Organic search, although a feature of the Internet that’s fantastic for business websites, not least those of hotels (it’s when traffic for a website’s generated without relying on non-advertised search ranking results), isn’t without challenges in ensuring traffic and conversions remain high and grow. Unfortunately, these issues can range from the basic to the advanced, while some, if allowed, can quickly spiral out of control. The following, however, are some major – and very common – examples and how you can avoid and overcome them, thus preventing them from sending your site’s traffic in the wrong direction…

Put simply, a clear and sensible content strategy for your site is a big winner. Why? Because if you’re not planning the content that appears on the site there’s a good chance those highly important keywords (for which Google scours the ’Net to match the terms people are searching for and arrange web pages in its results accordingly) are getting duplicated. The problem with this is the same keyword derived from two separate pages on your site will see the two pages needlessly compete with each other – instead of with rival sites’ pages – in Google search and, thus, reduce their rankings. Bad news. Unoptimise one of the pages or remove it altogether.

When it comes to generating traffic it’s all about giving potential visitors a reason to come to your site – essentially like how you need to ensure your hotel offers the best possible accommodation and service to entice people to book a room. This all depends on a solid, effective hotel search engine marketing strategy. For instance, if your rankings in search engines aren’t what you need your site to be achieving, consider a change in approach or focus in exactly what the site’s doing.

To wit, what’s the content like? How’s it actually performing? Would a tweak here and there improve it; make it more informative, genuinely unique and overall more compelling and useful? Moreover, what about your external linking and content sharing/ social media-based sharing? Are they resulting in less traffic than they might? How can you improve that?

If it becomes apparent that many of your site’s search engine optimisation (SEO) issues aren’t down to external factors but can be remedied by you yourself, whether with specialist help or not, don’t hesitate to get on with it. The trick is, like or not, simply being vigilant and not giving up. Don’t launch your site and then expect it become an overnight silver bullet for your marketing; keep checking, tweaking and fixing things. It’s effectively a living, breathing online entity that you have to nurture and fix when things go awry. In the end, like a hotel, your website needs constant attention to successfully attract visitors.