In the hotel sector, we often see how self-styled "SEO consultants" lead hotels to make real mistakes with their online marketing budgets.
Often, these professionals are more interested in selling their own services than in advising the hotel correctly. Either out of ignorance, or out of interest (or both), the hotel ends up investing resources in useless actions or with a very low return on investment.
In this post I want to highlight some aspects of SEO and other online marketing techniques when applied to a hotel website, and the low impact of these actions, as opposed to the most important factor for a hotel website, conversion.
Below I will demonstrate how SEO optimisation is not very effective for a hotel website, and how detrimental it is to invest too many resources in these techniques, instead of investing them in other areas of much greater interest from a hotel website marketing point of view.
Marketing is much more than SEO and social media
Marketing must start with a correct strategic positioning, reflecting carefully on what is the current positioning and what we want to achieve.
Given the enormous amount of options that are presented today in online marketing, it is easy to tend to try to cover as many channels as possible: search engine optimisation and positioning, presence on social networks, search engine advertising, advertising on content networks and retargeting, advertising on social networks, etc.
When the SEO consultant launches into using all the known techniques, without prior analysis, it is clear that he has not stopped to analyse the characteristics of the traffic of a hotel website.
In order to make the right decisions, it is necessary to take into account the essential aspects of marketing, and even more so, given the great idiosyncrasy of our market, created by the enormous specific weight of the large online booking centres, such as Booking.com and the other intermediaries.
We sell hotel bookings, not trainers of fifteen different brands.
We have to start from the premise that in the hotel environment, the generic recipes that are applied in other sectors do not have the same effectiveness.
In fact, our sector has such strong peculiarities that most traditional online marketing actions are useless or irrelevant if we measure ROI exclusively.
The objective of SEO is none other than to attract new visitors to the website, for "free" through good search engine positioning. The rule is simple, as visits increase, sales will increase.
However, for a hotel website, it is practically impossible to significantly increase visits from qualified users, since most of these users already visit the website "naturally".
90% of visitors to a hotel website do so by directly searching for the name of the hotel in search engines, precisely to see the hotel's website. The reason is that these users have already visited Booking.com and other booking portals.
In addition to representing the main volume of traffic to the website, these visits account for 95% of the bookings.
In other words, 90% of the visits, which account for 95% of the bookings, visit your website naturally. Doesn't this fact deserve to be taken into account?
What I have just explained is so important that it should be framed and hung on the walls of the office, let me summarise it:
To significantly increase the visits of qualified users to a hotel website is practically IMPOSSIBLE, because THE VAST MAJORITY of qualified users, including the BEST (those who are going to book), have already visited the website, after finding the hotel on Booking.com.
Given this fact, any online marketing action aimed at increasing visits will be extremely inefficient.
In my opinion, the space left by Booking.com and the other booking portals to find users interested in your hotel is too small for it to be profitable to conquer it.
On the other hand, living in the shadow of the big portals has its drawbacks, but also advantages, which we should take advantage of. Booking.com acts as a filter for all generic search traffic, for example "Hotel in Madrid", and sends qualified traffic to the official website, potential customers specifically interested in the hotel.
No need to "fish" for users
Imagine two pools in front of you. On the left, a small pool. Inside it, hundreds of hungry fish, swimming frantically in search of a bite. To your right, a huge pool like an ocean. In this sea, some fish swimming peacefully, going about their normal lives.
Imagine that the fish are customers you have to catch in these pools, and that your fishing rod is your hotel's online marketing resources.
The pool full of hungry fish is your hotel's Home, with users coming from Booking.com. The empty pool is the long tail of your Analytics reports, the SEO pool, Webmaster Tools, keyword density, internal and external links, link-building, sitemap.xml and robots.txt.
The SEO consultant fishes in the huge, empty pool, that's his job. He is used to advising trainer shops and methodically applies the techniques he learned on the Adwords and Analytics course. In short, he is so engrossed in his own mechanisms that he has no intention of switching to the small pool, perhaps he hasn't even seen it.
In other sectors, they don't have an overflowing pool like hotel websites, and they need work to attract visitors. The SEO consultant ignores it, either because he is not aware of how it would benefit the client to fish there, or because his services are not suitable for that kind of fishing.
In other sectors, the enemy is the competition, and you have to stand out from them, make them disappear. In ours, the enemy is Booking.com and you have to have it close, very close, to be able to stab it in the back :)
Conversion: installing nets with a crane on your homepage
In your home, you shouldn't be fishing with a fishing rod, but with big nets with a crane. You should be catching fish by the ton.
Hundreds of qualified users pass through your homepage every day, card in hand, ready to book, don't let them escape!
Work on the contents
Your Home must be the definitive advertising impact that makes your client decide to book at that very moment. Show your client what he/she is looking for.
Work on the photos and texts. When you talk about your hotel, don't talk about you, talk about your clients. Look for a connection. Get them to visualise themselves soaking in your magnificent spa, or to see their children playing in that fantastic sunny pool.
Work your photos, but don't mislead. Clients can fall in love with what you offer, without pretensions, you just have to look for their complicity.
Pay attention to the texts! Sometimes, a word is worth more than a thousand images, as it can arouse emotion and affinity with your client.
If on your website you have written "X is a family hotel where you will feel at home" you are doing it wrong. Look for a sentence from a client, understand what they value about your hotel and maximise it in your homepage. Understand your customer, speak their language, and you will do well.
If you don't offer anything on your website that is not already on the portals, the customer will end up booking elsewhere.
Make booking easy
The user has to be able to reproduce on your website exactly the same search they just did on Booking.com, effortlessly, with very few clicks.
If your user has trouble selecting dates, or the results are not what they expected, or they have to perform the same search several times, or you receive many calls asking for help... make changes immediately, you could be losing thousands of euros every day.
If the user is not able to reproduce the booking they are interested in quickly, they will end up booking elsewhere.
Don't distract your user
Help them get the booking. Don't annoy them with your social networks, pop-ups, newsletters, etc. Don't distract them with flashy offers, vibrant colours, animations or text with exclamations. Don't try to sell them anything more than what they are looking for at that moment, there will be time for that.
The important thing is that your customer books on your website. When the customer is on your website, it is very likely that he is booking, don't bother him, or he will book somewhere else.
Don't surprise your user
Don't change the window, don't take him out of your domain, don't change the website, don't change the typography, don't change the design. Don't make them wonder if they are still on your website, or somewhere else.
If the navigation on your website is not consistent, the user will lose confidence and will end up booking elsewhere.
Meet your customer's expectations
Show them a good price, entice them with an offer, thank them for booking with you. Show them their booking on screen properly, offer help and contact information. Offer guarantees and technical solvency.
Don't want to appear more than you offer. Do not deceive the user with added costs, or with benefits that they will not get.
Customers value transparency and honesty. Be on the customer's side, or... they'll end up booking elsewhere!
But SEO is VERY important!
It is important as long as it attracts qualified visitors to your website, and that is very difficult in our sector. If you are still determined to fish in the SEO ocean, make sure you have your fishing in the small pool optimised as much as possible. To do otherwise would be to put the cart before the horse, and the opportunity costs could be catastrophic.
That is to say, if you are going to invest in SEO, consider beforehand whether it is not more important to improve some aspect of your Home, or to work on some promotion so that your REVENUE can take better advantage of it in the engine.
Think that every euro / hour of work you invest in improving the conversion of your website will directly increase your company's income from direct bookings. On the other hand, the resources you invest in SEO will be squandered in endless hours of clicks and more clicks in services such as Analytics or Webmaster Tools, applying technique after technique, optimisation after optimisation, without a clear return that justifies it.
Maybe one day, after months of work, you will achieve a hyper-optimised SEO, however, if you forget about the fish in your pool, others will be fishing in it.
If your website doesn't sell, you will have failed with your hotel's online marketing, and the profitability of the business could be seriously affected.
Take care of your homepage.
