As Marriott updates their systems and new websites, it’s important to stay up to date on understanding the process, creating an SEO Strategy, and implementing best practices for your hotel. First things first, Marriott changed their URL structure in 2022.
NB: This is an article from Cogwheel Marketing, one of our Expert Partners
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This change is important to know because you will want to audit all of your listing URLs and backlinks to ensure that all online platforms and listings have the new URL. The difference between the old and new structure is minor and is highlighted below.
The old URL structure is: www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/yhzmc-halifax-marriott-harbourfront-hotel/
The new URL structure is: https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/yhzmc-halifax-marriott-harbourfront-hotel/overview/
Even when done correctly, changing your URL structure causes Google to have to re-index your website and can take time. Making sure your hotel website is indexing all pages of value that are important for your organic search rankings. Utilizing a tool like Moz and SEMRush or running a tool called Screaming Frog can help distinguish which pages are being indexed and which pages are not being indexed.
What does it mean when a page is not being indexed: a page not being indexed means Google can’t find it. With any new URL structure, if there hasn’t been any traffic to your m.com internal pages, you need to identify why Google can’t find your page. There are multiple reasons why this happens. For example, it could be because of crawl errors, broken redirects, content quality, etc.
With a new URL, that also means you need to update all of your backlinks by implementing a backlink outreach strategy with the updated URL to ensure you are capturing the value. Requesting a backlink is literally as easy as sending an email to a website contact and asking nicely ‘Can we get our name put on your site on Page X and make it link to this page on our site.’
Help Guide for Backlinking Outreach
If you haven’t updated the quality links that link back to your hotel website (i.e. your CVB listing, any local sites your hotel is featured on etc.) with the new URL structure, your future guests will land on a 404 error or non-existent webpage. If you have not built a backlink outreach strategy, audit the backlinks of the old URL and reach out to the contacts of relevant links with an updated URL or find a service provider to handle for you.
Another very important change that recently happened is Marriott just sunsetted the EPIC system where some of the SEO updates used to be made and introduced Product Catalog.
Making the most of Marriott SEO opportunities is just one differentiating technique when understanding where brand marketing stops and individual hotel marketing begins.
Whether you are doing it yourself, hiring Marriott Digital Services or an outside agency, consider these factors when doing search engine optimization (SEO) for a Marriott branded hotel.
