines (especially Google) do not like content with stuffed keywords.

3. Work on the Page Title (Meta Title), Meta Description, and URL

The webpage title, meta description, and URL play an important role in the SEO of your hotel website. 

Because these are the only and essential 3 elements that’ll be displayed in the search engine results.

So let’s understand each one of them and write SEO-friendly content for your website.

Page title

The page title (also known as meta title) is displayed on your browser tab that tells your audience what your webpage/website is about. They are also read by search engine robots and your users.

The text that is highlighted in the below image is the title of your website home page.

Where to find the page title?

Step 1: Open your website. Press the F12 key or Ctrl + U to open the source code of your website, or right-click your webpage and select “view source” or “inspect element.”

Step 2: Find the tag. The content that you find there is the title of your webpage.

How to write an SEO-friendly page title?

Write a title that describes your property in the best way.

1. It should include your keyword. (I’d recommend starting the title tag with your focus keyword.)
2. It should be easy to understand for both users and machines.
3. Its length should be between 50-60 characters

So, this was all about how to optimize the meta title of your webpage. Now let us explore meta description:

Meta description

A meta description is an HTML tag that summarizes a page’s content. Search engines show the meta description immediately after the meta title.

This is the second most important factor that can make or break your ranking.

How to find out the current meta description of your website?

Step 1: It is similar to how we found the page title. Open your website, press the F12 key or Ctrl + U to open the source code of your website, or right-click your webpage and select “view source” or “inspect element.”

Step 2: Under the <head> tag, you will find the <meta> tag. The meta description of your webpage is mentioned there.

<meta name="description" content="Experience a truly authentic Maldives at the Palm Beach Island Resort and Spa, In a blissfully natural setting brought to life by the vibrant soul of our island">

How to write SEO friendly meta description?

Meta description plays an important role in SEO for hotels. While writing a meta-title, you should consider the following things:

1. Your meta description should describe your hotel thoroughly.
2. It should contain a keyword.

The real intention of the meta description is to present information to the searcher that will push him to click and land on your website.

An example of a good meta description:

A good meta description is an essential part of hotel SEO strategy, as it makes visitors click on the search result.

Now, let me walk you through the last yet very important part – the webpage URL.

Webpage URL

A URL is the address of each page on your hotel’s website. You may think, how come a webpage URL is a part of your SEO strategy?

Believe me, it has a great impact on your hotel SEO. A proper URL helps you go a long way in the SEO journey.

How to write SEO friendly website URL?

1. Your URL should be clear and easily understood.
2. Clear URL: https://yourhotel.com/queen-rooms
3. Confusing URL: https://yourhotel.com/rooms.php?pageid=9
4. Include your targeted keyword, but don’t stuff the extra keywords.
5. Separate words with hyphens (dashes) instead of underscores.
6. Don’t use connecting or stop words. (stop words like: is, of, for, with…)

A few examples of ideal hotel URL are:

https://www.yourhotel.com/dining/

https://yourhotel.com/aboutus/

4. Optimize Your Website Content

Content is the KING and a sure shot strategy in the SEO of your hotel website.

Let’s start with the content of your home page. Firstly, I want you to add the targeted keyword in the h1 tag.

Then, add the same targeted keyword into your page’s first paragraph within the first 100 words.

I’d also suggest you write at least 800 to 1000 words on your homepage that includes the keywords and their synonyms.

When you have more content (of course relevant and meaningful) there are high chances of ranking better on the search engines. Because, with such content, searchers will get all the required information and your target audience can engage with you.

You can develop content in the form of blogs, articles, and newsletters that attracts your audience. You can target a significant number of keywords with the content.

For example, you can write blogs like 10 things to do in Maldives or 10 unique accommodations in Maldives and add relevant keywords in them to enhance your website’s ranking.

Now, let me tell you how this will drive you traffic. Some travelers might search directly for topics like- 10 things to do in Maldives, and they come across your blog.

While reading your content, there are chances that they may end up booking with your hotel (if your content is appealing!)

Other than that, you can write about the city, the tourist spots, famous food or cuisines, and many other related topics.

Your hotel website’s SEO is incomplete without amazing content. You should put effort to produce content that your audience wants to explore before they book your hotel.

5. Add Alt Text to Images

Image alt text is an alternate text that appears if an image cannot be displayed. Here’s why writing relevant alt-text for each image is important:

• The search engines don’t understand images. Adding alt text to the images will give context to the search engines so that they can index your images accordingly.
• The alt text helps screen-reading tools to describe images to visually impaired readers.
• There’s a thing called – image search engine, which is of utmost importance in hotel SEO. You have to rank on that as well (as shown in the image.)

How to add alt text?

Step 1: Go to your website. Press the F12 key or Ctrl + U to open the source code of your website, or right-click your webpage and select “view source” or “inspect element.”

Step 2: Find the <img> tag

Step 3: Then ask your website designer or developer to add the alt attribute in the <img> tag. Or if you have editing access to your website (back end access), you can add it by yourself.

Here’s the example:

Before: <img src=”https://yourwebsite.com/image1.png”/>

After:  <img src=”https://yourwebsite.com/image1.png” alt = “palm beach hotel in Maldives” />

How to write SEO-friendly alt text?

• Describe the image or a topic specifically.
• Include your keywords.
• The length of your alt text should be fewer than 125 characters.
• Don’t start alt text with “picture of…” or “Image of…”.

6. Arrange Headings and Subheadings

The headings help users and search engines to read and understand the text content of your website. They define which parts of your content are important, and show how they’re interconnected.

Structured content is easy for users to read, which is better for your hotel SEO. Besides, headings give you a great chance to use your focus keyword.

How to find heading tags?

H tags are used to define headings and subheadings. The different heading tags are H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6.

Step 1: Press the F12 key or Ctrl + U to open the source code of your website or, right-click your webpage and select “View Source” or “Inspect Element.”

Step 2: Look for H1, H2, etc. They must be contained in brackets like this.

<h1>This is my text</h1>

Step 3: Include the focus keyword in the H1 tag.

Step 4: Maintain the right hierarchy.

Example:

• Welcome to Meraki Boutique Hotel, Manhattan (H1)
• Our services (H2),
• Rooms (H2)

While adjusting the heading tags, don’t forget that your content is for your website searchers/readers (not only for SEO purposes). Ensure that your content becomes readable after adding these tags.

7. Optimize Your Website’s Loading Speed

Loading speed is another factor that holds utmost importance in your hotel website SEO. You have to acknowledge the fact that your audience is IMPATIENT.  

I know it’s a bit technical but this will be helpful to understand what you should ask your website designer or developer.

Here’s how you can check your website speed.

1. Go to Google Page Speed Insight.
2. Enter your website URL and hit analyze.

It will show you your website score for mobile and desktop. Additionally, it will highlight the problem areas of your website and will guide you on how you can solve them.

You don’t really have to look into the technical details. Just focus on the insights as a hotelier. You can ask your website provider to optimize your website and improve the score.

What can you do to reduce your website load time?

• Use caching plugins (WordPress website only).
• Prefer building your website with light frameworks.
• You can use some of the available plugins to reduce the load time.
• Minify and combine files.
• Reduce the number of redirects on your website.

8. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

As per research, nearly 60% of Google searches are from mobile. Having said that, it is important for you to make your hotel website responsive as a part of SEO for hotels.

How to check if your website is mobile-friendly?

1. Head over to “Mobile-Friendly Test”
2. Enter your website URL and hit the enter key or “Test URL” button.

It will show whether your page is mobile-friendly or not. If it’s not mobile-friendly, it will display the issues to fix on your website. Simply follow those or ask your website designer to fix it. Once it is fixed, test it again.

Consider the following things to make your website responsive:

• Ensure your website’s loading speed on other devices too.
• Include the ‘Viewport Meta Tag’.
• Make your button sizes large enough to work on mobile.
• Use large font sizes.
• Compress your images and CSS.
• Perform mobile testing.

9. Build and Submit the Sitemap

As the name suggests, a sitemap is a map for your website. It shows what all pages are on your website.

A sitemap is a file where you can list the web pages of your site to tell the search engines about the organization of your site content. Search engines read this file to crawl your site. That is why it is important to create a sitemap as a part of SEO for hotels.

So, how to create XML Sitemap?

These days, modern content management systems generate XML sitemaps automatically. You simply have to enable it.

However, only creating XML is not enough.

Once your sitemap has been created, the next step is to submit to Google Search Console.

I know, you may find this technical. But, don’t worry!

Simply ask your website designer to help you with this. Or if you have hired an agency or freelancer for SEO, they can also help you with this. In fact, they might have already done this. 

10. Structure Your Content

Schema, or structured data, is a code that helps search engines understand specific pieces of data from your website. 

Schema is one of the best ways to optimize a hotel website and an important part of your SEO strategies. It gives users more relevant information in an organized manner.

There are a lot of things that you can add to your website’s schema markup. 

• Street address
• Phone number
• Description
• Star rating
• Hotel’s surrounding temperature 
• A photo of your hotel
• Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
• Typical room rates/price range
• Reception opening hours/check-in hours
• Map URL
• Features and services, such as a gym or pool
• A parent company, if you are part of a chain
• Languages that are spoken by your team

For example: This is how star rating and FAQs added in Schema are displayed in Google search results as “rich snippet”.

You can find out more details on Schema.org or ask your website designer to implement this.

Adding structured data increases your chance to rank better in search engines like Google and is one of the key SEO tips for hotels.

11. Make the Most of Google My Business

With the advanced hotel search option, Google is opening wide doors to bring traffic to your hotel website.

It is very important and a strong step in your hotel SEO. You have to make the most of this opportunity by getting listed on Google My Business (GMB).

• First things first, check whether you have access or not. If you don’t, then claim your listing. Once you get access, optimize it smartly.
• List your hotel’s name, address, and phone number (a.k.a., NAP).
• Ensure your Google Maps marker is in the correct location (so searchers can find your hotel).
• Provide additional details that are relevant to travelers looking for you. Such as Wi-Fi, disabled access, smoking area, and so on.
• If you are a hotel chain or hospitality group, then have a verified Google My Business listing for each one – maintained through a single account.

12. Make the Most of Google Hotel Search

In 2015, Google rolled a new design for its hotel search results. This search engine is designed specifically for hotels. It is an assured platform for you to drive more traffic to the hotel website using Google’s unique interface.

As mentioned previously, the two primary ways people search for hotels are:

• Hotels in “(name of town, city, or vicinity)”
• Hotel “Palm Beach in Maldives”

Google Hotel Search lays more emphasis on the featured properties with larger images and bigger fonts for hotel descriptions and prices. 

The goal for hotels is to obtain a spot on the first page of hotel listings, with a definitive description of the brand and a visible image of the hotel in order to drive traffic and conversions. 

However, getting to the top of the search results page is not always easy. Here are a few ways that will help you enhance your visibility:

1. Have HD quality photos that help to increase conversions and clicks.

Firstly, get your Google My Business account verified. Always save images with keywords in the file. For example, if you upload an image of the hotel pool, be sure to name the file: hotel-pool-on-Male-Beach. 

2. Encourage guests to leave as many positive Google reviews as possible.

Reviews are heavily weighted when it comes to factors that influence your organic search rankings. The more positive reviews you have, the better your organic visibility will be.

3. Provide useful information, such as hotel descriptions and amenities.

Ensure the Hotel Details Card of your Google My Business account is updated with accurate phone numbers, addresses, Google maps geo markers, recent photos of the hotel, guest reviews, and amenities.

13. Voice Search

In the era of Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google, more and more people have increased the use of voice search.

Though the adoption of voice search looks like a future technology trend. 

According to recent statistics from Microsoft’s Bing Ads, the number of people using their digital assistant, Cortana, to voice search for hotels has seen a 343% year-on-year increase in the UK alone. Similarly, finding flights by voice search saw a 277% year-on-year increase.

Google also reported that 20% of its mobile queries are now activated through voice, and the overall use of digital assistants and voice search has risen over 40% in the past year.

Voice search could increase your website conversions by connecting you to qualified leads and is an assured SEO strategy for hotels.

Here’s what you should do to optimize your website for voice search.

1. Focus on casual speech over technical  keywords

Writing website copy with conversational language will be a key tactic for hotels, once voice search takes over. Instead of the best 5-star hotel in Maldives, include the term, “which is the best five-star hotel in Maldives?”

Because this is how your audience is going to ask Siri or Alexa. 

2. Make your names and titles beautiful. 

Remember that when voice search users ask a question out loud, their devices will also respond out loud back. This means you have to be more descriptive and concise about your names and titles. 

3. Choose long tail keywords to improve long term SEO. 

Start using longer keyword phrases in your content to get an edge over the competition over time. 

4. Create marketing content around broader, general interest topics. 

For voice search, hotels will need their content to go wide, not deep. A great way to do this is to focus on tourist attractions or local destinations your hotel guests will visit. You can also provide plenty of FAQs about the city, your hotel, and general travel topics your audience cares about.

14. Build Links

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks to your website from other websites. A hyperlink (usually just called a link) is a way for users to navigate between pages on the internet.

So, link building for hotels would mean, getting backlinks to your hotel website from external sites such as those of hotel associations, OTAs and more.

Why is it important in SEO for hotels?

Links are the core element of hotel SEO. There are two types of links: 1. Internal Links and 2. External Links. Search engines use links to:

• Discover new web pages.
• Determine how well a page should rank in their results.

What are the internal links?

Internal links allow you to show the structure of your website to search engines.

By linking from one page to another on your website, search engines get a better understanding of the important pages and interconnection among them.

What are external links or backlinks?

It is the process of getting links from other websites. You need top-quality inbound links from credible websites.

The backlinks or external links give your reader a sense of confidence and are of great importance in SEO for hotel websites.

To get the backlinks or external links, you have to build online and offline relationships with companies that provide complementary services, such as nearby event organizers and tourist attractions.

Make sure you reach out to get links from websites that are relevant and have higher domain authority. Another most effective way of link building is through guest posting. Remember, you have to focus on quality, not quantity.

#Protip: Avoid low-quality links like comments, forums, web 2.0, PBN, and so on. These links will harm your hotel SEO.  

How to build external links or backlinks?

• Get listed on sites directly related to the hotel and hospitality industry such as TripAdvisor.
• Submit your website on online hotel directories.
• Register in your city’s hotel association or chamber of commerce and try to get links from their website.
• Focus on content writing for hotels in the form of blogs, infographics, or videos.
• Give the external links of the websites that have higher domain authority in your content.
• Ask people to link back to your content.
• Offer your content to travel websites or third-party sites and get a link back.

IMPORTANT: Never ever buy links. The search engines don’t like this.

15. Work on Local SEO for Your Hotel

Local SEO for hotels is an effective way to promote your hotel regionally. As a part of local SEO, you can simply use some of the below keywords on your website.

(NAP – Name, Address, and Phone number)

Your focus keyword + city name in the

• Title tag
• Meta description
• URL
• or Header tag

Hence, this will be helpful when the searchers will search like: Best hotels in Male.

Secondly, start with citation. A citation is an online reference of your name, address, and phone number (NAP). 

Search engines use them while evaluating the online authority of your hotel. It is a proven strategy in SEO for hotels.

Furthermore, along with NAP, citations also include other details such as hours of operation, driving directions, business description, images, videos, payment forms, and reviews.

With these 15 sureshot strategies, you are all set to begin SEO for your hotel website.

When you start, it would not be feasible for you to keep reading the entire blog. Therefore, I’m giving a 27-point SEO checklist for the hotel website to ensure that you do it right.

Hotel Website SEO Checklist

All you have to do is download this checklist and verify that you have considered all 27 parameters. 

Bonus: Track SEO Performance

Applying different SEO strategies and not analyzing the result is as similar as shooting in the dark!

If you don’t measure, you won’t grow. 

To get consistent and stable traffic to your hotel website, you have to track the performance of different SEO strategies. For that, you can use Google Analytics and Google Search Console. 

Both these tools are offered by Google that gives you an in-depth analysis of your website’s performance.

In addition to the above, you can keep a check on your Core Web Vitals such as the speed of site loading, responsiveness, HTTPS security; to ensure that your site is fulfilling all criteria for ranking in the search results.

How to use Google Search Console and Google Analytics?

Google Search Console: You simply have to add your property using your Gmail account and put the code on your website to verify it.

Google Analytics: You can install it on your own or ask your website designer or developer to install the tracking code of Google Analytics. 

Now let’s see

How to track your hotel website performance in Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. You can track the following things from the Google Search console. 

1. Impressions: This metric is all about search results visibility. If you have 100 impressions, it means your site appears 100 times in search results. Ideally, your impressions should increase regularly to get more visitors to your website.

2. Clicks: This is quite easy to understand. It shows how many people have clicked on your website through search results. (You can consider the total number of visitors on your website.)

3. CTR: Click-through rate is impression vs clicks percentage. It gives you a ratio of total clicks you got from the total impressions.

4. Position: This parameter tells you the average position of your page on search queries for the selected timeframe. In simple words, it is the average ranking of your web page.

Now let’s see,

How to track your hotel website performance in Google Analytics?

Google Analytics (GA) is a free web analytics tool offered by Google to help you analyze your website traffic. From GA, you can get detailed information on different aspects of your website’s performance.

1. Organic sessions: It gives you details on how much traffic you are getting from your SEO efforts.

2. Bounce rate: This metric tells you how many visitors are leaving your website (bouncing).

3. Average session duration: It tells you the average time spent by visitors on your website. Preferably, you should have a high average session duration. If session time is increasing, it means people are taking interest and you may get more bookings.

4.Goals or Ecommerce conversion: You need to set a goal for your website conversion. Since you are a hotel, your goal would be to get more bookings. With this metric, you can measure how many bookings you get through organic traffic. E-commerce conversion is similar to the goal, but it gives you an actual booking value.

Please note that your booking engine should be advanced enough that lets you send data to Google Analytics. 

5. Page wise organic sessions: This metric tells you about the page that is performing well in search results. If you find any page that is not performing well, you can optimize it. I’d recommend not to optimize all the pages at once. First, find out the important pages that help your visitors to book with you, and then optimize them.

So, this is how you can track the results of different applied strategies. You see, SEO is not an overnight process. Rather than, it is an ongoing process. You have to consistently keep on applying strategies and measure its performance.

Bonus-in-Bonus: SEO Tools

I am sure, you must be quite overwhelmed until now with all this information. But, here’s a quick tip for that too. SEO tools.

The market does not have any lack of SEO tools now. Rather, you’ll find a new tool every other day. So, I am sharing a reference for SEO tools to help you zero in:

1. Ahrefs
2. SEMRush
3. Moz
4. UberSuggest
5. Answer The Public
6. Exploding Topics
7. Screaming Frog
8. SpyFu

Some of these are free, whereas some have free and paid versions depending on your use.

FAQs

By far there might be a few unanswered questions in your mind. I have answered a few major ones below that hoteliers like you may ask.