My presentation from the 2023 National Hotel Marketing Conference, addressing three areas hotels and resorts should look to address/accommodate as part of their 2023 hotel SEO strategies, and their hotel SEO marketing moving forward.

1. SEO for Hotels,
Resorts &
Accommodations
The National Hotel Marketing Conference 2023
Dan Taylor, SALT.agency

2. Dan Taylor
Head of Technical SEO at SALT.agency
VP of Product Marketing at Mirador
2022 Queens Award for Innovation &
International Trade
2018 TechSEO Boost Innovation Prize
(First Winner)
Fellow Inst. Travel & Tourism
Spoken at marketing conferences in the
UK, EU, US, Middle East & Russia.

3. Three Takeaways From Today.
Google wants “unique quality” content
Trust is more important than ever
01
02
03 Don’t be afraid to adopt AI.

4. Modern Travel Content
Redefining “unique” and “quality” for longevity and sustained performance
in search.

5. Defining “Unique” & “Quality”
It’s not a new statement that Google values unique and high quality content.
However, the definition of unique & quality is now a lot clearer thanks to Google updating their
documentation and what we’ve witnessed from algorithm updates.
To determine quality, Google assigns all pages with a Page Quality score. To determine this, all
content:
● Must have a beneficial purpose.
● The “main content” on the page must be obvious and “satisfying”.
● General user experience must be good (Page Speed, Core Web Vitals).
This ties into a common concept in SEO known as EEAT (Experience - Expertise - Authority -
Trust).

6. E.E.A.T.
Satisfying MC
Beneficial
Purpose
Canonical
Signals
Obvious MC

7. hilton.com/en
travelodge.co.uk
marriott.co.uk

8. All relates to the “type” of search
Travel is a nice industry due to relatively predictable seasonality for a large
percentage of the market.
Reasonably predictable trends & destinations: Winter sun, Summer holiday
City break
The difference between consumer/leisure travel search and business travel
search is currently the greatest it has ever been.
Reactive content and understanding the impact of external variables, e.g. TV
shows.

9. Experience Forecasting
Search Engines are shifting from keywords to intent at an accelerating pace.
Experience forecasting is the notion that a user will imagine their potential future
usage of a product or service.
We need to first understand the intent and expectations of a user and then, through
our content, impact the user journey with key pieces of information to make the
imagination process easier.
Original Post: https://dantaylor.online/blog/what-is-user-experience-forecasting-in-
marketing/ (October 2020)

10. Trust *****
The battle for trust and authority is now more important than ever to
ranking in competitive spaces.

11. Trust & Sentiment
There’s only so many ways to describe a hotel in Spain.
As well as improving the overall “search” experience of users, Google and other search engines
are in a constant battle against result manipulation from SEOs.
Google has developed a fall back mechanism, brand recognition and reputation.
As a hotel, there are a number of locations and ways you can collect and display reviews.
Some have more weighting with Google than others, for example, Google Business Profiles.
I’m pretty sure everyone in this room has a mechanism in place to request users to leave
reviews on Google, or other third-party platforms.
Who has a process for monitoring, and reviewing?

12. Travel Reviews & SEO Impact
Whether they’re positive or negative, ignoring and
failing to acknowledge reviews can hurt your SEO.
Google has publicly confirmed that they prefer to
send traffic to responsive businesses.

13. Why GBP is so important
Google Business Profiles are/can be extremely prominent in the Map Pack and local search.
For hotel searches, they connect to Google paid features and hotel bookings direct from the
search results pages.
As Google displays them on a map, they also help users determine proximity to attractions and
other entities around them.
They rank for both brand, and non-brand search terms - and as they are a Google asset, then
can (depending on search type) outrank your own website and targeted landing pages.

17. “Shape” Reviews
When asking for reviews, don’t be afraid to
ask questions that help “shape” your
reviews and include key elements:
Keywords, amenities, etc…
Google actively scans reviews for these
entities, and makes them a searchable
feature within Google Business Profile
listings.
You can impact what you determine to be
important to you, and what’s important to
your target market.

18. AI for Travel
Using artificial intelligence to save time and enhance your efforts, and use
this to create a competitive advantage.

19. AI Shouldn’t Be Ignored Anymore
For travel, the potential for AI to disrupt and level playing fields is almost
unprecedented.
With correct usage, it should empower internal marketing teams to the point lower-
end market retainers (<£2,000 per month) need to adapt quickly, or they will
become obsolete.
AI generated content isn’t directly a violation of Google’s guidelines - it’s only a
negative if what you’re producing is of poor quality (referring back to section one of
this talk) and just designed to rank for specific keywords.
AI can be used to save time, create efficiencies, and with the right prompts, help
you create brand assets. For example…

20. Travel AI Use Cases
Complete content article drafts - Hypotenuse AI = ~$1.17 per 1500 word blog article, ~5
minutes to make. ~30 minutes to “edit and tidy up”.
Content structures - ChatGPT (free + paid options) - Generate article briefs and structures for
blog posts, pages, based on the MLM set.
Imagery - Midjourney (free + paid options) - with good prompt writing, you can incorporate
brand colours, locations, and assets into unique, high quality AI imagery in almost any style (it’s
not good at words yet)

21. A stylized, cartoonish zebras on the masi mara in the style of
Jack Kirby --ar 16:9

22. Photorealistic birdseye image of a man laying his head on a
pillow, resting on his arms, smiling --ar 16:9

23. This is a photo of a lady in sunglasses in an orange swimsuit, relaxing on a
poolside sun lounger, realistic style, cinematic, taken by slr, --q 2 --v 5 --s 250 -
-ar 16:9

24. Thanks!
Questions?
Email: dan@salt.agency
Hotel GBP Management Made
Easy.
Early Access Discounts Live:
mirador.solutions/early-access