3 Ways to Improve Hotel Website Traffic

After a turbulent few years, people are itching to take vacations and get away with it all. The rise of the staycation also presents a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurial hoteliers. If you can get your hotel website right, this could be the year that sees those bookings come flooding back in.

So, how can you make sure that your website is getting its fair share of traffic? How can you bring prospective vacationers onto your site, and keep them there long enough to convert?

Here are three suggestions:

1. Refresh your on-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you know anything about marketing yourself online, you’ll know that SEO is essential for boosting your reach. If Google can’t find your page, neither can anyone else.

When you built your site you probably made sure that the SEO was on point (if you didn’t, you definitely need to do so now!) So, why should you redo it?

SEO changes all the time. As search engine algorithms evolve, so does SEO. For example, old-style keyword stuffing won’t fly with Google any more. In fact, it may be penalised, as today’s Google prioritises a quality reading experience over simplistic, keyword-crammed copy.

So, in order to get seen and attract traffic, you need to re-optimise your on-page SEO.

How? Well, we can’t make exact predictions for what SEO will require, but here are a few ideas:

• Solution focus. Google has been trying to build an algorithm that can answer more and more complex queries. They want users to get the answers they’re looking for quickly and concisely, no matter how complicated their search queries may be. So, focus on offering solutions in your page copy rather than longform descriptions.
• Positive UX. Google is heavily invested in providing a positive user experience. So, produce high-quality copy and make sure your website is quick, slick, and easy to navigate.
• Think local. With the rise in staycations, people are increasingly searching in geographical terms - for example ‘Restaurants near Buckingham Palace’, ‘Car parking in [zip code]’ etc. From a hotel’s perspective, this means thinking about the attractions and facilities near you. If your hotel is near, say, a national park, emphasize that in your on-page copy.

2. Build quality backlinks

Backlinks are links to your site from elsewhere on the internet. Typically, a backlink will be embedded in anchor text, like this.

Backlinks are great for bringing in new audiences to your website. They open up new avenues for people to discover your brand and offering, and they expand your presence on the internet. This is especially true if your backlink appears in something like a positive hotel review, or a list of the best hotels in the area.

But that’s not all that backlinks are good for. They’re also a great SEO hack for improved search presence and authority. As link building agency Hive19 explains, “Backlinks are crucial to how Google finds, indexes and ranks your website. In order to help search engines locate your page, and classify it correctly – its relationship with other websites are absolutely critical. High quality links from niche-relevant websites are the currency that helps drive improved rankings and greater traffic levels.”

The sites your backlinks appear on do make a difference. The higher the authority and topical relevance of the host site, the more your own profile and authority will be boosted.

So, how do you get backlinks on high-authority websites? Here are some suggestions:

• Write high-quality, authoritative content. Good web writers usually cite their sources. So, if a writer’s research brings them to your website, they’ll reward you with a backlink. To be the kind of site that people come to for research and inspiration, you need to focus on high-quality, authoritative content.
• Hire a link-building agency or a PR agency. Agencies have contacts at high-quality websites and in the media. They can get your content shared, hosted, and linked on these sites.
• Write guest posts. Leverage your network and offer guest posts on industry sites. This will raise your profile, and gives plenty of opportunity to link back to your own site.

3. Experiment with (Virtual Reality) VR

VR is a growing trend, and people can’t get enough of it. This is very exciting for the hotel industry, as it provides a brand new way to show people what you offer.

Through VR and/or AR, you can provide virtual tours of your hotel and even its surroundings. Potential guests could step into a virtual room, explore your facilities, and check out your location in a much more immersive way than has previously been possible.

Virtual tours give a sense of scale, space, and atmosphere that aren’t possible with even the very best photography. What’s more, people love VR. So, by augmenting your website with VR and AR elements, you can bring in swathes of new visitors, all eager to try out your virtual facilities.

One word of warning, though - if VR upsets your digital UX, it may not be worth it. As we mentioned above, Google is heavily invested in giving its users a quality experience. If VR makes your website lag, or if load times suffer because of it, you could be doing your traffic levels more harm than good.

All in all, before you implement any VR or AR, make sure that your website can handle the extra pressure!

Bring traffic to your pages and guests to your hotels

Your website is an incredible resource. When you get it right, it can be the main factor in bringing guests to your hotel.

However, it’s no use having the best website in the world if nobody can find it. While high quality content will help you out with Google, there’s a lot more to driving web traffic than just having a nice site.

Innovating with VR, optimising your on-page SEO, and building backlinks will all boost traffic to your site. So, what are you waiting for?

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