Mastering the art of finding and using keywords will not just help you benefit from search engine traffic, but also help you to get to understand your customers better.
Start by Creating Buckets of Broad Topics, Then ‘Niche’ Them Down
What are the most important topics to your business? For hoteliers, travel, hotels and similar group words must be included. Other topics to consider based on your property type are skiing (if you’re a ski resort), backpacking, location based topics etc.
Once you’ve identified these broad topics of interests, start filling them with keywords.
“[City name] hotels” or “hotels in [city names]” are the first keywords that come to mind. These ‘seed keywords’ and are a good start.
But, these are also terms that are generally most competitive. So you need to find niche topics that are closely linked to your business. These are more specific than the broad keywords you start out with. Example – Auckland hotels with spas or Pet friendly hotels Mumbai airport. These are your long tail keywords. Typically the traffic volume is low, but the click throughs are more ‘qualified’.
Niche topics are a great way to find keywords that are less competitive, yet of interest to your customer and linked to your business (hotels). Eg. Places to see in Auckland CBD. This would be a good subject for a property owner in Auckland CBD.
When deciding on niche topics, try and think out of the box. For example if you’re in a location known for cycling, try to capture those keywords. Or if you’re targeting business travellers, target content link to business travel tips.
Now, Let’s Find the Keywords
Start with doing an audit of the keywords you’re ranking for – what words and phrases are you already getting traffic from?
Next look at the keywords you’re ranking for but have a very low click through – is there scope at your end to improve these? If the intent is correct, some tweaking of your meta description may encourage more users to click through.
What is your competition ranking for? We’re not saying copy those keywords, but take that as a guide to create your own list of keywords. There would be many keywords that overlap between your competition and you – make sure you optimise your pages well enough to rank here too.
Look for related keywords. These are the auto prompt keywords or phrases that the search engine shows below the search bar or at the bottom of the page – a goldmine really that most people skip.
