Hospitality SEO Best Practices For 2022 & Beyond – Search Engine Journal

What’s changed for hospitality brands and how can you put that information to work for your 2022 SEO strategy?

Travel and tourism have been extremely competitive in recent years, with hotels and chains competing against online travel agencies (OTAs) and booking sites in increasingly rich search results.

Now, the industry has also been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and is still feeling heavy repercussions.

There are signs of life as people start to travel again with the pandemic abating in some states and countries.

But user behavior has nevertheless changed dramatically, so hotel brands must shift their SEO strategies to drive incremental bookings, traffic, and revenue if they hope to acquire travelers now and in the near future.

Here is a list of strategies, tactics, and tools to help accomplish that goal with SEO best practices for hospitality in 2022 and beyond.

Prioritize Destinations Through Data

For prioritizing locations and making sure your hotel is ranking in top positions, look no further than Destination Insights with Google.

In the travel industry, where people are going is particularly important. Let the data tell you this, so you can compare trends and focus on making sure you have great visibility for those destinations.

For example, the top destination in the U.S. from 09/03 to 11/19 was Las Vegas.

If I were working with a hotel like the Bellagio, I would make sure I am ranking on the first page for Las Vegas hotels, brand, brand + geo keywords, restaurants, COVID precautions, and other associated keywords.

Another great tool to provide insights for your SEO strategy is Hotel Insights by Google. It gives you data on who is searching to stay in your area, in addition to tools and tips to make your business stand out from the competition.

Looking at data below from the New York area, where consumers looking to book travel are up 50% to 75% year over year (YOY).

If you are a travel brand in the area, this is a good insight to help you focus on destination pages. Review existing content and your striking distance keywords for opportunities to build out or repurpose content with things to do nearby and events in the city.

Another excellent feature of this tool is you can see if users are searching for this information from the U.S. or overseas. This could help plan out your content strategy and PPC campaigns to target international travelers and reach even more potential guests.

Satisfy Travelers’ Needs With A Brand Concierge Strategy

You should also always have content that meets the intent of the traveler and satisfies your own desire to demonstrate Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T).

The path to booking a hotel room is not a linear process. Before a traveler books a trip and comes to a hotel site, there are many considerations that come into play:

• Does the destination appeal to me?
• What is there to do?
• What is nearby?
• How are the restaurants?
• Do they serve vegan food?

These are just examples, of course. There are potentially thousands of combinations of preferences.

Travelers are conducting research sometimes months in advance. Ninety-one percent of travelers turn to search engines when looking for a place to stay and the majority (81%) prefer to use Google as their source of travel inspiration.

That’s why hotels need an SEO brand concierge strategy to connect with travelers throughout the user journey.

That includes a holistic content strategy and a deep understanding of guest profiles, which should include generational segments such as Millennials and Boomers as well as interest-based segments such as Adventurers and Foodies.

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