Search Engine Optimisation is a method used to help websites appear higher in search engine results pages (SERP), resulting in increased traffic and hopefully sales. There are many different aspects to consider in hotel SEO, but below is a brief description of some of the main actions to take.

1) Choose Keywords

A successful SEO campaign begins with thorough market research and identification of which search terms you will optimise your site for. This is important as it ensures that you do not waste time or efforts chasing traffic which will not convert into sales e.g. if your hotel was in Birmingham, but you were chasing Nottingham-based keywords. It is also important to consider the competition for specific keywords and begin focusing on localised searches to increase initial traffic. A good example of this is a Birmingham hotel optimising for ‘South Birmingham hotel’ rather than ‘Birmingham hotel’ as the competition will be reduced.

There are many different tools available to help you study your competition and appropriate keywords including some provided by Google such as Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools.Once you have identified your keywords, it is time to being optimising your site to make it appear in SERP for these keywords.

2) On-page SEO

Optimisation begins with making changes to your hotels website. In 2012, Google made many changes to its algorithm to ensure that quality relevant websites appeared in the top ranks of their search results, rather than the site with the most backlinks. Therefore, the content of your hotel site is key to improving their ranking position. You must ensure that the content is written for the user and includes the keywords that you want to appear in Google for, but only sporadically throughout the copy. Including the search terms too often will be deemed ‘keyword stuffing’, a black-hat SEO technique which could be penalised by Google. 4

3) Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO, even after the Google updates, is still a large part of the overall success of an SEO campaign. Off-page SEO involves building links to your site from other valued and approved sites. Each inbound link serves as an endorsement of your site which Google uses as an indicator of your relevance to the keywords.

Beware however, there are many companies who will offer to build links on your behalf in exchange for money. It is common for some of these companies to build bad links to link farms or undesirable sites, therefore bringing the credibility of your sites down. Whilst it is a time-consuming task, link building is best done by yourself or your trusted SEO company.

There are more elements to SEO which are not covered here, but this is a really good starting point. It is worth consulting an SEO company such as Chameleon Web Services for advice before you make any changes as some mistakes can be irreversible and permanently detrimental to the position of your website in Google SERP.