Wordpress & SEO Manager
April 12, 2016
You are a sales and marketing manager overseeing all of your property's daily activities, perhaps several, from sales group meetings to TripAdvisor reviews and website promotions. It's all connected.
Then one day, your CEO calls you and says, “I did a Google search for ‘Miami hotels’ and we’re nowhere to be found. Why are we paying that hotel website company?”
You immediately go online and as you do more searches you panic. You start to think, What AM I paying them for? Aren't they supposed to be handling all that Google stuff? Why list of greece consumer email isn't my hotel on the first page of results for all those generic keywords? Why is everything so different with mobile?
The answer is that everything you have hoped or known about hotel search engine optimization up until last year is outdated. Even if you have invested thousands of dollars in your SEO efforts to successfully have your website ranked on page one of Google for “Miami hotels,” you may never see your website listed on page one, much less a measurable return on investment.
So how do you answer to your CEO and hold yourself accountable for your hotel SEO agency? It’s time to redefine your KPIs when it comes to search, and face some of the harsh realities of SEO for the hotel industry.
Table of Contents [ Hide ]
1 Problem 1: Google has commercialized its results page
2 Problem 2: Increased competition for the same name as your hotel
2.1 Solutions:
Problem 1: Google has commercialized its results page
Summary: In 2015, Google reduced its Google Maps and Google Places results from showing a “ 7-Pack” to a “3-Pack ,” only showing three hotels with a thumbnail image and a Google self-marketing meta tool. Hotel Ads can lead a consumer to book through Google or with one of its partner OTAs .
And recently, Google made even more BIG layout changes to their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), especially for broad search queries like “hotels in Miami” or “hotels in Times Square.” As a result, natural/organic search listings have been pushed further down the pages and are seeing a reduction in organic clicks, and even less traffic on mobile devices.
Solutions: While you can't control the giant search engine layout or where your listing is displayed in the SERPs , you still have some control over the information that is being displayed:
Require your property's Name and Place ( NAP ) and make it consistent across all platforms from Google Plus to Yelp.
