Hotel SEO: Your Ultimate Guide to Off-Page and Local SEO For Hotels
So you have a great hotel website and you’ve done your homework in terms of keyword research. What’s next? Friend, we need to talk about local SEO.
Well, that and all the things that go into an off-page hotel SEO strategy.
“Off-page?” Whoa there — you’re telling me I need to worry about things that aren’t even ON my hotel website? How the heck do I control any of that?
Truth is, you can! Well, a lot of it, at least.
For any business, understanding how search engines function and rank content is essential to maximizing your reach and visibility. For hotels, search engine optimization can dramatically increase your direct bookings — at a fraction of the cost of paid advertising.
That’s why I want to show you exactly how to do hotel SEO in a way that makes sense — and delivers results. If you haven’t already, make sure you download my free hotel SEO checklist, too.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
2. Local SEO
4. Social Media
*Heads up, this post contains links to products or services I recommend, which I may get commission from.
What's the Difference Between On- and Off-Page Hotel SEO?
On-page SEO refers to the content and technical aspects of your website that are within your control. Off-page SEO refers to a number of different tactics that increase the authority of your website to Google, like local SEO and backlinks from other trustworthy websites.
The short version of that is pretty literal: On-page SEO covers what’s on your website, while off-page SEO includes the things you do off of your website.
That said, one thing they have in common is that YOU can influence a lot of SEO for hotels, both on- and off-site.
Here’s a quick comparison of on site vs off site SEO, for reference.
OFF-PAGE SEO SIGNALS:
Google Business Listing
Online business directories and citations (UNAP)
Links from other websites, like Online Travel Agencies, blogs, or other media
Social media
Think… “brand building!”
ON-PAGE SEO SIGNALS:
Page URLs
Image “alt” text and tags
Page content, including titles and subheadings
Keyword density
Linking to pages on your website (internal linking)
Linking to other relevant websites (external linking)
Meta descriptions and title tags
Website performance and speed (Technical SEO)
Schema markup (Technical SEO)
I like to think of on-page SEO as that first, most actionable step in a well-rounded search strategy.
You own your website, can create or update content yourself, and likely have access to a developer charged with making that website run like a well-oiled direct bookings machine. Start with what you can control.
(P.S. My free on-page hotel SEO checklist can help!)
Even the smallest changes you make to your hotel website can improve your standings with Google — and sure, less popular search engines like Bing and Yahoo, too.
But Google, Bing, and Yahoo all use a whole bunch of other signals to determine how content ranks and what they display on Page 1.
Google’s bots are constantly “crawling” the depths of the vast, endless Internet to find the most relevant, accurate, timely, and trustworthy information.
Now you might be thinking, “Well, of course my website is relevant, accurate, timely, and trustworthy!”
But it’s not enough that YOU think it is. Google doesn’t just take your word for it — it wants to know that OTHER websites and OTHER information channels think so too.
This is where off-page SEO comes into play.
Off-Page SEO For Hotels: Local SEO Guide
In 2020, it’s easier than ever for anyone and everyone to create a website. It can take as little as a few minutes to set up a page on Squarespace or Wix, buy a domain, and call it a day. That’s not a bad thing, by the way — but Google still wants to know that your business is real and legitimate.
So Google looks beyond your official website, at a number of off-page signals to check the legitimacy of your business.
Some of the most important signals to know about fall under a category called “Local SEO.” That includes things like UNAP, Google My Business, and other online citations. Since hotels are a brick-and-mortar business, local SEO is an important way for your physical location to get found by the right people.
Here’s a quick explainer and tutorial video:
local SEO: UNAP
In an online search context, UNAP stands for URL, Name, Address, and Phone Number. Google representatives like to call this your business’ digital fingerprint — it should be completely unique to you.
(Some like to refer to this as simply NAP, dropping the web address, but it’s essentially the same thing.)
If you want to know why UNAP is important to local search, it’s all about consistency and trust.
Your hotel UNAP must be accurate and consistent across all the different places someone might look for your hotel.
I’m talking about online business directories, local listings, OTAs… if you’re listing your URL, name, address, and phone number somewhere, it MUST be consistent with what you’re showing elsewhere.
Most importantly: whatever UNAP is given on your hotel website should be the same UNAP you use on other sites.
Google wants to provide its users with the best search results possible. They don’t want to return pages of businesses that display inaccurate information or no longer exist — folks don’t really like that.
In order for Google and the other search engines to show your hotel, their web crawlers need to know (and trust) that your hotel is open and operating*, it’s located at a specific address, and it has a working telephone number.
If there are different variations of your URL, name, address, and/or phone number floating around online, Google is less inclined to display your hotel in local search results. If you want to know how to improve local SEO for your hotel, understanding UNAP is the best place to start.
*Of course, there’s a COVID-19 caveat to this, which I’ll explain in the next section.
local SEO: Google My Business
Google My Business is a free platform and one of the biggest drivers of local SEO success. Having a consistent UNAP applies to all websites, but Google My Business is a particularly important one. Think of Google My Business as a very specific online directory for local businesses. Owned by Google, of course.
When you set up a free account and “claim your business,” you can feed important information about your hotel to Google, from what your business is to where it is and how to reach you.
Google My Business listings for hotels include your UNAP, and quite a bit more:
Name of business (✓ UNAP)
Address (✓ UNAP)
Phone number (✓ UNAP)
Opening hours
Website URL (✓ UNAP)
Reviews
Photos
Hotel amenities
Questions & Answers about your business
An added perk of claiming your hotel Google My Business listing is that control over what information is being fed to Google. You can respond to Google reviews, write public answers to specific questions from guests, list all of your important hotel amenities, and more.
Honestly, one of the best local SEO tips I can give you is to simply show your GMB listing some love. Like, right now. Open yours up and make sure everything is filled out. I’ll wait…
…
All done? Great!
Now, what do you with your Google My Business listing if your hotel closes temporarily due to COVID-19?
Will marking my hotel as closed negatively impact my search ranking?
According to Google, no.
In their specific search guidance to businesses affected by COVID-19, Google says, “Marking your business ‘Temporarily closed’ won't affect local search ranking and it will be treated similar to open businesses.”
Depending on your situation, your hotel restaurant could be different case. Note that Google also says, “Businesses offering pickup or delivery services should not mark the business ‘Temporarily closed,’ otherwise those services won't show on Google.”
Make sure you’ve mastered on site SEO for your hotel before getting too deep into off-page! Download my free on-page hotel SEO checklist below. ⤵
Off-Page SEO For Hotels: Link Building
One of the most important tactics in off-page SEO for hotels is link building. Link building is the process of getting other, trusted websites to link back to your website. That link itself is often referred to as a backlink.
Quality links are an essential part of your off-page SEO strategy as they signal to Google that your website is credible. It’s like when someone you trust or admire vouches for a specific product — you’re much more likely to think that product is worthwhile.
In the same way, good backlinks signal to Google that your website is worthy.
(Source: GIPHY)
link building: DOFOLLOW VS NOFOLLOW LINKS
Link building is a big part of off page SEO, but you should know that not all backlinks are created equal. Let’s talk about the difference between dofollow links and nofollow links.
When you place a hyperlink to another page or website, that link will be “dofollow” by default.
This means search engine crawlers can follow that link. If a reputable website adds a dofollow link to your hotel website, it’s going to pass on some of its credibility to you — “link juice,” if you will.
On the other hand, a “nofollow” link does, well, exactly what you’d expect. It prevents the crawlers from following that link and passing one website’s signal of quality on to the other.
Since all links are dofollow by default, a nofollow link has to be manually created. To create a nofollow link, you would add a short attribute to the link, rel=”nofollow” which in HTML, looks like this:
<a href="https://fivestarcontent.co/" rel="nofollow">Five Star Content</a>
Depending on your hotel website’s content management system, doing this could be as simple as ticking a box while editing your text. Wordpress, for example, has plugins which allow you to control which links are dofollow and nofollow.
So, why does this matter?
When would your hotel want to use a nofollow link instead of a dofollow?
One of the main places we see nofollow links is on blog comments. If your hotel website has a blog with comments enabled, anyone can comment any link to any website. If that website isn’t relevant or high quality, your SEO is negatively impacted because Google thinks you’re vouching for it. Guilty by association!
Otherwise, don’t get too caught up in when and where you should manually create a nofollow link. It’s much more important to know how to recognize them on other websites.
To do this using Google Chrome as your browser, simply highlight the linked text, right-click, and select “Inspect.” Look for that rel=”nofollow” attribute, like in the example above.
Nofollow links will not give your hotel any sort of “link juice” or SEO benefit, but they do still send visitors to your website.
If you’re unsure of whether a nofollow backlink on Website X is worthwhile, consider how much traffic it could potentially send you. (By the way, I’ll give you a few different tools that help you do this in the Helpful Resources section of this article.)
Link Building: How to get quality backlinks for your hotel
Earlier in this article, we talked about local SEO for hotels as it relates to online listings like directories and Google My Business. But there are plenty of other places on the web to consider when building links to your hotel website.
Some examples include:
Your local tourism bureau
Vendors you work with
Travel forums (TripAdvisor, Fodors, etc.)
Q&A websites (Quora, etc.)
Contribute to reputable blogs as a guest author
Press coverage
Some of these could even overlap — maybe your local tourism bureau has a destination-focused blog that accepts guest posts from time to time.
I will also add that not every vendor, florist, event planner, or limo company has a quality website. If you still want to include them on a page of partners/vendors, this is another time you might want to use a “nofollow” link.
(Sit tight, I’m going to provide a few Helpful Resources later in this article which will help you figure out whether a site is a good backlink or not.)
When it comes to travel forums and Q&A sites like Quora, my best advice is to participate only when and where your contribution is relevant. Take some time to provide clear, thoughtful answers — don’t just promote your own business!
And don’t forget about the traditional press release.
Press releases are (still) a great way to get backlinks from reputable media sites, local news, and even relevant bloggers.
The key here is to create something newsworthy — and I must be clear, 10% off BAR ain’t it.
Different media markets consider different things “newsworthy” so it’s hard to say exactly what will work for your specific hotel and destination. Here are a few things that worked at my hotels:
Unique rooms packages — something timely, following a specific theme, or even downright cheeky
Profiles and personal stories — from colleagues or guests
Subject-matter expertise — ie. original tips from your wedding planner, who has 20 years of experience
Limited-time F&B activations — themed afternoon tea, a pop-up restaurant or chef dinner, Tiki-themed cocktails in the middle of winter (yes, seriously)
Memorable experiences — Oscars watch party, pop-up coworking
Giveaways — win something exciting, like a weekend in your finest suite or your entire wedding, paid-for
It goes without saying, but if you’re going to send out a press release about any of these, make sure your hotel is actually delivering above-and-beyond on these experiences. Digital marketing might get guests through the doors, but Operations makes the magic happen!
Oh, and when you format any press release, here’s a tip for SEO: Use anchor text to make it easier for media to copy/paste those backlinks exactly how you want them to appear. (What’s anchor text? Keep reading!)
Link Building: Anchor Text and why it matters
So what is anchor text, anyway? According to Ahrefs, anchor text is the clickable text used to link one website to another.
As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to use your keyword or the topic of the page as anchor text.
All over the web, folks link to other websites in weird and often unhelpful ways.
Here are some types of unoptimized anchor text:
Linking a generic word or phrase: Click here to read my post about hotel copywriting examples.
Linking the URL: See the best examples of hotel copywriting (https://fivestarcontent.co/blog/hotel-copywriting-examples) on Five Star Content.
Both styles of anchor text don’t really give Google any context into what your page is about.
A better way to link to that post would be to tell you that I’ve put together a new article with a few of my favorite hotel copywriting examples. (See what I did there?)
While you can’t control everything that happens off-site, understanding how to use anchor text can really help your link building efforts.
When you send out press releases, make sure you link to a relevant landing page on your website — and use anchor text correctly right in the text of the release. Chances are good that the journalist or blogger receiving your release will copy/paste that link (and its anchor text) exactly as-is.
The same goes for backlinks you acquire through guest posting or by reaching out to local websites like your tourism bureau. Be direct in your outreach and supply them with a link that’s already formatted with your preferred anchor text.
Off-Page SEO For Hotels: Social Media
I know I harp on about this, but social media, content, and online marketing all play an integral role in the hotel business these days.
The exact relationship between SEO and social media, however, is a bit murkier.
One thing we know for sure is that search engines like Google and Bing do crawl pages on most of the main social platforms — if they have a web version, at least. (Sorry Snapchat.)
We know this because our social profiles can and do appear in search results.
In fact, these profiles often rank on Page 1, sometimes beating OTAs and other travel websites — that alone makes it necessary to claim (and update!) your profile on each of the most important social media platforms.
From a hotel SEO standpoint, social media plays a role in driving traffic to your website. While there’s no hard evidence that posting on social media alone impacts your search rankings, social can certainly amplify your content’s reach.
As with other directory listings, you also want to make sure your UNAP is consistent. (Make sure you don’t skip Part 1: Local SEO if you’re not sure what I mean.)
How To Do Hotel SEO: Helpful Resources
In Part 2 of this guide to off page SEO for hotels, we talked about quality link building. There are tons of free or low-cost tools for hotel SEO, but I want to specifically recommend a few free backlink checkers.
Hotels can use a free backlink checker to quickly and easily find all the websites currently linking to yours. Most will show you that website’s authority score, traffic, and whether that link is dofollow or nofollow.
Some backlink checkers even allow you to see which websites are linking to your competitors — but are not linking to you. Some notable tools include:
It goes without saying that you will always be limited to what you can achieve with any free tool.
The resources linked above are great for getting a a quick snapshot, but fair enough, all require paid accounts to unlock their most valuable features.
My SEO secret weapon: KeySearch
I’ve tried all of the above tools, plus a few Enterprise-level ones thrust upon me by hotel corporate offices, and my personal favorite is KeySearch*.
Sign up for KeySearch here* and get an extra 20% off with coupon code KSDISC.
It’s what I use for all of my hotel clients and it’s helped me significantly grow my blog traffic in just a few months.
Along with a powerful backlink checker, KeySearch gives you all of the following:
Keyword research
Rank tracking
Competitive analysis
Content assistance
Saved lists
SERP analysis (What’s this? Here’s how hotels appear on Search Engine Results Pages)
Unlocking everything you need on Moz or Ahrefs can cost thousands of dollars. If you’re an independent hotel, not part of a big chain that pays for a pricy hotel SEO tool, managing your search strategy can quickly get expensive and overwhelming.
KeySearch* is my go-to recommendation for the most user-friendly and affordable keyword tool for hotels.
Sign up for KeySearch here* and get an extra 20% off with coupon code KSDISC.
Final Thoughts
If you’re still reading this, it’s likely you’re motivated to learn how to do hotel SEO effectively! I hope this deep dive into all things off-page proved helpful, so let’s quickly recap.
Off-page SEO is all about ensuring your website is recognized as a credible, trustworthy resource. Google, Bing, and other search engines need to see external signals from other websites to know that yours is legitimate.
Make sure your URL, Name, Address, and Phone Number (UNAP) are consistent, wherever you put it
Claim your Google My Business listing (and use that same UNAP)
Build quality “dofollow” backlinks on reputable sites (those online directories, relevant blogs, etc.)
Keep an eye on “nofollow” links that could still drive valuable traffic
Create and share interesting, newsworthy content
Claim your social media profiles (again, use that UNAP)
Use a backlink checker like KeySearch* to find new link building opportunities
Oh, and make sure you don’t neglect what’s actually ON your page
My hotel SEO checklist walks you through all the different on-page SEO components you need to optimize. Grab your free copy below. ⤵
*Heads up, this post contains affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase using my link, I’ll receive a small referral fee at no extra cost to you. I will only recommend products I use and love. Thanks for supporting my business — and iced coffee habit.
WHAT TO READ NEXT:
SEO For Hotels: 8 Simple Tips To Help You Rank Higher On Google
Hotel SEO: How To Find the Right Keywords For Your Hotel (+Free Checklist)
Hotel SEO: How Hotels Appear On Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
Published: 8/24/2020
Updated: 8/30/2021