Technical SEO On the Hotel Website: One Of the Most Important Revenue Drivers
By Max Starkov, Adjunct Professor NYU Tisch Center for Hospitality, Founder & Director at NextGuest Digital
It is really mind-boggling that after more than 23 years of SEO historical data and solid SEO best practices, technical SEO is one of the least understood and very much ignored digital technology and marketing disciplines in hospitality.
Good technical SEO on the hotel website sends Google multiple "signals" used by the Google search algorithm Hummingbird to determine how to rank your website pages in response to various searches and directly affects the PageRank score of the webpage. For example, if a webpage is determined to be mobile-friendly, this is a signal that is registered by the Googlebot and used in determining the page ranking.
Google has frequently stated that it is using more than 200 major ranking "signals" with many thousands of sub-signals and variations. The following three categories are well within hoteliers' control, and if the hotel website is optimized to communicate these signals to the search engines, will achieve higher ranking in SERPs and reward the property with significant organic revenues.
- Content: unique, highly relevant and enticing website content that is professionally written, informative, useful and of travel guide-level quality.
- Links: links to the hotel website from highly authoritative non-paid websites like CVBs, online magazines and newspapers, blogs, social media, etc.
- Technical SEO: an ecosystem of technologies, configurations, and processes implemented to the website and server designed to optimize the hotel website and enable the search engine bots to access, crawl, interpret and index your website, which ultimately results in increased search traffic and revenue.
NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD: TECHNICAL SEO ON THE HOTEL WEBSITE EBOOK
Max Starkov
Founder & Director at NextGuest Digital. Recognized as a thought leader in digital marketing strategies in hospitality, Max is a frequent guest speaker at industry events and conferences. His expertise is sought after by a diverse client portfolio of top tier hotel brands, luxury and boutique hotel chains, hotel management companies, resort and casino companies, franchisees and independents, as well as major Wall Street investment banks and financial institutions.
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NextGuest Digital uses the latest in digital marketing technology to assist hotel brands in crafting their digital presence. Through the agency's smartCMS®, Content Personalization Engine, Smart Data Marketing, and other innovative initiatives, hoteliers see a drastic boost in direct bookings, as well as lower distribution costs and an increase the lifetime value of guests. NextGuest Digital is part of NextGuest, an all-encompassing partner that helps hoteliers acquire, engage, and retain their next guest. Based in New York City, the company is comprised of NextGuest Digital, CRM, Labs, and Consulting. www.nextguest.com | (800) 649-5076 | [email protected]