What has changed?

The tried and true marketing methods aren’t performing the way they used to. A few years ago, simply having a website and publishing a few posts on your Facebook page could get plenty of exposure. Supplementing this with some paid advertising when running special offers or promotions worked well.

These days, the online space is increasingly crowded, and it’s becoming more challenging to stand out to potential guests. Many businesses that updated their website only a few years ago are now finding that these websites are outdated and no longer ranking well. Mobile-first design, page speed, and fresh quality content are essential.

What about Paid Digital Advertising?

Organic reach on social media platforms is more limited in 2022 than in previous years. More and more businesses need to turn to paid social media advertising to generate engagement and conversions.

To further complicate matters, paid reach has also become more complex, with privacy protocols creating challenges in targeting specific demographic groups by interests or preferences. Campaigns are now targeting broader audiences that match target demographics less precisely, and so conversion rates aren’t as high as in previous years.

While options such as Google Ads, social media advertising, YouTube advertising, and digital display ads are still generating results, the financial investment required to generate the same results is showing an upward trend. As voice technology such as Google Home, Siri, and Alexa becomes more popular, search queries are becoming more tailored to question formats.

Search Engine Marketing in 2022

The outdated way to rank well for a Google search keyword was to include a few pages of content on your website with strategically placed keywords, tags, and backlink building. Today the algorithm is much smarter and aimed at providing high-quality content and a fast, enjoyable user experience for the online searcher.

It considers a variety of factors, including regularity and quality of content published, and how well the content matches the search intent. It factors in readability, related keywords, subsequent user behaviour, and much more. It’s far harder to “trick” the algorithm than in years past.

The best way to rank well in 2022 is to consider what your potential guests might be searching for and optimise your website to give them the answers they are looking for. Deliver regular, fresh, accurate, and high-quality content. Ensure the user experience on your website is fast, intuitive, and enjoyable and makes them want to keep reading more.

Having a social media presence on multiple platforms and sharing website content such as blog posts and updates can also help signal the freshness of content to search engines. Targeting the right keywords for your business, including those that indicate user intent actions, is another crucial strategy.

Where to Start

Keyword research is key. Ask your guests how they found you, and why they booked with you. This can give you an idea of potential search terms to investigate. Find out which keywords your competitors are targeting and which are driving their website traffic. Discover keywords that your competitors aren’t yet targeting.

Next, audit your website for mobile speed, responsiveness, content quality, backlink quality, and domain authority. Optimise for any missing or duplicate tags, missing meta descriptions, image alt tags, compress images, and remove any unnecessary pages. Disavow toxic backlinks. Remove any unnecessary code.

Finally, build an SEO strategy based around great keywords. You want to choose keywords that have a good monthly search volume, ideally, indicate purchase intent, aren’t so competitive that you are unlikely to ever rank, and are highly relevant to your accommodation offering. Then deliver excellent content that’s well written, informative, and valuable to the reader.

If SEO isn’t your area of expertise, chat to us about a tailored SEO strategy, optimisation, and content creation package to align your hotel or accommodation website SEO with 2022 best practice.

Search engine optimisation or SEO is the process of looking at your hotel website, and seeing what can be improved, changed, or added so that it is more likely to appear in the top results in a search engine. Whether the user is searching on Google, Bing, Yahoo or another search engine, in 2022 an SEO strategy should deliver high-quality content that meets the needs of the user searching.

Currently, an estimated 92% of web users choose to use Google as their primary search engine. As such, we will be focusing on on-site optimation for hotels based on Google best practice guidelines for the purpose of this discussion. The Google algorithm constantly changes, updates, and becomes more complex and intelligent. So, it’s essential to stay on top of emerging trends and adapt SEO strategy accordingly.

What does Google want?

What does Google use to determine who ranks more highly? It’s not as simple as having the best information. There are a lot of interconnected elements that all work together to determine the quality of the user experience and how visible that content will be on search engines.

Website elements and structure

You might look at a hotel website page and think that it’s just words and images, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes that you may not be aware of. Having well written and informative content with appealing pictures is a great starting point, but that’s just one part of delivering a webpage optimised for SEO.

Search engines use tags to help determine which words on a website page are most important and how different sections relate to each other. Title tags and image tags are used to tell the reader and the search engine what the content is about. The page title might tell Google the topic of the page, H2 and H3 tags can be used as subheading titles and differentiate them from paragraphs.

In general, more important headings will have a bigger font to catch the reader's eye. For example, on this page, you can see “Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Hotels in 2022” is the biggest and most apparent, and is telling you what the page is going to be discussing.

You also want to make sure that you include the keywords you want to target as per your SEO strategy. Keywords are simply the words that a web user is typing into Google to try and find information. This might be something like “hotels near suncorp stadium”

Google will also offer suggested searches similar to the keywords entered that are popular searches and might be helpful. When you know which keywords your guests are using to find you on Google you can create content that caters to that. Keywords should be included in title tags, in the paragraphs at the correct keyword frequency, and related keywords also play a role and should be included if possible.

Internal links are elements you can click on that direct you to another related web page on the same website. External links are elements that you can click on that will take you to a related web page on a different website. Having both internal links and external links to reputable sites is important.

Google will also look at design and user behaviour. One example is font size. If the font used is too small and too difficult to read on a mobile device, it will not perform as well as a larger font size that’s easy to read. If there is too much content on the page, this can also affect the user experience. Pages with lots of pictures and words all tightly compressed together can be overwhelming, and can also result in slow page load speeds. Mobile-first design takes priority, which means that you want your website to perform well on a mobile device even more than you want it to look good on a desktop.

Planning a hotel SEO strategy

Firstly, if your hotel or resort is already getting traffic from Google, it’s a good idea to determine which keywords are driving that traffic. You can check your website Google Search Console account at no cost to see which keywords your site is ranking for and how many website visits are being generated. You will need to be signed in to the Google account associated with the website with which your sitemap was submitted in order to view this data.

Subscription-based SEO platforms can collect even more detailed information about your organic traffic and find out which keywords your competitors are ranking for. You can also see keywords that have high monthly search volumes which you may not be targeting yet, and see how difficult it would be to rank well for a particular keyword. Hotels and resorts should aim to target keywords that relate to their accommodation, that people are actively searching for on Google, and where they can genuinely offer a solution to a problem that the reader is having, or offer information that the reader will find useful.

It can be difficult to know which keywords would benefit your business most unless you have a good understanding of SEO best practices, which is why we conduct comprehensive keyword and website audits as well as keyword and content strategies for our clients as part of our SEO services.

Implementing SEO best practices

Once you have the list of keywords that you wish to target, you can determine where your existing website requires optimisation. For pages that are already ranking but aren’t on the first page of Google search results, or are on the first page but aren’t at number one, on-page optimisation may improve your current rankings.

Take a look at which website is currently ranking number one for the keyword that you wish to target, and compare it to yours.

• What is the word count?
• How many times do they use the keyword in their copy?
• Which tags are in use?
• Which related keywords are they using?
• How fast does their page load?
• How user-friendly is the design?
• How many backlinks do they have?
• What is it about their page that keeps a reader interested and increases page view time?

Asking these questions can help you to see where your website can improve, and what kind of content readers are finding valuable. Keep in mind that while you can use a competitor page as a way to offer insight, your own website content must be completely original. Plagiarism is against Google best practices.

Publishing new SEO optimised content such as fresh new pages or blogs regularly can also improve your rankings, especially when internal links are used well. Ideally, you can keep a reader on your website for longer, and have them check out more than one page in a session.

Measuring SEO results

Your Google Search Console of Google Analytics accounts can both tell you whether your overall traffic from organic search is increasing. You also want to keep a record of your SERP rankings each week or month for target keywords so that you can see if they are improving.

With our eTourism SEO services, we do offer much more comprehensive reporting and analysis to offer a clearer picture of your SEO results for all organic keywords, not just the ones that you are targeting.

Local SEO – Google My Business

More and more people are turning to Google My Business to find local services and products. They can view contact information at a glance, read Google reviews, view the location on Google Maps, and visit the website for more information.

Having a Google My Business account set up, verified, and with complete information is essential for hotels and resorts in 2022. Monitoring and replying to reviews, as well as updating details as they change such as opening hours is also important.

eTourism SEO packages for hotels

If your website traffic or online booking have been declining, and your website hasn’t been updated recently, there’s a good chance that your Google rankings are declining. There’s never been a more important time for hotels and resorts to align themselves with Google best practice strategies and tailor their website content accordingly. Choosing an SEO service package with eTourism can help keep your website relevant and performing well.

Contact us today and find out what we can do to help you reach your business goals and increase bookings in 2022.

If it isn’t, chances are your hotel website needs SEO.

SEO, which stands for search engine optimisation, is the key to climbing up the search engine results pages (SERPs).

In other words, the more search engine optimised your website is, the more “Google-friendly” it will be. It will appear higher up when web users type in relevant search queries, resulting in greater visibility and more traffic to your website.

So, how do you search engine optimise a website? This beginner’s guide will go over the key factors for making your website SEO-friendly.

Website Performance

Did you know that the speed of your website is taken into account by search engines?

It’s true: slow loading times will demote your website in the SERPs. But thankfully there are several, ways you can speed up your website and improve its overall performance to increase your search engine visibility.

Primarily, take note of large images and third-party plugins that are taking too long to load, as these are often the first causes of a slow-loading website. Other causes may be poorly optimised code and substandard server hosting.

SEO Keywords

SEO keywords are the search queries that best represent your website or business, for example: “central hotels in Sydney”. Incorporating these keywords in your content is one of the best ways to optimise your website to be more Google-friendly.

However, it’s not effective to simply “spam” your content with as many keywords as you can think of. It’s better to nominate a few that are relevant, uncommon and unique to your website, before building your written content around them.

As for placement, SEO keywords are often included in title tags, headers, body text, alt text, meta descriptions, internal links and URLs.

Quality of Content

Going hand-in-hand with SEO keywords is the quality of your website’s written content. It’s not enough to simply rely on SEO keywords; your content must be well-written, unique, engaging and accurate/trustworthy to be deemed valuable by search engines.

It’s best to have a professional copywriter create the written content of your website, but you can analyse your existing website content by asking yourself a few key questions, including:

• Is my content interesting and engaging?
• Is my content easily readable and to the point?
• Does my content inspire me to take action, i.e. make a booking?

Landing Pages

Landing pages are “standalone” website pages that are designed to generate leads and convince website visitors to take action. For a hotel website, a landing page might be a web page designated to local attractions and things to do, or a brand new special offer/marketing campaign.

Creating landing pages are especially effective for increasing your website’s visibility, as these can further utilise your SEO keywords as well as widen your online reach in regards to what your audience might be searching for.

In general, a landing page will attract new customers, then lead them to one of your hotel’s main website pages to find more information, subscribe to your email list or make a booking.

SEO Blogging

Do you maintain a regularly updated website blog? A blog can be viewed in the same way as a landing page, but with more freedom in terms of the content, you choose to write about.

A hotel website blog can be utilised in a variety of creative ways: promoting local attractions and things to do, local restaurants, upcoming events as well as small announcements or news updates for your reader base.

And similarly to all your website content, each blog can be search engine optimised for Google by incorporating SEO keywords, internal/external links and audience-engaging topics.

And that’s it – now that you have learnt the basics of search engine optimisation, how SEO-friendly have you made your website? Let us know in the comments below!

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What does an SEO marketing strategy offer? To put it simply: increased online visibility for your business across the search engines, meaning more clicks, website traffic, customer engagement and guest bookings.

And with online travel bookings now widely accepted as the norm, maintaining a clear SEO strategy using the most effective methods is vital for businesses looking to thrive in the current market, which, let’s face it, is as challenging as ever when it comes to standing out!

If you need your website to drive more traffic and bookings, here’s how.

Is Your Website Search Engine Optimised?

Perhaps it is, but is your website’s SEO approach the most optimum? Search engines, like Google, are smart and dynamic. Everything that shapes your website is taken into account, from its keyword implementation and content readability score to its tags, sitemap, URL choice, website links and so forth – even its loading time plays a part in how high up your website ranks on the ladder.

It sounds overwhelming but, when implemented from a structural level, a website that’s been effectively search engine optimised is the key to climbing the search engines, standing out from competitors and generating more customer traffic on the whole. Without a functional SEO strategy in place, your website will fall flat before it even goes live.

Are You Staying Visible with Fresh, Consistent SEO Content?

As well as a well-optimised website, its ability to be favoured by search engines goes hand in hand with the content it puts out on a regular basis. This is where a professionally managed website blog can give you the edge over similar sites and competitors – most of which will opt to rely on their initial website content alone.

Just like your website, blogs have the capacity to be search engine optimised using the same SEO methods mentioned above, allowing you to expand your reach with compelling content that markets everything you have to offer and engages with your audience on a relatable level.

So, if your website isn’t utilising professionally written SEO blogs to promote your hotel’s best features, what’s happening locally and the newest special offer you’ve just lined up, you’re losing out on significant search engine traffic that could be yours.

Get a Free Website Evaluation with eTourism

Effective SEO marketing is what we do best here at eTourism, from base market research specifically for your business to designing your website from the ground up using proven SEO practices that deliver exactly what they should: generate user traffic and drive more direct bookings.

Whether you run a motel, hotel or resort, our expert team will work with you to create your ideal website and ensure that it stands out in the competitive online market with a range of fully comprehensive services designed to suit your short or long-term needs and goals.

And, to help you along the way, we can even give your current website an industry-standard SEO evaluation – 100% free with no obligations. Just send us a request!

Find out more today – take a moment to visit eTourism.

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As we move into the third month of the year (already!) it’s time to recap the big search trends marketers are using to reach their audiences online and the new direction search is moving in.

1. Voice Search On The Up And Up

With voice search expected to account for almost half of all searches by 2020, marketers are waking up to a new way of thinking about keywords.

The days when internet users simply typed a word or two into Google and hit “search” are fading, with voice queries far more likely to be longer, conversational and more specific. Your hotel’s search campaign must change with the times by thinking about the language your audience use to research their breaks online and focusing in on long-tail keywords to rank prominently in the SERPs.

2. User Experience Is Everything

Google has started giving more prominent rankings to websites that prioritise user experience. This means simple and intuitive navigation, an engaging design and a straightforward, easy to use booking page.

If your hotel’s website isn’t offering the user experience it should be, you’re not only turning off guests and losing out on bookings; your rankings are likely to suffer too (which of course, means more lost bookings…)

3. Mobile-First Optimisation

As part of it’s commitment to improving experience for its billions of global users everyday, Google is continuing to build its mobile-first index, giving higher rankings to websites that prioritise mobile friendliness. With weighting given to page load times, design and usability, now’s the time to assess the mobile health of your hotel’s website and make sure it performs optimally across screen sizes and devices.

What SEO trends are you noticing gaining ground in 2019? Let us know in the comments below!

This year, Google has fore grounded page-speed and mobile friendliness as ranking factors. Moving into 2019, most SEO trends are expected to follow suit, with a continuing emphasis on user experience as the best tactic for climbing the SERPs.

Let’s take a look at the 3 SEO trends expected to rule 2019.

Mobile-First Indexing

Google has been migrating websites to a mobile-first index since the early months of 2018, and the buzz around mobile-friendliness as an essential ranking factor is going to carry through to next year. This means that although there’s still only one index with both the mobile and desktop version of your hotel’s website, it’s the mobile- version that counts towards your ranking.

Since it’s the mobile version of your website which will be used as the primary one for ranking, there’s no time for delay when it comes to getting mobile-friendliness up to scratch. If you still haven’t provided a mobile user experience for your guests, do it now, then regularly check your pages to ensure they provide a smooth and seamless user experience for those browsing from small screens.

Page Speed

Nothing matters more to Google than improving user experience for it’s billions of users worldwide.

While page loading time on desktop has played a role in ranking position for some time, this summer, mobile page speed joined it as a ranking factor.

To understand the change, it’s important to understand the information Google uses to determine page speed evaluation, which comes down to Speed Score and Optimisation Score.

When it comes to Optimization the data for the Speed Score is taken from the Chrome User Experience report, in other words, data that reveals the user experience of each visitor. Since it’s difficult to measure how quickly your hotel’s website pages load for each travel shopper that visits your site, the metric is impossible to analyse through local tests.

When it comes to Optimization score however, you can totally control it by fixing all the issues preventing your site from loading fast – i.e by sticking to Google’s list of recommendations.

Furthermore, the current data suggests that as it stands, Optimisation Score has far greater weighing on a page’s position in the SERPs than Speed score, although this is expected to change in the year ahead.

Brand and Ranking

Google insider Gary Illyes recently revealed that Google incorporates brand mentions within its search algorithm, taking in the volume of mentions, as well as the quality of the source of the mentions to build up a picture of a brand’s authority within a particular field.

According to the search company’s  Search Quality Guidelines reputation plays a role in ranking. With this in mind, it’s more important than ever to stay on top of your hotel’s reputation online by addressing negative feedback and engaging with happy satisfied guests as well. Use a monitoring tool such as Awario or Mention to track mentions of your hotel across the web and be ready not only to step in and respond promptly and courteously to feedback, but to reach out to influencers who may be talking about you.

Use the same tools to take a look at your competitors – what can you learn about the tactics they’re using to manage reputation and grow awareness? An analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of their strategies will help give you a holistic view of your own SEO efforts.

Moving into 2019, what are your predictions for the coming year in SEO? Let us know in the comments below!

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But with the digital landscape changing daily, it can be a struggle for even seasoned search marketers to keep pace. This means you could be leaving significant SEO value untapped on your hotel’s website, and your rankings may be suffering as a result.

Before we take a look at 3 sometimes overlooked search optimisation strategies you can use to boost your visibility, conduct a quick analysis of your website to check for obvious ranking killers such as broken links or spam alerts. If there are no obvious culprits, it’s time to think about what else your strategy might be missing.

1. Structure Matters

According to research by Moz, 24% of organic ranking factors are determined by on-page signals, specifically the site’s domain page authority. In other words, the service you’re using to host your hotel’s website can actually negatively impact its ranking depending on its standing with Google.

Unsurprisingly, Google favours websites that offer a positive user experience, with fast page loading speeds and a smooth check-out process. The domain’s credibility is also important – if you’ve opted for a less reliable hosting platform with lots of 404 error pages, that could hurt your own website’s ranking in the SERPs.

When it comes to choosing a host, be on the lookout for important SEO features like customisable meta descriptions, URLs and page titles. Blogging platforms and social buttons, either as built-in features or add-ons, are also a great way to build links and include more keywords within your website.

2. Target Lower Ranking Keywords

Even those brand new to SEO are probably familiar with the concept of keyword research – that first crucial step used by marketers to uncover the most searched for terms related to a topic. Identifying these high volume keywords is important, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

When a keyword is getting searched for by lots of consumers that also means it is being very commonly used on lots of websites, which means the likelihood of your result achieving high ranking is pretty small.

Competition for the keyword “Gold Coast hotels”, for example, is going to be pretty steep. Sure, this generic phrase is popular among your guests, but it’s popular with your competitors too. For that reason, including more niche, less common but still extremely relevant keywords will help you stand out from the crowd.

For example, adding additional keywords like “child-friendly”, “family,” or “budget” can help your hotel’s web pages rank for more searches and better still, for travellers who have a clearer idea of what they’re looking for and may be more ready to make a booking.

3. Amp Up Your Drive For Reviews

Encouraging reviews from past guests doesn’t just help persuade other travellers to book, they can serve a boost to your search strategy too.

There is evidence to suggest that review signals contribute significantly to ranking factors, and that Google takes into consideration not only the volume of reviews, but how often new ones are written and even how authentic they appear to be. After all, if most of your hotel’s reviews are worded very similarly or are years old, there’s a good chance they’re either not genuine or no longer relevant.

Including a good range of guest reviews on your hotel’s website can also help your page get featured as a Google rich snippet, which will make your search result more attractive, even if you don’t achieve the top result.

What do you think? Had you considered any of these tactics as part of your hotel’s overall SEO strategy? Let us know in the comments below!

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But as with every other form of content marketing, it’s not enough to simply create high quality videos, you’ve got to stick to a range of best practices to ensure your content actually gets seen by the right people and clicked-on. When it comes to videos, understanding the basic principles of YouTube SEO is what will make the difference between your carefully crafted videos finding their audience or falling flat.

1. Do Your Research

Just like when creating a new blog post or written piece of content for your hotel’s website, it’s essential to carry out keyword research before you even start thinking about ideas for your next video.

One of the easiest ways to do this is simply to check whether your chosen keywords have YouTube autosuggestions and results. You should also take a look at Google Trends to analyse the search volume for your chosen keywords over time.

By doing this, you’ll have a good idea if your guests are likely to be interested in your video content ideas.

2. Optimize Your Video Title

Your video title should contain at least five words, including those you’ve identified from your keyword research in step one.

Since it’s the first thing travellers will notice, your title should also act just like a blog headline in that in should be as eye-catching and snappy as possible. Remember that the content of your video needs to be relevant to your title, or you’re going to suffer from short viewing times which will negatively impact your ranking over time.

3. Optimize Your Video Description

Your video description should set out what your video is about in clear, concise terms.

Why? It’s not just potential guests that are using your descriptions to get a feel for your videos, it’s search engines too.

Include a link to your hotel’s website in the first part of your description. This boosts rankings as well as driving more people to your website to find out more and book.

Aim for a description length of at least 250 words, including your targeted keywords, sprinkled around 3 times throughout. Even though it’s important to incorporate these key terms, don’t over-stuff them. A video description that sounds clunky and unnatural takes away from the credibility of your brand.

4. Choose An Enticing Thumbnail

Your video thumbnail is right up there with its title when it comes to grabbing your guests’ attention in the YouTube search results.

The platform will automatically offer you a choice of three thumbnails after you’ve uploaded your video. If you have a verified account, you also have the option of uploading a custom image to ensure you pick the most interesting and click-worthy thumbnail. YouTube recommends a resolution of 1280×720 pixels.

Have you optimised your videos to rank highly in the YouTube search results and get discovered by more of your guests? Let us know in the comments below!

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For marketers, the temptation to disregard search engine guidelines and draw on black or gray hat tactics as a quick fix to boost rankings is ever present. But what exactly are the risks and rewards, and most importantly, is it worth it? In today’s blog, we’ll take a look at some of the most common of these SEO practices to see if they’re worth the effort.

Negative SEO

While most search engine optimisation tactics are focused on building your own online presence through technical and content-based best practices, negative SEO is a little more cutthroat. In essence, it’s all about sabotaging your key competitor’s campaigns by creating spammy, low quality backlinks to a site, duplicating their content or even hacking. Those particularly hell bent on sabotage can even pose as a competitor and set about removing links to their website.

Not only are these practices morally dubious (and in some cases, downright illegal), since Google is better than ever at detecting things like spammy links, they’re often fruitless from a tactical standpoint too.

The Lowdown
Risks: getting banned from Google SERPs, imprisonment.
Rewards: none.

Buying Links

Although much has changed in the search landscape in the past decade or so, building quality links to your website remains an integral component of SEO. But there’s no escaping the fact that it’s hugely time consuming, tiring and boring.

So paying for links is the answer, right? Wrong.

Firstly, it’s totally against the guidelines of the major search engines. Secondly, it’s expensive. In fact, with the amount of money it costs to buy just one high quality link, you may as well just invest in a traditional marketing campaign to build links legitimately.

The Lowdown
Risks: rankings penalty from Google if caught, risk of overspending. White hat link building tactics are more effective in the long run.
Rewards: quick compared to traditional link building strategies

Keyword Stuffing and Content Spinning

There’s no denying that creating engaging and useful content is hard work, so it’s not surprising that in the past plenty of marketers have looked to cheat the system by “spinning” existing web content or knocking out low quality content chock-full of keywords in attempt to game the search engines.

Luckily for the sake of readers, these content cheats don’t fool Google anymore. Thanks to a string of sophisticated algorithm updates, the search giant is now much better at picking up on natural language patterns, which means spammy, low value content stands out from a mile away.

The Lowdown
Risks: a penalty from Google, turning off your guests with low quality, unreadable content
Rewards: quick and easy to create and publish content on a large scale

With search algorithms getting smarter by the day, the rewards rarely outweigh the risks when it comes to using quick fixes and gray/black hat tactics to get your website seen by more people. Sure, you may get away with it in the short term, but it won’t be long before Google clues up and cracks down on you.

What are your thoughts? Have you ever been tempted by any of these strategies? Let us know in the comments below!

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So, how can you fine tune your content marketing and ensure it resonates with the intended audience and drives more tangible results?

The key is data, and more specifically SEO-related data. Every marketer has a wealth of this search data at their fingertips, but knowing where to find it and how to use it to improve your content creation efforts isn’t always obvious.

In today’s blog, we’ll look at 3 ways you can use data to maximise your content marketing and results.

1. Maximise The Value Of Older Content

Your content needs long term value to maximise organic results. Not to mention that thanks to Google’s frequent algorithm updates, a blog post which may have performed poorly in the past could turn out to be your best performing piece of content at some point in the future.

Analyse the performance of your existing content with the help of Google Analytics or Search Console, taking a close look at keyword rankings, impressions, and clicks data.

• Do any of your posts rank on page one multiple times?
• What does each page rank for?
• Which posts generate the highest click through rate or impressions count?

Answering these questions will help you pinpoint the top performing posts that have the most value from an SEO perspective. Once you know them, you can link to these posts in future content to enhance the organic performance of your content.

2. Analyse The Behaviour Of Your Organic Traffic

Once a travel consumer lands on your website after finding you through search, what do they do? Join your contact list? Browse? Bounce? By finding out the actions your website users take for each keyword group, you can get a better idea of where they are in the holiday shopping process and come up with additional content that guides them further along the booking funnel.

To get started, take a look at the Behaviour Flow report in Google Analytics and filter your audience segment to organic traffic. This will help you identify which pages are pulling in the most guests from the SERPs and the next steps they take after landing on your hotel’s website. If you notice a high bounce rate, it’s time to get serious about conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Using a tool like Google Optimize, run A/B tests on key elements like CTA placement, headings, content length and images to see which combinations generate the most conversions. Once you’ve identified the specific changes that boost performance, you’ll know which tactics to continue with, and which to drop in your future content.

3. Examine Inbound Links

Although its importance has been debated over the years, linking remains an integral component to any SEO strategy because it signals to Google that your website is a valuable and relevant source of information to its users.

But what content strategy insights can inbound links provide? By examining which of your hotel’s posts are the most linked to from quality websites, you have a good idea of the content that other people find the most interesting or helpful, offering a valuable guide for your future posts. You might also decide to run a series of blog posts relating to the most linked to content. To analyse your inbound link data, use a tool like Moz’s Open Site Explorer.
 

Do you use search data to inform your hotel’s content strategy? Is it something you would try moving forward? Let us know in the comments below!

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