Hotels have a lot to gain during the Christmas season with everything from voucher sales, to Christmas parties, holiday stays and more. It is important that your hotel website takes this into consideration and ensures it will be present and ready for the holiday rush.
Whilst seasonal SEO is a highly debated topic, there is a lot of merit in making sure your site is optimized for the season. The season is fleeting, and it takes time for your optimization efforts to be noticed and taken into consideration, so why go through the trouble?
True, proper SEO can be time-consuming and laborious, and your whole index and ranking won’t change overnight thanks to a few mentions of Santa on your homepage.
That said, there is a good chance that if you put the work in, you’ll be able to give yourself the upper hand over competition and increase both your visibility and traffic this Christmas.
Here is a checklist to get you ready for the holiday season:
1. Create Relevant Content
Creating content surrounding the holidays and your hotel, will not only help give more information to guests about what you offer, but also provide an outlet for keywords-rich pages. An increase on your site of these holiday-specific keywords will help you to bring in valuable and targeted traffic. Consider creating an entire subsection of your site or creating a microsite to cater to this specifically and increase your standing.
2. Clean Up Duplicate Or Outdated Content
Nothing kills SEO quicker than a high bounce rate. Cleaning up old and outdated content will decrease your chances of a high bounce rate and improve your user engagement. This is equally true for duplicate content which will also incur a damaging penalty.
3. Update Google My Business
Your Google My Business listing is one of the first things a customer will see when they search for your property. Make sure this is up to date with hours (if you close over the holiday period or your restaurant hours change), and that amenities are catered to in the information section. Information that is clear and current will help improve both your bounce and click-through rates.
4. Plan Your Marketing Strategy Ahead Of Time
Having a clear idea of your marketing message, what platforms you will be present on and with what frequency will help you to maintain a concise and consistent message throughout the season. Avoid the last-minute scramble and start early. Again, it takes time for your efforts to take effect and pay off, so the earlier you start, the better.
5. Review and update Metadata
Whilst this will not necessarily make or break your holiday SEO, it will play a role in the way search engines will judge your website and content. Your meta data during this time should reflect the content on the page in question and make good use of the keywords you’ve used within. Don’t forget though, it’s all about quality over quantity. Pick a few out that you want to focus on, rather than throwing them all in just once.
6. Build your links
Links are liquid gold in the SEO world, so ensuring your website has the right outbound and inbound links built will be a key player in your success or failure. Most important in the link world are inbound links. Your search engine results ranking will rely heavily on what links are pointing to you, so get in touch with important websites, databases and platforms who can help you spread the word and link back to your content.
With all of these tips checked off, your SEO should see a cumulative boost this holiday season. We hope you profit from lots of bookings and a successful season!
For more of our expert’s SEO hacks that should be used throughout the year, check out this blog.
