Why SEO is key to driving hotel website conversions?

The whole pandemic situation has completely changed the face of the hospitality industry. Things are simply not the same as they were Circa 2020. Thanks to coronavirus, more of the processes involved in hotel bookings, research, and exploration have gone online.

As things go more ‘online’ the competition among hoteliers and other key hospitality agents is bound to grow. 

However, if you adopt the right SEO strategy, you can stay afloat even during the hardest of times. In this post, we look at why SEO is super essential for driving hotel conversions and traffic.

It Helps to Outrank Competitors

The hospitality industry was already a competitive one. Coronavirus took that thing to a whole different level. However, this is not the first time that tourism industry faced adversity. The rise of home-sharing services and AirBnB also came up with a similar threat in the past. 

But, hotels rebounded, ultimately. The current pandemic scenario is a similar one as almost everyone is hesitant to travel. But, they will – once again. And, when they do – they will have to sift through multiple options and hotels will once again be fighting with each other.

The only way to get ready for that future pent-up demand is via digital marketing and SEO. Optimization is the only way to beat your competitors. 

While you’re waiting for the situations to improve, you can get to work on your SEO strategies so that when everyone is ready to travel again you have your search rankings to capture customers and increase bookings. 

Improves Mobile Conversions

How well a hotel booking site loads on mobile is super crucial. In short, mobile readiness is no longer an option. And, while most hoteliers and hotel experts would claim that they understand the importance of hotel SEO – not many of them know how to leverage the power of mobile friendliness to drive conversions.

The thing is – Google follows the mobile-first indexing. What does it mean? It means the search engine giant looks at how the site loads on mobile-first and desktop later. It gives major importance to mobile friendliness before distributing rankings in search results. 

But, for a hotel to drive bookings, you need to go beyond just ensuring mobile friendliness. You should also use mobile for driving conversions and bookings. Make sure that your mobile site allows bookings as well. 

According to a survey, mobile bookings are responsible for over 39% of the total business brought by the OTAs. Not just that, over 70% of the last-minute bookings come from mobile devices. The mobile comes with a ton of opportunities for hoteliers to boost conversions. There’s nothing quite like SEO to leverage that power and make it happen in real-time.

Helps Secure Links From Other Sites

Before distributing rankings, Google looks at how many quality links a website attracts against any search term. The more high-quality links a site has pointing towards it, the better it is for the rankings. A site with thousands of links pointing to it has a higher likelihood of securing better rankings in search engines.

If a site with more links points at it means that it’s a trustworthy one. Google thinks that the site has quality content to offer that’s why so many other sites are pointing to it. Accordingly, it will give you a higher spot in SERPs.

Because of this, many sites engage in a practice called link building. It involves acquiring links from other websites. It can be done in a variety of ways such as –

• Guest posting on other blogs
• Creating high-quality/viral content that attracts links naturally
• Asking for links

For hotels – link building can be a little tricky. What they can do instead is contact sites that publish press releases and ask to publish something newsworthy such as an announcement or something.

Improved Search Rankings

The first and foremost thing SEO aims to do is make sure you rank for all the relevant search phrases and keywords linked to your hotel/resort. It’s simple – the higher you appear in search results, the more people can find you. More people can find you, more sales and conversions you can derive.

In the absence of a thoughtful SEO strategy, none of that would be possible. Ideally, you would want to have your phone number and all the contact details as easily visible among the top search results as possible. 

If you can get search engine optimization to bring you more traffic, there’s nothing quite like it to ultimately lead to better conversions and higher revenue.

Brings Your More Qualified Traffic

SEO makes sure that you don’t just get traffic; you get a lot of relevant traffic. For example, let’s say a potential customer is looking for a resort in a certain location. 

With the right optimization effort, your site should attract people who are looking for resorts within their price range and preferred location. It should not attract traffic that’s looking for a mid-range hotel in the suburbs.

When you attract relevant traffic, their chances of contacting you and finalizing a booking are much higher than otherwise.

Bottom Line

As you can tell – SEO is no longer an option for the hotel industry. There are a ton of ways in which search engine optimization can boost their conversion exponentially.