Developing proper content for a hotel website

By Pedro Colaco

In this competitive world having a good website has become difficult concept. Although technology made website development easier over the years, the amount of factors involved when defining a good website are more and more complex. Its not enough to have a website online, its about making sure it ranks for the right keywords, that it has a precise loading time, that it is cross-browser compatible, that it is mobile phones and all new gadgets -like the iPad- friendly. Aside from the new challenges, there is one particular thing that over the years scares anyone that decided to develop a new website: Content.
This is usually where projects get blocked! “What to write?” “What do you mean by adding keywords?” “How good is the SEO of my content?…
In this article will give you some guidelines on how to write good content and some hints about SEO that you should keep in mind.
The SEO comments will be focused on Google, as it is the browser most used for searching the web (Yahoo has more visits but less searches as it provides different of services).

SEO; something you should know

Normally you would think we should start by talking about the page creation and them move to optimization. You are right, that would be the right thing to do but SEO is really what people stress about and focus on. We want to take that stress away from you and make sure you focus on what’s important: getting customers.
Good content and good design/site development techniques are the only path to ensure proper SEO. In fact they account for something like +90% of your ranking. There is no short way to guarantee good rankings other than having a good website with good content.  If you want to have a good reading about SEO I suggest you read it from Google itself.

Creating content for your website

One important fact about content is that every webpage has the potential to have a good ranking in search engines. It is also very important for pages to can draw traffic from other website, social media sites and blogs, depending on its quality, usefulness and how interesting the information is. “Quality“ is a mix of different things (URL, page name, H1 tag, image names, keyword density), but in simple terms, the more specific the page is, the greater the success. For instance, think that you are a hotel in Cape Cod that decides to create a page in its website with information about all the nearby beaches. The first issue would be the name of the menu. If you think about what people search for, you would name it “Cape Cod beaches” or “beaches at Cape Cod”. Then you would create a page describing the beaches. But your website is brand-new and the chances of you ranking #1 for “Cape Cod beaches” is 1.000.000/1. If you go the extra mile and create a specific page for a specific beach your chances of success would improve dramatically.

As we’ve said in previous articles, don’t aim to rank #1 on broad keywords like “Cape Cod beaches”; instead focus on what is more specific about your location and/or your property. This means that you can easily rank #1 for a specific beach if you develop good quality content for that specific page.

Setting up your Menu

Get a blank piece of paper and write down the answers to the following questions: “what are people looking for when visiting a property such as mine?” and “what are my competitors doing?”
Based on our experience website visitors look for the following when they visit a hotel website:

• Prices
• Picture gallery (hotel and location)
• Rooms description
• Special offers
• Best rate guaranteed policy
• Ability to easily book a room
• Contacts/directions
• Local attractions
• Local events
• Hotel specifics (pet friendly…)
• Restaurant/ Bar

Figuring this out will help you create your site map and keep you focus when writing content.

Write, write, write

Having spare time no longer exists in our dictionary, that is why nowadays visitors demand to find good quality information. You have to be able to impress your visitor as soon as the page loads, if you are not able to do this you increase your chances to loose a customer.
Here are some rules you should follow when writing content:

• Write pages that clearly and accurately describe your offer.
• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
• Be objective. If you could say it in fewer words, you probably should; long scroll bars scare people away.
• Be specific. Write about specific topics on specific pages; don’t try to put everything in the same place.
• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number and make sure you’re not adding broken links.
• Avoid using images instead of text when displaying important keywords such as page titles since Google doesn’t recognize text contained in images.
• Avoid duplicate content. Google can view as an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic.

Following these simple rules will help you write good content for your website, that will engage your visitors and work as a good source for your SEO.