Hotel SEO, 3-pack & Search Console: How to get the right data and how to improve CTR?
-
Hey guys,
I've been working with some hotels and I feel like there are some specific issues which need special solutions.
Maybe some of you also work for hotels and face similar problems.Question 1: Google "forces" 3-packs impressions to OTAs like booking.com via Hotel Ads. You basically have a big blue "book now" button and a small little website button. This ends up basically leading to CTRs below 1% despite a 1-3 Position. Is there any way to improve the organic CTR? Of course we use hotel ads, but they offer bad analytics AND we basically pay for our SEO-Performance.
Question 2: Search console doesn't specify wether or not a impression comes from 3-Pack or the rest of the organic results, which basically leads to a average position which says nothing. It's hard to evaluate the performance of meta-titles and texts, because the ctr is also mixed. What would be a better way to get this data or do you think google will change this in some time (new search console doesn't offer this).
Question 3: Hotel Rankings are dominated by OTAs, Meta-Searchers and BIg Chains. Has anyone experience in SEO for smaller, family owned Hotels? Any tricks how to get a steady traffic source outside of brand results?
Hope there are some travel experts in here
-
Woohoo!
A question that I can definitely help to answer. I was in the Hospitality industry for 2 years working on purely hotel sites, from large international chains to small family owned businesses.
The hospitality industry is definitely one of the MOST competitive industries that I've ever been in and competed on. The majority of the SERPs are already dominated by OTAs and Google's HPA isn't helping much either. Here's my answers, I hope they help!
-
I totally hear you on HPA. It's a very specific product that's rolled out by Google to target the hospitality industry and one that does NOT get as much attention as HPA. What you CAN use HPA for is for data-mining purposes. HPA offers quite a bit of insight into the search behavior of the possible customers for your hotel clients. That data can help to guide you in focusing your efforts for organic search. For example, looking at the historical data in HPA, what are the top sources for bookings? Is it Google Maps? Which countries are they coming from? What days of the week are they booking for and when are they booking? (This was particularly useful as I was also managing their PPC search campaigns.)
-
I might be wrong on this as it's been about 6 months since I stopped working on the Hospitality industry, but I think you can find the CTRs for the knowledge graph or 3-pack in Google My Business, and the CTRs for SERP rankings in Google Search Console.
-
SERPs are essentially dominated by the OTAs for the top converting keywords. Fist-bump I totally get how you feel about this.
My strategy for traffic was to build up the OTHER pages. Smaller sites aren't going to rank for top-level queries like 'chicago hotel rooms' for example. They can however rank well for associated keywords that are relevant to the hotel itself. For example, 'beach front hotel in east florida' or my personal favorite type 'family rooms near ****'
Also look towards the property's other features. Restaurants, spas and other facilities are key targets to work on for SEO.
Another tip I can give you is to analyze the countries that the site's traffic comes from. I saw some decent results from optimizing the site for Naver (Korea), Yandex (Russia), Yahoo (Japan), and Baidu (China). It's definitely challenging to try to optimize for other search engines, especially the language barrier. But I definitely saw good results from this.
Feel free to reach out to me for other queries!
-
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
-
Organic & Pop Ups
Hi I wanted to find out whether pop up messages affect Google rankings. We only have one voucher code pop up. Thanks Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Is it a good idea to 301 redirect one same niche site towards another site for seo benefit
Hello friends, I have 2 android niche sites, one site is running on a technology dropped domain i catch 1 year ago it has, almost 400+ domains linking to different parts of the site, the other one i established from scratch and both are running from jan 2015. Now i want to redirect first site which already has 400 links pointing towards it to the home page of my 2nd android site. Is it a good idea to do so and does it give any boost in terms of seo?
Algorithm Updates | | RizwanAkbar0 -
Google traffic drops (October 24th 2014) - Penguin 3.0?
Hi All My client's site http://www.carismaautodesign.com took a bit of a knock around 24th October 2014. Google organic traffic down by ~32%. I am trying to understand if site has been hit by a Penguin refresh (3.0) - and if so why?
Algorithm Updates | | seowoody
If it was, it would appear to be a false negative as the site and backlink profile is clean. The content is perhaps the only area in question... as it's more of a brochure site, therefore content is relatively thin and promotional rather than in-depth/editorial. For example, the gallery pages are very similar in structure, with the images and specification text being the only variation, click on any of the vehicle interiors to see what I mean - http://www.carismaautodesign.com/gallery/mercedes/viano/ You will see the specification text is unique per vehicle interior, but not hugely; Then how could it be? The interiors all contain the same elements just a variation in seating, leather colour, stiching, wood finish etc. Question: Do you think... a.) This IS NOT a Penguin issue but something else (please ellaborate)
b.) This IS a Penguin issue but a false-negative, so do nothing, this will bounce back with next Penguin refresh
c.) This IS a Penguin issue related to content. Merge all gallery pages into one page per vehicle (i.e. one Mercedes Viano Interior page, with all 19 interior galleries as part of the page - thus building one stronger page with more intro text and simple bulleted specification per gallery)
d.) This IS a Penguin issue related to something else (please ellaborate) Thanks,0 -
SEO for FMCG
Hi folks I'm basically hoping for some tips for great resources specifically focusing on SEO tactics for global FMCG ... Obviously I'm doing my own research but would love help from the community if possible with; 1- material on general SEO 2- Material on local SEO 3- Material on Image SEO 3- material on Video SEO any help would be greatly appreciated
Algorithm Updates | | Intrested0 -
New Search Engine.... Vanoogle.com
I'd like to see google start a new search engine. They might call it Vanoogle.com (Vanilla Google). This search engine would not be stinked up with social data, freshness inclusions, crap from my last query, skewed based upon my IP, warped because of my browser, targeted because of my cookies, no personalization, no image results, product results, none of that stuff. Ads are OK if labeled. I just want a plain vanilla search. Something that I know is "clean". Just like the good olde days. Millions of people will start using it right away. 🙂 Would you use Vanoogle.com?
Algorithm Updates | | EGOL2 -
Which website? It's hard to get enough resources to develop both
I started my Whitby cottage website for years ago www.endeavourcottages.co.uk not knowing anything about SEO, but I now have very good rankings for the keywords on Google. I'm ranking quite well for Whitby holiday cottages on Google and I now list to other cottages in the area for my friends. The point is that I'm now starting a small letting agency and hoping to expand it now so I bought the domain http://www.whitby-holiday-cottages.co.uk/ and set up a WordPress site but it's not ranking are getting anywhere near the same amount of traffic. This domain name and website structure would be much more applicable now that there are more than one cottage to let. Whenever I get some free time I spend it doing SEO on my first website to improve its rankings and so which is the best strategy from here on. One try and develop the new cottages letting website at the expense of my main website, or forget about the new website are together and continue with my first website which was designed initially for just one cottage. It's hard to have enough resources to get both websites ranking high. Thank you very useful tips Alan Davidson
Algorithm Updates | | thepersuader0 -
This Guy Is Turning SEO Upside Down
Hi, Everything my competitor does goes against everything I have learned about SEO so far. For starters: he registered a brand NEW domain and within a space of **4 months and ** has a top ranking for one of the most competitive search terms on Google. he uses scraped content the navigation is almost non-existent. his backlinks seem dodgy. 1-page sites with content that doesn not relate. Bunch of links to other websites too And yet his site stats are as follows: Domain Authority: 72 MozRank: 4.63 MozTrust: 4.72 Linking Root Domains: 1725 On further investigation I discoverd that he owns a SEO company and that they in fact have achieved a #1 rank in various niches such as life insurance, car insurance, mortgage etc. On his SEO site he actually promises a #1 ranking in less than 4 months. The sample sites he lists on there all achieved #1 over a 4 month period...of course he owns most of these domains and then just sells the leads... So, my question is how on earth does he do it? Do you have any ideas Zane
Algorithm Updates | | Springboks0 -
Mobile SEO
Hello, A bit of an open question to start the week... What do you think are the key differences between Google's mobile search and web search algorithms? Obviously greater importance on site speed for mobile search!?
Algorithm Updates | | A_Q0