This blog is adapted from an EVG Media presentation given at HSMAI on Oct. 10, 2024.

With easy rate comparisons and “lowest price” promises, online travel agencies (OTAs) make it difficult for hoteliers to gain direct bookings. These juggernauts also take up an inordinate amount of real estate on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), simply making it hard for hotels and hospitality ventures to even be seen.

So, what can you do? How do you boost your hotel website’s visibility and increase direct bookings? EVG Media has you covered.

Align Your Content with Audience Expectations

The stripped-down content of an OTA doesn’t excel at selling the experience, and that’s something that many direct bookers are looking for. They want to know what it’s going to feel like staying at your property. Travel and hospitality content is very much about connecting to readers on an emotional level. Publish content that inspires people to travel and encourages them to dream; convey how it feels to visit, what your city’s vibe is, what the regional cuisine tastes like, etc.

Getting the Most from the Basics

First things first—you need to make sure that you’re already covering the basics of your digital footprint.

Boost Your Organic Ranking

Review, revise, and optimize your metadata. Metadata doesn’t typically show on your website, but it does display in search engine results so it’s important to optimize it and to ensure that your titles and descriptions are engaging. For every page of your website, list the page and topic and then write a meta title and description for each. If you’re using a CMS like Wordpress, this is relatively simple with plug-ins like Yoast SEO.

Align your headers and subheaders with their page topic and metadata. Your header (H1 and H2) tags matter. They indicate what the page is about, direct the reader to what’s important, and signal search engines. Assistive technology also relies on header tags to indicate the importance level of the text. 

Check your images. Ensure your images align with your page’s content and are sized appropriately for site speed. Once you’ve chosen the right images, you’ll want to make sure that they’re displaying correctly on the website. Our clients have seen a correlation between broken images and decreased bookings, especially when it comes to photos of guest rooms.

All your images should include alt text, which should provide a description of the image, not just your company or product name. Alt text is valuable not only to search engines but also accessibility; some forms of assistive technology read those image descriptions to users so they can more fully grasp the page’s content. 

Build Links: On & Off Site (Backlinks)

Add internal links. Make it easy for website users to quickly find the answers they’re looking for with links to related pages. For example, you might want to link from a weddings page to your dining page where your catering menus live. If you’re writing a blog (which we do recommend for a better user experience and site ranking), you have huge opportunities to build internal links. These links also help search engines gauge whether pages provide trustworthy and authoritative content.

Obtain backlinks, links to your page or site from other websites. These are the most important links to build because they’ve been proven to increase your search engine ranking—by a lot. However, they’re also actually pretty time consuming and tricky with recent Google updates.

It’s a worthwhile pursuit, but first you have to have content that others see as valuable. Good places to start are press releases, influencer partnerships, and relationships with local businesses (such as vendors you partner with).

Showcase Your Brand

Monitor regional and industry-relevant publications for mentions of your brand. Most of these publications are online/digital these days. Set up a Google alert for your hotel name to get notified by email. Some of these websites run editor’s or reader’s choice contests. If they have a “best of” contest, throw your hat in the ring. 

If your brand gets recognized by a publisher or organization, either as an award winner or as the subject of a featured piece, reach out to them and find out what your options are for promoting that recognition. In most cases, you’ll need the publisher’s permission or a license to use their intellectual property. 

Promote your recognitions. When you win an award, once you’ve secured the appropriate license, place it prominently on your website, blast it out on social media, create a press release, and write about it on your blog. 

Post user reviews. There’s a significant difference between saying you’re the best and having a customer say you’re the best. Reviews on your Google Business Profile or other popular review platforms carry more weight than you might imagine. Responding to those reviews with a thank-you message demonstrates that your brand is active and engaged.

Beyond the Basics

Tips for Dealing with Hospitality Trends

One challenge that most industries are facing is Google A.I. Overviews (zero-click results), where users obtain information (sometimes yours) without ever getting to a website. Two ways to help combat that trend are to create more content that hits the sales funnel at the middle and bottom and to inter-link your content to guide users through the funnel (top to bottom).

Providing hyper-specific, geo-targeted content helps connect you with the end-users most likely to convert. Properties in the city center and out in the suburbs should have different, relevant supporting content.

Craft content to catch users at the top of the funnel. Creating and posting articles on destination planning and exploration adventures connects you to users who are still browsing. A call-to-action at the end of the article can lead them to your relevant brand offerings, both leading them further into the funnel and putting you at the top of their list before they dig into competitors.

Create travel content centered around events. Think about the sporting events, festivals, recreation activities, and markets that bring patrons to your area. Helpful, relevant content could help you show up in pre-booking searches.

Social media is a great way to connect with guests, especially around events. Encourage them to tell their stories. Make unique social media accounts for each individual hotel.

Tips for Dealing with SEO-Related Trends

Focus on building brand trust and your unique services. Remember the EEAT hallmarks that Google says it uses to establish site quality: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Make sure your content exemplifies these criteria. You should also highlight your unique services in your keyword strategy. We recommend focusing on long-tail keywords (e.g., dog-friendly hotel near Greenville hiking trails).

Reddit and other forums have found their way to the top of search results, making it even more important than ever to find ways to authentically connect with users in these arenas. You can also take advantage of the push-back to AirBnB (fees, extras, etc.), restating all your benefits in comparison.

You’ll also want to build separate pages for each offering and list all your service options. This allows for greater tailoring and broader reach in your SEO strategy.

A.I. and Beyond

A.I. is a powerful technology. But, to quote Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Here are some key guidelines for dealing with A.I.

• Keep humans in the loop.
• Establish a strict A.I. policy.
• Look for efficiencies without sacrificing customer experience.
• Trust, but verify.

Remember that one of your goals is to connect to potential travelers on an emotional level, and this is something at which A.I. does not excel.

Finding Opportunity in a Shifting Landscape

Since late 2023, Google’s search results have been in a state of flux, with frequent experiments in layout and the growing influence of A.I. As the weight given to a brand fluctuates, it’s important to ensure your brand scores well on the Experience-Expertise-Authority-Trustworthiness scale. As Google uses A.I. to organize search results based on the type of query, it’s going to get more sophisticated at returning the results most likely to match exactly what the user is looking for. If you (and your content) are in tune with your audience, you can already be there.