Let’s be real. Landing a top search result ranking isn’t easy, and in the multibillion dollar travel industry “page one” success is particularly competitive.
Even with sound strategy and a savvy SEO support team, appearing prominently in search is something of an art. But search engine rankings aren’t all smoke and mirrors.
According to a new study from software company Searchmetrics, there’s a fundamental framework of “best practices” hotel marketing teams should build their digital presence upon.
The data looks at top-ranking travel brands to analyze what helps propel them to the top of search results.
Here’s our breakdown of the data, and what your brand can do to land among the most coveted search positions.
#1. Publish Content with Bulleted Lists
The travel world’s top-ranking sites consistently have landing pages and blog content that are rich with bulleted lists. In fact, travel sites have longer bulleted lists than are typically found on sites from other industries.
Hospitality brands that already organize their features and amenities into bulleted lists are on the path to success. The more easily digestible the information, the better.
Case Study: Thompson Hotel‘s website has long bulleted lists laying out the amenities guests can expect in rooms and suites at its Nashville location. This makes it easy to absorb what they offer, and helps expedite decision making.
#2. Write Long Form Content
In a case for being verbose, top-ranking travel sites use more words than their competitors. On average, they offer a staggering 2,500 words per page, some 57% more words than top ranking sites in other industries. This means the pressure is on for hospitality marketers to put fingers to keyboard and tell an interesting story about their brand.
Concision is always an important consideration when writing for the web. It’s a poor strategy to be wordy for the sake of being wordy, but as the data from this study shows, it can be beneficial to err on the side of longer content to improve rankings.
