Why Australian Hotels Need SEO to Remain Competitive

It doesn’t matter if your running a small country hotel or your part of a multinational hotel brand, one thing is certain, you need to be doing SEO if you are going to attract new guests.

Nothing is more critical nowadays than having your hotels’ website ranking on Google.

Sure you can get new business from popping your hotel on booking engines like Trip Advisor, Booking and Agoda but nothing will generate the amount of new customer inquires than having your website on page 1 of Google. Plus you don’t have to pay these OTA’s any commissions – think about all the money you will save.

Let me elaborate on this to make this point clearer. I know a lot of hotels rely heavily on the established booking engines but for other facets and parts of your business, these really don’t work too well. They are strictly all about rooms and what happens if your website is buried on page 2 of these platforms? You will get nothing. Your at the mercy of their ranking system.

Let’s say for example you have a hotel in Sydney and want to attract local and overseas guests. The first thing they are going to type into Google when looking for a hotel to stay in Sydney is the keywords ‘hotels Sydney’. If your website is on page 1 the chances of you getting that inquiry is seriously good.

You should even have a map listing up there with some quality reviews. All these happen and come once SEO is implemented. Without it, you can forget about it. It just won’t happen and your website will be sitting there languishing on page 10. Not ideal is a competitive area such as travel. There are too many options and choices placed in front of the consumer so you have to take the initiative and be extremely proactive in this space.

Also read: How much should I pay for SEO in 2021 in Sydney

As another example let’s say you are a marketing manager of a big name brand hotel in Sydney like The Hilton, Sheraton or The Marriot and your job is to start pushing and promoting different business components of your hotel like; the restaurants or the large open ballroom for weddings, events and conferences.

This is where the effectiveness of SEO can really help you hit your marketing goals. At SEO Sydney Experts we can optimise keywords like ‘wedding venues Sydney’ or ‘conference venues Sydney’ and link these back to custom-designed conversion-focused landing pages.

This is a fantastic marketing strategy and it works. Sure you can still rely on other forms of direct marketing like contacting wedding planners and event organisers as well as social media promotions, but nothing will give you the kind of results that Google can.- when it comes to diversifying your hotel business and getting additional forms of revenue streams.

I am not just saying this because we are in the SEO space, I am telling you because we have seen the results first-hand of what a good online search engine ranking can do for a business. It’s absolutely amazing. One day you are relying on old fashioned outdated techniques that bring in a meagre amount of inquiries and after implementing an SEO campaign, the phone is ringing non-stop.

If you think I’m kidding here I can tell you first hand that we have ranked a business in the travel industry on page 1 of Google and within 8 months they are now the largest for their particular field. It’s all about getting them up there on page 1 and making that landing page a high conversion page (CRO). That is, you eliminate any hurdles they may have in contacting you. Plus you want to make it as appealing and eye-catching as possible. CRO in combination with SEO is a killer strategy.

This type of SEO strategy will also work for hotels and motels in regional Australia. For example, if you run a hotel in say Wagga Wagga or a motel in Port Macquarie you can apply the same techniques here. All we need to do is optimise keywords like hotels Port Macquarie or hotels Coffs Harbour, design some fantastic landing pages and once ranked, you will see the huge difference this makes.

A point to note here is that SEO is a long term strategy. There are some quick wins but overall you need to be doing this for the medium to long term for it to be effective. As a business owner or part of a marketing team, you need to think that SEO is now a firm and very central part of your marketing mix. If you find that sales are sluggish give this a go and see how dramatically your hotel or motel bookings turn around. Waiting and doing nothing simply gives your competition a distinct advantage.