The Importance of Search Engine Optimisation within the Hospitality industry

SEO is the main driver for organic search engine traffic so your website's business performance is the main reason why SEO is important for your hotel. Good SEO can be invaluable to the longevity and profitability of a successful hotel and below we talk about some of the effects of a good SEO strategy. 

Traffic Increase

Effective SEO will directly improve the number of visitors a website receives as pages from the site will return high up in search engine rankings. The higher up a page ranks in search engine result pages (SERPs), the better chance it has of attracting relevant traffic.

Profitability

When a site attracts more relevant and targeted traffic for a product or service, it is reasonable to expect more sales. The increase in sales leads to an increase in the profitability and viability of any business. SEO will improve the volume of visitors as well as attracting the right demographic. The higher traffic levels make it easier to split-test landing pages and make improvements to the sales funnel.

Brand Awareness

As more people discover a site through high SERPs, the related brand gains more exposure. This improves the chances of them returning to the site and becoming repeat customers through continued exposure of top ranking results.

Establishes Credibility

Due to increased brand awareness, credibility also increases. As people become familiar with your brand they trust it more and this improves the chance of them becoming a buying customer.

Trend Setting

When a website has large volumes of traffic the owner or webmaster can analyze how people use the site. This insight enables large traffic sites to quickly catch on to new trends developing in their industry or to become central to starting new trends.

Competitive Advantage

With more traffic it is easier to analyze trends and gain a significant first mover advantage as new trends develop. Lower traffic sites do not have the data to confidently predict trends and therefore aim to quickly jump onto trends as they discover them. However, with good SEO and high SERPs positions, a business is able to spot trends from their own sites and produce new products, services or content to build closer relationships with their customers.

Customer Loyalty

As your site gains more visitors, you can build up a more robust customer reward program. This can take the shape of a mailing list that offers discounts or informs people of sales and special offers on a regular basis. A mailing list can also help develop a good relationship with customers and improve their loyalty over time. Without effective SEO, the amount of traffic arriving is significantly lower and more difficult to get any customer reward program up and running efficiently.

Overall, Travel SEO is important for all travel agencies and hotels as it enables them to gain more visitors from search engines on a regular basis. The increased level of traffic makes is easier to modify business strategy in order to capitalize on new trends, develop new products, improve brand awareness and develop customer loyalty.