Your website is one of the most important tools you have when attracting new guests. You want it to tell your property's "story", be easy to use, and be seen by as many potential guests as possible.
Though this statement may seem obvious, it is not nearly as simple as it sounds. Attracting potential guests goes far beyond building a beautiful site and using the right keywords. Search Engine Optimization involves many moving parts. Understanding how you can use these different parts to boost traffic to your site is essential. The best websites not only provide what the search engines are looking for, but more importantly what visitors want. This is by no means a comprehensive guide. However, by implementing these 5 basic SEO tips you can increase website traffic and improve user experience.
1. Delete Abandoned Pages
1. Delete Abandoned PagesIf your website has been around long enough, you have likely accumulated several “dead weight” pages. Examples include:
- Archived pages
- Dated blog posts
- Landing pages that no longer generate reservations
- Old package promotions
If you take the time to go through and trim out old pages, you will see a marked increase in traffic to your site.
Note: You will want to redirect and deleted page URLs to another relevant page on your site using a 301 redirect. For more details on 301 redirects join us for one of our SEO Webinars for Innkeepers.
2. Enhance Your Title Tags
The proper keywords can make or break the visibility of your posts, but you need to know how best to implement them. In general, 50-75% of your search engine traffic comes from what is known as “long tail” searches. Long tail searches are the specific, unique searches that bring people to your page, such as “best inns on the Oregon coast.” To take advantage of this, you need to go beyond general search terms and get creative. Add modifiers, such as events, reviews, or things to do.
For example:
Oregon Coast Inns - 2016 Family Events
3. Add Quality Content
Make sure there is enough quality content on your site to entice visitors and keep them coming back. Many hotel marketers believe that most website visitors don’t have the time or the attention span to read posts longer than 400 words. I disagree. Research shows that posts 1,200 words and longer actually generate a lot more traffic. Of course, this should not be 1,200 words of sub-par, boring, or unnecessary content. Every post on your site should be credible, informative, and comprehensive. If you are providing visitors with information they want in a well-written, captivating way, then they will be more than willing to read your content and consider staying at your property.
For more details on writing quality content check out our post "3 Questions to Consider When Writing a Bed & Breakfast Blog Post."
4. Clean Up URLs
Not only are long URLS no longer useful or necessary, but they confuse search engines and users alike. If you can slim down these lengthy URLS and cut out all the superfluous junk, then Google will have a lot easier time accessing your site. Make sure your URL only contains your target keyword or the title of your page.
A well formulated URL should look like this:
https://odysys.com/blog/statistics-online-reviews-affect-hotels/
5. Link to Relevant Websites
It may seem counter-intuitive to provide links to other sites when you want to bring traffic to your own, but this is a proven way to bring more people to your site and enhance their experience. Pages with two or more outbound links can successfully boost traffic to your site. Links are not only a helpful tool for showing search engines the popularity of a site but for determining if a site is trustworthy or if it is just spam. Google actually wants its users to visit other pages with helpful information, so it is worth your time to provide links to authoritative sources on the topic or to other relevant sites related to your post.
For the uninitiated, Search Engine Optimization can often feel like a strange, daunting beast. However, there are little things every beginner can do to create a search engine-friendly website and dramatically increase its visibility. Getting people to your website translates to getting people to your business, so it is well worth your time to learn the basics. Using these 5 easy SEO strategies will help you to boost the number of visitors to your site while ensuring that their user experience is as smooth and useful as possible.
What's next? Check out our video: How to Optimize Title Tags & Meta Descriptions, and download our SEO Template.
