Creating an effective online marketing strategy for a resort that attracts new visitors is what’s going to pay the bills and make the difference between a good financial year and another year of scraping by with little profits or big losses.
You can’t afford to keep ignoring the new way that travelers book their vacations. It is done online, through massive research, and emotional purchases.
That means the traveler is going to look at your website, the reviews of your resort, and what you have to offer them before they decide that they want to stay with you. They will also compare you to your competitors before reaching a decision. Price will affect, but it won’t be the deciding factor in most cases. This is where your resort must separate from the competition.
So without further ado, here are some of the marketing strategies that you could implement to help gain an edge over your competition and get bookings from your new visitors!
With social media becoming the common norm with every passing day, you would be missing out on a great opportunity if you would not utilize social media platforms to showcase your beach resort. There are hundreds of social media accounts that your resort can create profiles on (Beach Resort Marketing recommends that you create as many profiles as possible).
At the very least, we are going to focus on 5 main social networks that you must be a part of to effectively market to future visitors to your resort.
Vacationers share their travel experiences with friends and families from all over the world through Facebook. It is the largest social networking site on the planet and the 2nd largest website after Google. Your resort Facebook marketing strategy will let you communicate with past, present, and future guests and get people excited about being at your resort. 2.3 billion monthly active Facebook users is a number your business cannot ignore.
Here are some strategies to make your Facebook page awesome and entice more guests:
A. Create an Awesome Cover Photo
First impressions are everything in social media. When someone lands on your resort’s Facebook page, they will be seeing your cover photo first as it is the most prominent image on the page. Pick a cover that showcases why your resort is amazing and beautiful. Check out these examples of eye-catching Facebook cover photos.
Take a look at the Sandals Resort cover picture below:
They used a Birdseye view of their facilities to visually entice its target audience. Many other resorts also aim for the same angle of pictures when selecting their main cover photo.
New trends for 2018 include cover videos. Here are some of the best practices of cover videos that beach resorts are alluring potential visitors with.
B. Post to Your Page Daily
Facebook is all about community and creating relationships. Letting your clientele learn about your community and the culture that you want to portray to your guests will grow your brand’s loyalty. Regular posting to your page will show everyone that follows your page that you are open for business and they are welcome any time of the year.
This is also very important for customer engagement. You want your community to ask questions, share your posts and ultimately get hooked and book a stay at your resort.
Developing a strong and well-researched content strategy for your Facebook page will guarantee not only authority amongst your competitors but also a significant fan base growth.
C. Create Interaction through Polls and Contests
You want to get your audience’s perspective on what they consider a good vacation means to them. You want to get to know your market deeply; in a way that can tailor your business to their needs. Creating polls will not only get the insight on their travel goals but will also make your page dynamic.
Also, people love giveaways!
Contests are great with growing your fan base. Why not include a monthly gift to one lucky fan after following several guidelines that will increase not only your popularity but engagement as well?
D. Make a Live Stream on Facebook
If there is a large giveaway or a very important event you want your audience to find out about as it is taking place, make sure to make a video live stream of it.
While you have to consider your target market and your resort’s demographics, a very well done live stream can increase interest in your destination. People that do not follow your page that have a friend follow you will get to see the video and if they are curious enough, you will increase your fan base.
Instagram is the 4th largest social media platform and is owned by Facebook. Instagram will showcase your resort and tell your story to thousands of people through images, stories, and short videos. This is where you get to showcase your brand to dreamers from all over the world.
Images combined with hashtags allow other Instagram users to like and follow your brand. Guests of your resort and influencers (Instagram users with a high following), can also provide images through your resorts unique hashtags. This is called User-Driven Content and helps grow your following and brand image.
What is the purpose of a hashtag you ask? It’s a search term that can be tracked to all the other images and videos that use the same hashtag. For example, if I search for the #bestbeaches, all of the images that have that particular hashtag will show up.
Here are some marketing strategies for your resorts Instagram page:
A. Create a Unique Hashtag for Your Resort
Having your own Instagram hashtag (#) that others can identify with your resort will allow you to create a traceable search term on Instagram. Using that unique hashtag in every one of your resort’s posts and telling others to use that hashtag when they post photos of your resort will grow your brand awareness.
B. Use Multiple Hashtags On Every Post
According to Instagram guru, Sue Zimmerman, Instagram posts with 11 hashtags or more receive the most traffic. Just make sure they are relevant to your brand, your geographical area, the topic of the post, and the message you want to send to your followers.
C. Contests
Create a unique hashtag that can be tracked for engagement and create a contest with your followers. Photo contests are a great way to showcase your hotel, restaurant, and resort property to others.
Offering incentives to guests to participate while they are staying at the resort will get your resort in front of their followers and increase awareness of your brand.
D. Lifestyle
Figure out your resort´s identity. Create a buyer persona and talk directly to them through your audiovisual content. Create a Hashtag that embraces all of your values and then post the content periodically, to create user curiosity and want.
This particular Hostel started as a small house in front of San Juan del Sur Beach, in Nicaragua.
Now, it is a franchise with over 4 locations. It is also host of the #13 best resort parties in the world ¨Sunday Funday¨, according to Lonely Planet Magazine.
Their Instagram page features the kind of lifestyle you would enjoy if coming down and spending your time at this hostel.
Artesanos is a celebrity hideaway in Marsella Beach, Nicaragua.
It is a luxurious Hotel-Boutique with a very different demographic audience than that of Pachamama Hostel.
The similarities between these two beach hotels rely on how they convey lifestyle in their visual content.
For Artesanos, comfort and elegance are what they want to showcase to attract the correct traveler to its resort.
E. Stories
Keep your Instagram page active by posting several short visual stories of your resort or activities held there. Create a filter that is unique for your resort´s use only. Use HTs and poll people through your stories. Ask your fan´s opinion on different subjects involving traveling and hospitality. Have influencers go live on your Instagram Stories and invite people to visit your resort.
Stories have become so popular that they are the #1 sales gimmicks offered by Instagram.
Twitter is the 3rd largest social media platform in the world. Twitter has recently doubled the allowed characters per tweet from 140 to 280 characters. This is a great opportunity to get your brand’s message across and showcase your resorts content.
One of Twitter’s advantages is ‘real-time communication’. What this means is that you can instantly send out messages, alerts, promotions, and events to your followers. It is great for resorts because it allows you to have constant communication with your guests and their followers.
Here are some Twitter marketing strategies for your resort:
A. Include Links to Current Promotions
Tweets promoting daily, weekly, or monthly deals can be sent out to your followers that link back to your landing pages where you can grab emails to build your email list. Here is an example:
We are having a July special. Book 3 nights and get the 4th free.
#resortname #resortpromo #destination
B. Promote Events at Your Resort or Around Your Location
Say that there is a local holiday tradition happening around the local area. You can invite guests back to your resorts club for a discount on drinks afterward.
Maybe you want to promote your Happy Hour at the resort. Tweet it out to get more traffic through the door. There are endless possibilities for communicating with Twitter. Get creative, get followers, and get the extra dollars coming through the door.
Spice Island Beach Resort did it right.
Their message is simple but alluring. Here you have some special promotions on wine or drinks and you want to know more about it, so they insert their website link for you to find out more.
Voyager Beach Resort used twitter to invite people to their Valentine’s Day candlelit dinner.
Our suggestion would be to use less text on the image and to direct your audience back to your website, instead, for further details. This image has too much text and people tend to ignore text filled images.
LinkedIn is important to market to for a few reasons: The first is because it is the 7th largest social media platform on the internet. It is a big deal and it mostly caters to the business community.
LinkedIn also allows your resort to showcase your brand to people who run businesses, promote businesses, recruit employees for businesses, and people who will recommend your business.
This is a platform that many resorts overlook because they feel that they won’t reach the average traveler, but they fail to see the value in promoting to other businesses.
Marketing your resort on LinkedIn is also important because it keeps your brand in front of the decision-makers of companies and lets you market other services such as conventions, company retreats, executive getaways, and any other business-related events you could think of.
Think of LinkedIn as the corporate world´s social network. If your demographic aims to reel in people with high acquisitive power, then you should be on LinkedIn. Also, remember that your brand needs to be showcased in absolutely every space that the internet allows you to do so.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to showcase your resort to future clients by starting up a corporate fishing tournament? The ideas are endless and LinkedIn is a great showcase for your property.
Take a look at the example of Robert´s Grove Beach Resort that uses LinkedIn to attract people for destination weddings.
Remember that having the most social media platforms as possible is great for brand presence.
Google+ is not the most popular social network and is not even in the top 20 for traffic. The reason I listed Google+ in this list is because of the value that having an active profile on Google+ will do for your resort and website.
Travelers search on Google. Google is the number 1 website on the internet and they LOVE their products. You want Google to LOVE your product and if you are on Google+, you will get extra attention from them, because of the link power it will give your website.
To get more future travelers to see your website, it needs to have good rankings in Google. As an SEO (search engine optimization) strategy, having strong Google profiles linking back to your website will result in stronger rankings for your website.
Stronger rankings = more organic traffic = opportunity to put more heads in beds.
You can post regularly to your Google+ profile and build a community in the social network that will attract followers. As with any social media platform, gaining more followers is not a bad thing for your resort.
You can also join Beach Resort Communities within this platform and have people share experiences and review your page.
Similar in many ways to Instagram, Pinterest is an image-based social media platform. It is the 8th most popular social media platform and its demographic is largely made up of women, almost 70% of the users.
Pinterest is different in many ways though, the most notable is that every post or picture (‘pin’) has an individual link back to the source as opposed to Instagram, where the only link is in the bio of the profile. This is important for SEO reasons and should be utilized.
Instagram is about capturing the moment and being able to upload your picture immediately to share where Pinterest is more curating the content and being able to tell a story through themed boards. Telling a story visually will drive more engagement.
Pinterest is seen as more of a scrapbooking tool that highlights boards, or categories, that you want to showcase. It is an excellent visual tool for your beach resort.
Take a look at Myrtle Beach Resort´s Pinterest Board:
They can create multiple boards showcasing all the different activities that they offer; everything from activities for children to nightlife and recreation.
We talked about posting photos to your social media profiles to encourage engagement and grow a social following that brings more awareness to your brand. A lot of the social media posts can be spontaneous, fun, and user-driven, but having professional photos of your resort that you can showcase is a necessity as well.
Your best photos are the ones that you will use for your website, TripAdvisor, your offline media, OTR’s, and the countless image sharing sites. These are your ‘first impression’ photos and this is your opportunity to sway the decision of the potential guest to choose to stay with you.
The last thing that you would want your potential guests to look at would be poor quality pictures of your resort. Not only would they be unable to make out anything of what you would have to offer, but there is no way that they would even consider your hotel the next time they would be making a booking.
Having a photography contest held at your resort for local photographers is a great way to get hundreds of new images that you can have in your database and use for your resort marketing strategies.
You can use multiple versions of a contest such as just having it for amateur photographers, or between the ages of 18-22, or having the contest for guests or employees only. Be creative and have some fun with it.
Make the rules and make sure the rules of the contest are clear. Here are a couple of examples:
- Each photographer must submit 50 unique photos that were taken at or around the resort
- All photos submitted can be used for marketing purposes by the resort
- Winner will be highlighted on the resort websites and social media profiles
- Grand prize is a 2-night stay, 2nd place is a dinner at the resort restaurant, 3rd place is a local excursion
Shephards Beach Resort did it best!
They shared their contest with their Facebook community with a link that would direct them towards the contest´s terms and at the same time, got a lot of traffic of people who were able to browse through their website.
You get the idea. The point being is that you don’t need to pay thousands of dollars to get images of your resort taken. Your goal is to have a large database of resort photos that you can use all year round to use in the marketing for your resort.
Thanks to high-resolution pictures being posted on your website as well as your social media accounts, future guests will see the beauty that you offer by booking a stay at your resort.
Here’s a SEO tip for your images that you use for your resort online marketing strategy:
“Make sure you Geo-tag your images prior to uploading them onto your website and fill out the alt-tag description of each photo so the search engines can understand what the image is about.”
A visually attractive website should be the highest priority in the marketing strategy of your resort.
This is going to be your chance to make a first impression to the dreamers searching online for a place to commit their money to and spend their vacation at. Your website and how it grabs the imagination of the people viewing it will be an important decision making factor for your future guests.
It is shocking from a marketing point of view how many resorts out there have outdated and non-user friendly websites. This should be the foundation on which you grow your brand’s image throughout all of your resort marketing efforts.
It is equally important to make sure that your website also converts the visitors to book as well. Let’s look at some examples of some resort websites and break down some of the key aspects that should be dominant.
The Shores Resort and Spa has won multiple website design awards. More importantly, it is responsive to all devices available.
Its sleek and easy to maneuver theme is very tasteful. You want to aim to be tasteful and very visually enticing for your potential customer.
Another great example of an elegant site is the Grand Wailea Resort’s website. This stunning Hawaii beach resort uses multiple images throughout the website to give the visitor a perfect visualization of what it would be like to stay at the Grand Wailea.
Having a clear call to action on the website that is above the fold (the top section of the website) is important for converting viewers into bookings. This goes hand in hand with number 3 above and needs attention when creating a solid website foundation for your resort marketing strategy.
While you might have a lot of interesting facts and useful information on your website, not having a good call to action for the viewer can make the difference between a booking or not.
A call to action is what you want the visitor to do on your website or where you want to direct them to. It is your chance to keep them on your website so they explore more or book through you.
It could be something as simple as listing all the phone numbers that they could call, and also a reminder to place a booking soon if they would like to get the best deal.
It can also be some special offers that you want to promote or letting people know that by booking through your website they will get the lowest price possible.
You want to make it easy for your viewer to make a decision or get a hold of you. Here are 2 examples of resorts using calls to action, both below the fold and above the fold.
Mukul Golf & Spa Resort has a clear call to action when you click on their site. Our suggestion would be to have the call to action above the fold (so you don’t have to scroll down) for better conversions, but they still did a good job to have a call to action on the home page.
RIU Hotel´s Website greets potential customers with a call to action that invites them to check for a resort near you. This is a great example of having a call to action above the fold.
YouTube is the 3rd largest viewed website on the internet and is the second largest search engine used by millions of people every day.
Using video in your resort online marketing strategy will showcase your brand across another huge audience that will be able to view your property and the culture of your resort.
You can shoot videos of the property, the areas to visit around the resort, your staff, your different room options, the activities of the resort, the amenities that the resort offers, and the dining options of the resort.
The list is endless and video can be used for your marketing strategy for tourists just as well as photos can be.
With today’s technology of using drones to get a bird’s eye view of your resort and using other devices such as waterproof GoPro cameras and mobile phones, there is a lot of opportunity to produce videos that you can use to attract tourists to your beach resort.
Similar to ranking a website in Google, you can also use search optimization techniques to rank your videos for keywords that are searched for in video sites such as YouTube. This will drive more free traffic to your resort’s website where you have the opportunity to convert them into bookings.
Creating more content to your resort website and social media profiles serves multiple purposes, but let’s focus on 2 main points of view:
From The Future Tourist Point of View:
Having a lot of information about the destination and the resort is important when making booking decisions. When people start researching where to stay on their vacation they want to be able to know what the resort has to offer, what amenities the resort has, what activities the resort hosts, what excursions are available, the dinner options, and so on.
Creating the content to provide these answers will give the website visitor a one-stop opportunity to find out everything they need to know when booking a stay at your resort. The more content you produce will show your guests that you are active in making sure that they have a great visit when coming to your beach resort.
Creating more content about your resort, what you offer your guests, and about the destination area will give you an advantage over the resorts that are not rich in their resort content marketing strategy.
From A Search Engine Optimization Point of View:
Creating more content on your website provides search engines like Google more chances to find the keywords that people are searching for. Google is looking for pages that have the most relevant content when someone is searching online.
If you are providing great relevant content for your audience, your chances of ranking higher for those search terms in Google will be greater; After all, you want your resort to appear first on every search engine result page.
The thing about having a presence on social media platforms is that you would have to remain active. If you fail to do that, people would think that you are not interested in forging a good and lasting relationship with the customers.
To make sure that you would be able to accomplish this task, you should make a daily goal of posting something to all your social media pages. No matter how silly or minute it might seem, all these little efforts would contribute to reaping big rewards for your business.
Having a person responsible for posting in all your platforms is crucial. Running your resort will not allow you the time you need to stay active on your social media accounts. Your social media manager should provide a posting calendar that you will approve with anticipation, and these posts can be scheduled for later days.
Some of these posts should include an ad campaign (FB, Instagram), to reach a large number of people.
To assess the effectiveness of your marketing strategies, you could also think of hiring a review management team. They would be responsible for overlooking all the strategies that have been implemented, how they are being carried out, and the response that is being generated from them. If the response seems to be less than favorable, then necessary actions would be undertaken to rectify the situation.
Learn what to ask from them:
- Comparative reports (Monthly)
- Facebook post response (best performing posts vs bad performing posts)
- Website traffic reports
- New trend analysis
- Thorough Competitive Analysis
- Marketing Analytics
- Data Reporting/KPIs
- PPC Audit (If used in the strategy)
While there would be tons of events being hosted in your beach resort, it would not be worthwhile to hold them if people don’t have any idea about them. If you would like people to know, then you could send out press releases for events. While some people have debated that it needs to be a page long, that is not true. You could simply stick to the point and list all the important details. Also, you should think of giving it to all the major newspapers so that word would spread around faster.
Having a major newspaper or known event blog link your site to anything they write about you, or to their press releases, will give authority to your site and rank higher when displaying in search engine result pages. It is very important to include them in your event coordination strategy and also create strategic bonds between them and your resorts.
In the modern-day and age, nobody would be able to get work done better than a digital marketing company. By leveraging their knowledge, experience, and skills, you would be able to bring your beach resort into the spotlight. Also, this might mean that a huge responsibility would be shifted from your shoulders. In this way, you would be able to focus on more pertinent matters.
Therefore, these would be some of the actionable marketing strategies that you would be able to implement for your beach resort. While there would be other social media platforms that you would be able to utilize, these are the ones that would be able to yield you the most successful and desired results.
You must also remember that your digital marketing efforts require more than just social media management. You will need a complete team that will be in charge of all online commercial strategies for your resort. Professionals in SEO, PPC, Web Design, Graphic Design, CRO and Content Management are the ones that will not only stay current with the ever-changing digital marketing trends, but also will carry out the umbrella that is your digital marketing strategy.
How to Improve Your Resort Marketing Strategy through SEO
11 Tips to Improve Hotel and Resort Marketing Through Search Engine Optimization
Your SEO Marketing Strategy for Beach Resorts
A beautiful resort, a strategic location, excellent cuisines on offer, a broad range of amenities just to name a few. All these statements are just meant to attract and retain customers. The challenge is that most hotels and resorts fail to attract new customers and retain existing ones. The secret behind effective marketing is the strategy that the marketers use. We are living in a world where everything is going digital. You cannot underestimate the role that SEO plays in your hotel and resort marketing strategy.
Travelers use several channels to research and identify the best deal that will meet their needs. Travelers no longer rely on the travel agents as the only vetting source for beach destinations and hotels. The consumer is becoming increasingly active in researching and exploring the available options. The process also entails relishing these options.
Integrating Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the marketing strategies for luxury resorts is becoming more important than ever before. SEO works well when targeting travelers and if you want your brand to maintain a competitive edge in the market. The travel industry heavily relies on online marketing strategies whose role is becoming more important than ever before.
This article presents some of the online marketing tips that can enhance the brand visibility of your resort. These tips can assist your hotel to attract more tourists from all over the world as you spread some of the beautiful words about your destination. The primary intention is to ensure that your business in on the right track of growth.
1. Focus on Proper Keyword Research
Keyword research plays a critical role in the success of your website. Not doing keyword research is like shooting blanks in the dark. It is important to learn how to find resort related keywords and integrate them into the SEO strategy for your resort if you wish to record success.
A keyword refers to a term, word, or phrase that people type as they look for information on various search engines like Google. For instance, a couple can use the words “best romantic resort in Maui” while looking for the right vacation destination for their honeymoon. If you have a resort in the region and have not optimized it for the keyword “best romantic resort in Maui,” there is a high chance that the couple will not come across your website. The process of using keywords to enhance your position in the search engine is what online marketers call organic ranking.
One thing you could be asking is how do I get the right keywords. You cannot just wake up one day and begin to think about the best keywords. You need to find the exact phrases that people type into the search engine. Several keyword tools can assist you to meet this objective with a lot of precision.
Some of these keyword research tools are free and readily available online. You can get access to some of them by searching through the search engines. Just learn how the chosen keyword tool works and search the best keywords according to the hospitality industry and your region. Optimizing your content with such keywords will greatly enhance the visibility of your website.
One thing you need to note is that you should place the keywords in the body of your text in a natural manner. Trying to force the keyword in the context of your content can do more harm than good to your marketing efforts. It will also be meaningless if you use inappropriate keywords that no one is searching online.
Why It’s Important
The website for your resort may organically rank for some terms on its own, and this is a very wonderful thing. However, you must always have a plan in place even if this is the case. You can significantly enhance the search ranking position and resort engine optimization by making use of targeting the right keywords when creating content on your website.
When optimized properly, your resort website will appear on top of the search engine results when a user searches using the matching keywords. You also need to understand that your site can rank for multiple keywords on a single page. Getting to the first page of Google for your keyword is important in driving more traffic and sales to your beach resort.Suppose you took an inventory of the property of your website right now! Ask yourself how it can be useful to your guests especially if they understand which room you want to lodge in. If your answer is ‘very little,’ then you are not alone. This response is a clear indication that you should begin to create content that is useful to your guests.
2. Create Content Pages to Enhance the Experience of Your Guests
Travelers always look for more than just a place to stay when they begin to plan for their trip. The visitors will look for a resort that will offer them places to go, things to do, or restaurants to try. Offering such services will allow you to bond with the traveler and there is a high likelihood that they will choose to stay at your place.
Make sure you highlight how staying in your hotel or resort will make visiting such attraction more convenient. Also, you need to explain the amenities that your resort has can complement the activities in the region. For instance, you can put down a list of the nearby golf courses and how you can get them if you have visitors that love golf.
The baseline is publishing content that is not only informative but also engaging. You can have very rich content but the way you put it forward is very critical. The type of content you publish on your website will determine the bounce rate. Reducing the bounce rate is a sure way of increasing the number of visitors who will spend time researching your resort in the future.
You need high-quality content that is 100 percent unique for your blog. Such an approach will make your resort website to stand out from the rest. Travelers will take the time to read your message as long as it is interesting. No one wants to waste time reading something that does not add value to his life. It beats logic to repeat things that are obvious on your website. The traveler will want to learn something new that will make him choose to lodge at your destination.
Why It’s Important
You will help your website with ranking keywords and rise in the search engines by producing more pages and content. You need to frequently publish fresh content that is up to date on your website. Also, make sure you direct any content that is no longer relevant to a newer post or page on your website.
3. Make Use of Interesting Short Videos
Visitors will spend more time on such a site to familiarize themselves with your brand. You will enhance the chances of booking in more guests by becoming the go-to resource for the things the traveler can do in the region.We cannot run away from the fact that most people spend a lot of their time on social media and travelers are not an exemption. You can upload and share short videos on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram among other social media platforms. Such videos can get viral on social media if you target them to the right audience, but mostly, your videos are an excellent resource for you to use to increase the booking experience for your future guests.
The good thing with short videos is that you can produce them with a lot of ease just like photos. Allow your employees to visit some of the remarkable tourist attraction destinations in the area and shoot some short videos from there. You can also take shoot videos for some of the events in your place such as an annual festival.
The videos should be short to keep the visitor engaged. No one has the time to listen to a very long clip. Make the videos precise and exciting if you want to attract higher viewership. The most important thing is to have a call of action for each of your videos.
Why It’s Important
Apart from the fact that videos engage the viewers more, the videos will also begin to rank in the search engine and this will enhance the exposure of your brand to potential guests. YouTube ranks in the second position in the internet search engines and travelers will desire to virtually see where they are booking as they research for their upcoming trip.
Videos will allow you to showcase your resort or brand and bring your future travelers into your doorsteps from their mobile device or desktop and send viewers to specific landing pages on your website.
From an SEO standpoint, having links to your website from your videos will also help your rankings because video sites such as YouTube are considered to have high authority links.
4. Set-Up a Mobile-Friendly Website
Mobile searches have surpassed desktop ones and any website that lacks mobile optimization will receive ranking punishment from Google. Make sure that your website is appropriately optimized for mobile searches if you want it to appear on the first page of the search engine results.
Why It’s Important
Having a mobile-friendly website will show your audience that you are accessible and current. Google penalizes sites that are not mobile-friendly and rewards those that comply with this requirement. Given that most travelers use their Smartphones and tablets to do their search, having a mobile-friendly website will increase the likelihood of getting someone to spend more time looking at your brand.
5. Make Your Website secure
The address of a secure website will always begin with https instead of the standard Http sites. An excellent example of a secure site could be https://beachresortmarketing.com. The address bar will also have a lock to tell your visitors that they are visiting a secure site. Travelers wanting to book their vacation want to be sure that their information is safe as they search for the best resort to stay in during their trip.
Why It’s Important
Your visitors will have a lot of confidence when you have a secure website in place. Visitors can go ahead to book for rooms through your site if they are sure their payment information will not be subject to a risk. Any website that allows online transactions must have this encryption of high security that allows for financial transactions. Having an HTTPS website is also a ranking factor with Google in its algorithm.
6. Start Blogging
A blog is a handy hub on any website. This section will allow your target audience to read some interesting articles and stories among other content regarding your resort, the experiences and the surrounding areas that the visitor can expect when they stay in your place. It allows you to showcase what you are offering when guests come to your resort.
Why It’s Important
A highly useful blog can attract thousands of visitors to your website. The blog can also assist your resort’s website to increase the number of indexed pages on the site. This approach will enhance the visibility of your website in the search engine and increase the organic search traffic. You can also boost your content asset in the form of blog posts which you can share on social media and encourage viral marketing.
You can also use blogs to establish the brand of your resort as a top influencer or thought leader in your industry. This platform will allow you to spread information about your cause to the entire world. You will also be able to gather insights feedback and other valuable data from your target audience. Finally, a blog will assist you to build and maintain healthy relationships with your prospective and existing clients.
7. Create Social Media pages
Some of the social media platforms that offer free channels or pages for business include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google +, Instagram and Pinterest. Any resort should leverage on some of these sites if it wants to improve its online visibility.
Facebook has close to 1.44 billion users every month, 1.25 billion of these monthly Facebook users access the platform through their mobile phones. Additional statistics reveal that 47% of all internet users are on Facebook.
Additionally, Twitter has 284 million users and 88% of them use their mobile devices. Instagram has 300 million users and close to 70 million videos and photos are sent each day on Instagram. 53% of internet users aged between 18 t0 29 years are on Instagram. Finally, 80 percent of those internet users who are on Pinterest are female. These statistics explain why you need to create social media pages for your resort website.
Why It’s Important
Having an active presence on social media comes with an endless list of benefits. From the viewpoint of SEO, your social media pages are high authority sites by the various search engines like Google. Linking to your website from different social media pages will give you powerful links that will boost the ranking of your site. It’s wise to link each of your social media pages together if you want to give each of them more power. You can rank your social media sites in the search engines as well.
8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The SEO techniques you employ will inform the search engine of everything they need to be aware of regarding the quality of your content, how it is relevant to the specific content, and how much your audience can trust you. SEO has everything to do with your organic presence. The primary role of SEO is to drive unpaid user traffic to your site which makes it a real golden egg for the traffic of your website.
Why It’s Important
This idea is straightforward for website owners to understand. Any website that has no optimization in the search engine can rarely appear in the search engine results organically. Remember everyone strives to get his website at the top of the first page in the search engine results. Suppose you are searching the name of your hotel in Google and it comes out in the third or fourth page. Such results can be a nightmare, but you can reverse the trend with a little SEO tweaking to your website.
Guests who are searching for your brand name should find your site on the first result. The search is highly targeted and shows that the visitors have a lot of interest in you. Such a person is close to making a booking that anyone who types a keyword like “top resort hotels in Mexico.”
On-page SEO ranking of a piece of content on the search engine results page (SERP) is driven by the authority and relevance you build through the content you publish on your website. The first rule for on-page SEO optimization is to use the keywords that your target audience might be using to search for and ensure those keywords are relevant on the page. The most important thing is to make sure that you place this keyword in the body of your text in a natural manner.
The foundation of all on-site SEO is keyword research. Since the Hummingbird update from Google, the role that entities play has changed where topics now take the role of keywords in SERPs. Google has made great strides in concept grouping and synonym identification. You don’t need to create multiple pages about the same thing if you want to optimize for different keywords. Instead, have a single, well-written, citation worthy topic page and optimize them for multiple keywords. This is another great reason for using long-form content that is longer than 1000 words.
Meta Tags or Title Tags
These elements are key in the placement of keywords because what you write inside the ‘title’ tag appears in your results as the title of your page. The title tag should not exceed 65 characters, and the keyword should be near the beginning. Complying with these instructions will make sure that your page ranks highly in the search engine results.
Images
One thing you need to understand is that search engines can’t read images. However, they can read the textual description through the file name and tag of images. The two instances should include keywords and describe the image. For instance, it could be a banner ad, lobby, or guest room.
Internal Linking
These are phrases or keywords that you link from one page to another page within your website. Internal links assist users to navigate and help in establishing the importance of search engines by the number and quality of links to a given page.
9. Off-Page SEO & Backlinks
This is the cherry that lies at the top of the cake in the SEO strategy for your resort. You can improve the authority of your site by obtaining fresh and unique links from other high authority websites. Backlinks have a direct effect on the ranking of your site in the search engine.
For the hotel industry, the best starting point could be to have your hotel listed in the well-ranked authoritative niche and local directories. You could try to use .org, .gov, and .edu directories; universities alumni directory and chamber of commerce. Strive to ensure that your top employees get listed in some of these top directories. An excellent example of beneficial directories for a domain could be non-profit contributor profile directories.
Why It’s Important
75 percent of SEO relies on off-page optimization. The process entails using inbound signals to build the online authority of your website. Off-page SEO is the relevance and quality of links to your website which will establish the authority of your website and ultimately influence your results in the search engine.
We can sun up link building in four words which include quality, authority, quantity and diversity. The similarity of internal links to external ones is that they use anchored keywords but point to the page of another domain and not a page from your website. It is key to have links that come from other websites because the search engine uses them to evaluate and rank your website. No one will link to your website unless you are an authority in the niche.
10. Social Connections and Interactions
Social media enables businesses to create meaningful connections with customers about their products and services by setting up an open online dialogue with users.
However, social activity can have a powerful secondary impact on your SEO efforts. Search engines will use your social signals as a factor to determine rankings. Branded social signals will increase the strength of your resorts brand and importance in the eyes of Google. Therefore, you cannot undermine the role of social interaction connection in supporting SEO activities.
The usual suspect social media platforms for building engagement include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. You can consider integrating some of them into your future marketing efforts.
TrірAdvisor.com: – Though more of a travel website than a social network site, it can assist customers in finding travel information, posting their opinion on a product and reviews of travel-related content and engaging in interactive travel. Primarily user-generated content, TrірAdvіѕоr.com is a direct platform for your customers.
WAYN.com: – This is one of the largest travel social networking sites that has more than 20 million users.
Bootsnall.com: This is a travel community for the independent travel community. It will give you a unique thing to get connected to Indie travel.
Why It’s Important
It can increase the number of visitors, brand signals and higher engagement among users who search your site. It will make sure that your content gets to the right users who are influencers. All this can result in more natural links that will directly come to your website and further sharing and this cycle will repeat itself. All these secondary effects will significantly boost your SEO efforts.
11. Optimize Local Listings
One surprising thing is that this is the Achilles heel for most hotels and other businesses that invest in SEO in the hospitality industry. However, even some of the biggest brands in this industry miss out on this critical element of SEO. It is a must to optimize your local listings by 100% no matter how well-known, big or small your brand is. Travelers will search according to your location, and it will be tough for them to get to you if you are not optimized in the local listings. Therefore, you must abide by this expectation if you want to get on top of the search engine results.
Why It’s Important
It does not matter how many branches your resort has because each still is a local business. A hotel will always be a local business by default. Optimizing your site for local listings may turn out to be the most key factor that search engines take into consideration while indexing local businesses. The location of a hotel is a unique factor to put into consideration. The best way to optimize for local listings is by claiming and actively building the Google + local page for your resort. Your website will appear in the SERPs if you take this approach every time the hotel appears for local searches.
Take Action and Apply These Tips Into Your Resort Marketing Strategy
SEO is a critical component of any website because a site that is properly optimized will drive relevant traffic and reach out to consumers who are searching for your services online. Search Engine Optimization is a long term strategy that will help the growth of your beach resort.
Using best practices is more important in the hospitality industry because over 80 percent of travel shoppers begin their search online and keeping your brand in front of online searches will get you more visitors to your website where you start to get them into your sales funnel.
However, you need to be careful as you apply these tips. Make sure that you are writing for human beings and not the search engines. Google will penalize you if you attempt to deceive the search engines by using bad practices. You will also not attain a top-ranking status overnight. The process is gradual as you continue applying these techniques. Google has over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm and they are always changing and adapting.
In case you wish to hire an SEO company to manage your campaigns, make sure you understand the techniques and terminology that they use so that you can be educated on what processes they use. At Beach Resort Marketing, we have strong communications with our clients and make sure that every question is answered.
While SEO does not have any quick tricks, it’s important to understand the basic elements that are explained in this guide.
All you need is to put your website on the path to success.