Although the hospitality industry has big names that many of us know like Hilton, Marriott and Ramada; did you know if you did a search with the basic keywords of “Phoenix hotels” or similar that the first sites which show up in the natural / organic SERP’s are those for Expedia, Cheaptickets, Orbitz and other hospitality booking sites?
The travel booking sites have a high volume of pages which dominate the search engines for specific keywords and mainly because they have been online businesses for close to 10 years! And even newer players in the game are seeing their day in the spotlight like Kayak. I mean if a potential client does a search for “Comfort Inn Georgia” and the hotel of Comfort Inn wants to be found first in the natural listings vs a travel booking site then what do they need to do to get to that page result and dominate that page with all their hotels located throughout the world?
So what should Hotel chains do when wanting to conquer the organic search results?
For hotel organic SEO, first the brand should devise a strategy, either in house or by contacting an outside source who understands how to get listed organically in the search engines. Once they have the knowledge and experienced players on board, then write out the expected goals and a time frame when these goals can realistically be met.
- Discuss what needs to be completed. Some Organic SEO choices can be SEO Web content, MetaData, hotel blog entries, article submissions, social media, natural link exchanges, RSS feeds, and landing pages.
- Devise a 6-12 month plan, broken up into phases with realistic deadlines.
- Give status updates to the corporation 1-2 times a week.
The biggest thing we have found is that corporations, no matter what industry, don’t have much information when it comes to Organic SEO. We have in-person, phone or web meetings to discuss a strategy, the realistic expectations and the best course of action and devise a 6-12 month phase plan.
Working together to devise an Organic SEO plan and allowing a strategist to do their job and then discussing the phases is the best route to take when looking toward a long term organic hospitality SERP goal.