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A Brief Guide to Hotel & Resort Local/Meta Search

A Brief Guide to Hotel & Resort Local/Meta Search

Brian Fitzgerald
Brian Fitzgerald May 6, 2014
A Brief Guide to Hotel & Resort Local/Meta Search

Local Search is a segment of Search Engine Optimization that focuses on searches that are done with a geographic location in mind. “Hotel in New York, NY” is a good example.

Why It’s Important

Not every business can leverage local search, but it’s a critical tool for your hotel. When consumers search for a hotel online, these searches are done with a location in mind. Someone looking for a hotel in downtown Boston, MA might search “downtown boston hotel”. Within Google, these types of searches will trigger some neat things to happen:

  • A map outlining the hotels where the user searched will appear.
  • A list of hotels with ratings and current prices will appear in a box at the top of the search.
  • At the very top of the Google search, a black bar will appear with pictures of hotels as well as current reviews.

Users searching for a hotel will see all these things and easily gravitate towards them; you can see why a good local search strategy is important for your hotel.

What You Can Do to Optimize for Local Search

Optimizing your hotel’s online presence to take advantage of local search can be somewhat of a daunting task since you want to make sure that your hotel is properly listed across various sites like Yelp. Here are a few things to think about as you get started:

Optimize Your Website

Make sure that your website includes the correct address and phone number for your hotel. Also, you can optimize certain pages of your website to target local keywords like “hotel in downtown Boston”.

Claim Your Citations and Profiles

Your hotel may or may not be listed on sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor and Google Places. If they aren’t, you want to be sure to “claim” these citations and place your hotel’s address, phone number and website address on there. Your Google’s business profile is particularly important since Google will use it in searches done within Google.

If your hotel is listed within these websites and more, then you want to make sure that the information is correct. If it’s not, then be sure to go through the process of changing them.

 

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