Onsite SEO Strategy for a large accommodation site
-
Hi All
I have been thinking about the best strategy for keyword optimisation on a forthcoming accommodation website I am involved with. This may be a bit of a newbie type question, but most of my work has been on considerably smaller sites to date....
Lets say the site will have 1 primary landing page for "Hotels in Bristol" and then 50 pages that are each for a hotel in Bristol. The aim would be for the primary page which will be a browse/search result type page to rank well for the term 'Hotels in Bristol' and other similar terms.
If each of the hotel listing pages that have a hotel in Bristol on, have the phrase 'Hotel in Bristol' contained within the title, url, page content, maybe headings/alt tags etc. will the result be that the rank for the site is 'spread too thin' across the domain? Whats the best way to drive all the relevancy and keyword usage on the 50 listing pages, to the primary page such that that is the one that ranks well? And the other pages rank more for the hotel name etc?
I guess one way would be to avoid using the words hotels and Bristol in the title/URL etc.. but the natural approach for usability (not SEO) would be to use these words i.e. http://www.newtravelsite.com/hotels/bristol/stgeorgeshotel/
Or would each of the 50 listing pages simply need a followed, anchored link pointing the main landing page?
I'm sure there may be a fundamental technique to do this that has alluded me so far, but any help, thoughts or guidance much appreciated!
Regards
Simon
-
Many thanks for the input Andy. Good call on less sub folders, have a few sites with this kind of structure, will change for some pages and monitor results... and yes, I just typed a not real example of the hotel name, totally agree spaces (dashes) are required.
Great idea with the mixing it up too, those are the perfect kind of long tail phrases that will add up and help massively.
And yes, we are looking at user reviews, but limiting it to people that have booked via the site to avoid the 'trip advisor effect' and be as genuine as possible! As for showing in the SERPs - I've seen uplift too following adding rich-snippet review data on an ecommerce site, but they are so easy to game at the moment!
Cheers
Simon
-
If I understand you right heres a few things id do:
- http://www.newtravelsite.com/hotels/bristol/stgeorgeshotel/ isnt a great url protocol as you have 3 sub folders in there i.e. /hotels / bristol / stgeorgeshotel. It would be better as something like /hotels-bristol-st-georges-hotel. Also not the spacing between the hotel name, works better for seo and will help clickthrough rate in search results.
- Optimise the Bristol hotel page for Bristol hotel phrases. Optimise the hotel specific pages for hotel specific phrases, clickthrough rate and conversion rate should be good that way. You could also mix it up a bit on the hotel specific pages e.g. if you have a hotel near the docklands, inc it in your page title/h1 etc e.g. XYZ Hotel near Bristol Docklands. That way you're actually optimising for hotel name + hotel near Bristol Docklands (which should be pretty easy to rank for).
- Inc user reviews on the hotel pages and use rich snippets for the reviews, review count, pricing - this will then show up in your search results and give you a huge lift in clickthrough rate (ive seen 30%+ on the last site I did it for). Aside from that reviews are pretty vital in the hotel decision process. Obviously if the sites new this is a bit tricky though.
Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Mobile site SEO: faulty redirects.. 204! help pls!
Hello, I have recently read that a m.site.com should provide the same number of pages as the non-mobile site. Is this so? Is this why my mobile site won't rank? Our competitors have their standard websites showing up before our m.website.com version... Also, do I have to get a whole new set of mobile links for my mobile site? In WT, I am seeing absolutely no inbound links, which seems odd? Any help would be greatly appreciated. 🙂 Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | lfrazer0 -
Seo For Forum Sites
I have forum site.I've opened it 2 months ago.But there is a problem.Therefore my content is unique , my site's keyword ranking constantly changing..Sometimes my site's ranking drops from first 500.After came to 70s. I didn't make any off page seo to my site.What is the problem ?
Technical SEO | | tutarmi0 -
When Should You Start SEO?
I am launching a new website (related to IT services) on Monday 6th May 2013. What should be my SEO/SMO/PPC strategy for a brand new website with new domain ? I have a blog within the website as well. Is it better to promote internal blog or should i focus on external bogs like wordpress ?
Technical SEO | | afycon0 -
SEO for mobile
Hey everyone! I had just finished building my first mobile website and i wanna focus on SEO for mobile search. Now, since there is a redirection once a visitor enter to the web domain to the mobile site automatically (e.g. sample.com to m.sample.com). Question is: Where should i refer my back links to to improve my ranking on mobile result page? Would love for some help..
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Site Map Problems or Are They?
According to webmaster tools my Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt Our site map is generically generated and encompasses all web pages, whether I have excluded them using the robots.txt file As far as I am aware this has never been an issue until recently. Is this hurting my rankings and how do I fix it? Secondly, webmaster tools says there is over 5,000 error/warnings on my site map. But site map is only 1,400 or so pages submitted. How do I see what is going on?
Technical SEO | | Professor0 -
SEO mark-up language
Hi there, i have been looking into schema and noticed some articles on it recently too. Who here has used schema/mark-up language in their code? I heard Google will be looking for at this soon to interpret data better. Is it schema .org where i can get the code information from? Any help much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
How to move a site slowly
I've got a site that I started back in 2001 (www.jaaroncaststone.com) to sell what I was making, concrete countertops and sinks. Well we're going to be discontinuing the concrete products in a month or so and want to start pointing all the links from the old site to a new one dedicated to a single product (www.jaaron-wood-countertops.com). I don't want to do a full 301 on the old site just yet but can I put a canonical tag on the index and about us pages pointing to the new site now so the search engines start looking that way or should I wait and do a full 301 when the day comes to pull the old site?
Technical SEO | | JAARON0 -
Moving Duplicate Sites
Apologies in advance for the complexity. My client, company A, has purchased company B in the same industry, with A and B having separate domains. Current hosting arrangement combines registrar and hosting functions in 1 account so as to allow both domains to point to a common folder, with the result that identical content is displayed for both A & B. The current site is kind of an amalgam of A and B. Company A has decided to rebrand and completely absorb company B. The problem is that link value overwhelmingly favours B over A. The current (only) hosting package is Windows, and I am creating a new site and moving them to Linux with another hosting company. I can use 301's for A , but not for B as it is a separate domain and currently shares a hosting package with A. How can I best preserve the link juice that domain B has? The only conclusion I can come up with is to set up separate Linux hosting for B which will allow for the use of 301's. Does anyone have a better idea?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0