Internet marketing for Hotels, Restaurants, and the Hospitality Industry

Online Search Shouldn't be an Inhospitable Experience for You or Your Customer

As your prospective guests look online for places to visit, rooms to stay in, and restaurants to eat in, some important questions arise: can they find you online and is your website easy to read? Despite the media hype around search optimization, internet marketing for local hotels, restaurants, and other guest locations in the hospitality industry remains a largely untapped resource for many establishments. The large national menu sites and aggregators such as hotels.com have created a major market for one-stop shopping with their website strategies. However, more people are looking for the personalized nature of local web sites and what they have to offer while they are traveling.

Whether you are a hotel, restaurant, major attraction, or other guest location in the hospitality market, you can get more bang for your search engine buck by following a few simple steps:

1. Make sure your site can be “read” by visitors as well as search engines. This includes focusing your content on your city and on the specifics of what you do;
2. Budget in some online advertising to drive traffic to your site;
3. Measure your results – understand what it's worth to you in terms of cost per lead

First, before you spend money on search engine marketing, you need to invest in making sure your site is ready. That means your site should be easy for both the search engines and visitors to read. You're in the hospitality industry and that means creating a great user experience online before they visit you in person.

• If you're site isn't friendly, your prospects may associate that experience with your overall customer service – rightly or wrongly.
• Focus your content (words) and images to provide information on where you are located, who you cater to (your target audience), your amenities, and on local attractions and events.
• Guests are looking at hotels and restaurants by city and near major events and attractions. Thus, be sure to list local events and attractions on your site so that users searching for those attractions can also find your local service among the listed results.
• By doing so, your site can create good breadcrumbs for search engines to follow and index (that means reading and listing your site).

Generally, easy reading by search engines (and, sometimes, people) means staying away from flash-based sites. Flash is a popular software program that allows designers to create and post video that runs in your site. Many business owners mistake "flashy" websites for great marketing tools. However, be aware – most search engines cannot read Flash files. If search engines can read parts of them, they often do not provide good links into your site's real information because the content in the video cannot be indexed even though the link to the video might be. Most visitors to your site might be impressed the first time they see your flash video introduction, but more than likely, they are eager to find the "skip" button after that first visit. The most important aspect of your site is readability for quick information. Thus, flash files can also be a time distraction when your visitor is looking for information quickly and easily.

A second way to get bang for your internet marketing dollar is to consider local advertising as well as ads in major search engines such as Google. This means advertising on local websites that are relevant to your business. Just as you might list major attractions and events on your site, reciprocal local ads on major event and attractions sites can also drive targeted traffic to your site.

Finally, only use advertising that can track your ROI (return on investment). That is, ads should be able to tell you how many people have viewed your ad and have clicked through to your site. By placing ads on the major search engines with focused key phrases that capture what you do, you can develop traffic to your site on a controlled budget that allows you to track which phrases are successful. This tracking enables you to adapt your phrases as needed if certain words aren't working.

You also need a way to track phone calls, emails and order completions generated by your website so that you know which ad channel is responsible for driving the most leads. This enables you to calculate your cost per lead by channel so that you can compare your investment and return on internet marketing to your other forms of advertising. Once you know this information, you can adjust your budget relative to your other marketing programs in order to optimize your investment.

Navigating the finer points to a successful internet marketing does not have to take up a lot of time or resources. If you need help with any of these items, or would like us to review your site for hidden internet marketing opportunities, please contact Kevin Dean of WSI Net Advantage.

Phone: 510-687-9737

Email: kdean@wsinetadvantage.com