HOW TO USE SEO AND SOCIAL MEDIA TOGETHER TO GENERATE MORE BOOKINGS

Social media marketing and search engine optimization might not seem as if they are all that closely linked at first glance, but the two can actually work wonders when it comes to securing more bookings for your hotel if they are strategically deployed hand in hand. Read on to find out how to optimize your SEO and social strategy to generate more bookings on your hotel website.

• Social Media Improves SEO Rankings

Your hotel’s social media profiles will appear in the Google search results as a separate listing, meaning having a well-performing Facebook page or Instagram profile gives you another chunk of Google real estate. This makes your hotel more visible and knocks your closest SEO competitor down a spot, so it’s worth putting in some time and effort to keep your social profiles well-maintained. There are several inventive ways of using SEO and social media together in order to drive traffic to your website and encouraging bookings once potential customers have landed on your social media pages.

• Growing Your Audience

Social media is a fantastic tool for cultivating an engaged following, which can in turn encourage potential visitors to book a stay at your hotel. Showcase the unique benefits of your hotel whilst communicating in your own unique tone of voice. Rather than going straight for the hard sell, growing a social audience is all about observation and continual improvement.

• Optimizing Social Sharing

There are few ways to stamp your brand’s authority on the internet like successful social sharing. All of your sharing activity contributes greatly to the momentum it is possible to build through your social channels, which in turn increases your thought leadership. This has fantastic benefits for your SEO presence too. With more shares you’ll generate more links and more buzz. In turn, this helps with your SEO and can lead yet more potential customers directly to your social channels and online booking engine.

When done well, social sharing is self-perpetuating, leading to a steady stream of new fans or followers who can all be enticed to stay at your hotel – and boost your SEO in the process.

You could encourage sharing by offering a prize or reward for a particular post, or by promoting limited time offers with a click-through to the applicable page where customers can book.

• Exerting Local Dominance

It’s very important to ensure you rank well in local search. This is a way to optimize bookings amongst potential customers looking at a particular area or region, promoting your venue as the natural choice for a stay in the area. Social media can help drive your hotel’s local search by showcasing your location as an integral part of your unique offering. Connecting with the social accounts of local businesses and brands, tagging the location of photographs which have a pertinent locational edge, and referencing local events or festivals can provide dramatically improved localised search results.

• Content marketing insight

If you carry out social media listening and observe which types of content your audience engages with, you’ll have better fuel for your content marketing. Record which content formats work best, which topics generate the most comments, like and shares and which hash tags perform best. Use this data to inform your content creation process – this will help to make your articles, blog posts and videos more successful and, as you are tapping in to proven audience interests, can help with link building, likes and shares. All of this makes an important contribution to your search engine optimization.