Hotel SEO guide

Hotel SEO is the work of being found on Google by travellers who have not yet chosen where to stay, and of being the first result when they search for you by name. This hotel SEO guide is for owners and managers of hotels, lodges, guest houses, villas and farm stays. It covers how travellers search, which pages to build, your Google Business Profile, the technical basics and what to measure.

It does not cover what happens after the visitor arrives. Rates, the booking step and commission are in the direct-booking website playbook.

How travellers search

Accommodation searches fall into three groups, and each needs a different response.

• Searches for your name. The traveller already knows you, often from an online travel agency listing. Your own site should be the first result, with a complete Business Profile beside it.
• Searches for a type of stay in a place, such as "guest house in Franschhoek" or "beachfront villa Grand Cayman". Large booking sites hold most of the top positions here. An independent property competes through its Business Profile and through more specific pages.
• Specific and long searches, such as a pet-friendly farm stay near a named town, a wedding venue with accommodation, or a lodge for a family with young children. Booking sites answer these badly, and a well-built page on your own site can win them.

Most independent properties should make sure of the first group, then put their effort into the third.

Build one page per topic

Stryx's rule for any site is one topic per page, with no pages competing with each other. For accommodation that usually means:

• A page for each room type, unit or villa, with its own photographs, capacity, bed layout, features and rate information.
• A page for each reason people come: weddings, conferences, the restaurant, the spa, game drives, wine tasting.
• A location page that says exactly where you are, how to get there, and how far you are from the places guests come to see.
• Pages for each kind of guest you suit, where you have something real to say: families, hikers, cyclists, guests with dogs.
• An offers page that is kept current, or removed when there is nothing on it.

Write each page for the guest. State facts in plain text: how many it sleeps, what is included, what the policies are. Thin pages written only to hold a keyword do not help, and mass-generated copy tends to say nothing a booking site does not already say.

Google Business Profile

For many travellers the Business Profile is the first thing they see, in Search and on Maps. Google's help pages say local results are based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that prominence takes into account links from other websites and the number and score of your reviews. Google also states that you cannot pay for a better local position.

Practical steps:

1. Claim and verify the profile.
2. Choose the most accurate category.
3. Complete the hotel details section, where amenities and services are set.
4. Add current photographs of rooms, grounds and shared areas.
5. Reply to reviews, good and bad.
6. Check the name, address and phone number match your website exactly.

Google notes that booking links and prices on a hotel profile come from hotel ads and free booking links, not from the profile itself. The article on Google free booking links explains how to get your own rate shown there. Businesses inside the hotel that the public can visit, such as a restaurant or spa, may have their own profiles.

If you serve guests in one area, local SEO work is where most of the early gain is.

Technical basics

A hotel site does not need anything exotic, but it must get these right:

• Every page can be crawled and indexed, and none of the important ones are blocked.
• Pages load quickly, including on a phone on a slow connection. Large photographs are the usual cause of slow accommodation sites.
• Each page has its own title and description that say what it is and where.
• Content that matters is on the page as text. Rates in a PDF and amenities in an image cannot be read reliably.
• If the booking engine sits on another domain, it is not part of your site for SEO. The pages that rank have to be your own.
• When a site is rebuilt, old addresses are redirected to the new ones so existing rankings and links are not lost.

Structured data

Structured data is code that describes the page to search engines. The schema.org vocabulary has a LodgingBusiness type with more specific versions, including Hotel, BedAndBreakfast, Resort, Hostel, Campground and VacationRental, and properties for check-in and check-out times, amenities and star rating. Google's guidance on local business markup recommends using the most specific type that fits.

Two cautions. The markup must match what a visitor can see on the page. And Google's listing-level markup for holiday rentals is limited to sites that meet its eligibility criteria and are connected to Hotel Center, so it is not something every villa site can simply switch on.

Links and mentions

Links from other relevant sites help search engines trust yours. For accommodation, the natural sources are tourism bodies, local associations, wedding and event suppliers you work with, activity operators nearby and press coverage. Earn them by being useful or newsworthy. Stryx does not buy links, and bought links put a site at risk.

AI search

Travellers now also ask AI assistants where to stay. The same foundations apply, with a summary at the top of each page and clear questions and answers added once the basics are sound. See how ChatGPT and Google AI recommend hotels and villas.

What to measure

Rankings are a means, not the result. Measure:

• enquiries, calls and completed bookings that began with an organic search
• searches and clicks in Google Search Console, split between your name and everything else
• views, calls and website clicks from the Business Profile

If growth is only in searches for your name, SEO is not yet bringing new guests. Tracking bookings depends on your booking engine, which is covered in booking engines for lodges and villas compared.

How long it takes

SEO is ongoing work, not a once-off job, and results cannot be guaranteed. Fixing technical faults and completing a Business Profile can show an effect early. Winning broader searches against established sites takes longer.

Stryx offers hotel SEO as a monthly service, measured on enquiries, calls and bookings. To talk about your property, get in touch.