There’s no denying the importance of a strong SEO-strategy to give your hotel brand that crucial search rankings boost, but buried in amongst all the great advice, there are lots of commonly held myths about the SEO process. SEO isn’t an exact science, largely due to the fact that Google doesn’t ever publicly reveal the full list of factors it considers when weighing up your search engine ranking. This uncertainly leads to a lot of guessing and theorising with lots of myths woven in amongst the actual useful advice. Believe those and it could be actively detrimental to your hotel’s rankings.

 

Any hotel business which wants to ensure the validity of its activities should take note of the following key SEO-mistruths to avoid being duped or doing anything that could have the opposite of the desired effect.

Search engine optimisation isn’t as straightforward as it may once have been considered to be, but that certainly doesn’t diminish its importance. If anything, as methods of ranking highly and the tools used to get you there evolve and grow, so does the need for clever SEO strategizing. While there have been lots of developments aimed at improving the efficiency of this process, search engine optimisation is still founded in the key aspects which it always has been – delivering relevant, SEO-friendly content which search engines are able to clearly index.

With the advent of negative SEO, this simply isn’t true. Irrelevant linking and link farm activity are a hangover from a time before the continual updating of Google’s search engine algorithm, which has effectively obliterated this outmoded and outdated way of looking at SEO strategizing. Where once there were entire websites certain SEO practitioners used purely for providing links back to their hotel client’s websites as a means of boosting search engine rankings, these days it is significantly more authentic linking which will help boost SEO activity and drive bookings.

Yes and no. Some meta tags are hugely important, such as your title tag (explaining the content of your page) and your description tag (encouraging click-through rates). These are picked up on by search engines – and so is their absence, to your websites detriment if they don’t exist. However meta tags are one piece of a much larger search engine ranking puzzle, dedicated to ensuring searchers are connected to the right content for their needs.

This is a dominant and enduring SEO myth which is also wholly understandable – what hotel doesn’t want to rank so high in Google search? However it is not the sole marker of success within hotel online marketing. What is far more important is ensuring your link is the one potential customers want to click, and this is quite distinct from being at the very top of the search results.