Reputation and Digital Transformation: The new era of SEO
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Reputation and Digital Transformation: The new era of SEO
COVID-19 has disrupted small and large hotels all over the world. Hotels and brands, in general, had to make dramatic changes to their daily operations.
Health, safety, and people wellbeing’s have now become part of your hotel's reputation.
Contactless and Touchless
As people all over the world had to adapt to a new reality at warp speed new demands like contactless and touchless became the new reality.
As a traditional service provider, the hotel industry was anything but contactless and touchless.
For an industry where their bread and butter was working for the people, how should it adapt to all the challenges that came as a result of COVID-19?
COVID-19 effects
One of the effects of the COVID-19 has been a dramatic change in conditions and character of people in general.
People all over the world got confined to their homes. And on Social Media, we saw a growth in people sharing their new travel patterns from one room to another room in their homes.
We started to experience an urgent need for information. And people flocked to their mobile devices to seek out information and new alternative experiences.
Reimagine experiences
What happened was that people started to reimagine their experiences and learned they were in control of their own experiences.
Traditionally in the past people went through a somewhat predictable journey that took them through dreaming, planning, booking, and experiencing moments.
As hoteliers, we had tools and strategies in place that would help hotels with SEO and marketing campaigns toward dreaming, planning, and booking moments.
The experienced moment became a reflection of the reputation of your hotel.
Experience journey
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned a predictable journey into an unpredictable experience journey.
All dreaming, planning, booking, and experience moments became digital during the COVID-19.
People discovered they could now control all elements of their experience. And they started to require brands to work with them providing a digital experience throughout all micro-moments of their new journey.
Social media and mobile devices have now become powerful allies helping people understand innovation-seeking solutions and alternatives that enhance every micro-moment of their experience.
Dreaming, planning, booking, and experiencing moments are now owned by the experience journey.
Reputation and SEO
Traditional SEO has focused on the processes of improving your hotel's website for increased visibility when people search for related products or services.
The better visibility your hotel website had in search results, the more likely you were to garner attention and attract new and existing customers to your hotel.
And traditional SEO has built on two primary principles; being found and being seen.
To be found meant someone would discover or come across your hotel's website while searching for a dedicated product or service.
Being seen meant they stopped and looked at your website link and description. Through this observation, they became aware of your hotel.
Depending on how much this observation was aligned with their dreaming and planning moment would determine if it meets their intent of booking.
When this alignment is met the next step typically takes a potential customer to research the reputation of the hotel.
Through reputation, the potential customer relies on recognition by other people.
As we see for hotels there has always been a connection between reputation and SEO.
Data has shown us that over 80% of customers frequently or always read reviews before making a hotel booking. And they can read between 6-12 reviews before an educated decision is made.
Search Engine Optimization
Today people have 100% control of their experience and they now require brands to work with them, not just for them.
As a hotel today you have to focus on value innovation that requires differentiation and cost-effective alternatives that create leaps in value for the customer.
Brands and individuals have for many years focused on producing content and stories around short-tail or long-tail keywords.
Short-tail keywords have been 1-3 words that cover a broad topic, while long-tail keywords are more than 3 words and cover more specific topics.
Short-tail keywords traditionally have a higher search volume than long-tail keywords.
And we have seen with short-tail keywords the competition is often very high, and it can become very costly for many hotels to get a spot on the first page of the search engines.
Long-tail keywords are key phrases with less search volume but higher conversion value as they are more specific.
领英推荐
Search Engine Optimization has been the art of utilizing short-tail and long-tail keywords to position your hotel in front of your ideal customer.?
Search Experience Optimization
With new contactless and touchless requirements, how should hotels shape the future of hospitality?
Let’s just get it straight – digital transformations were a trend before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. COVID-19 triggered a digital tsunami among people all over the world.
Digital transformation was no longer just a buzzword, but it became urgent for brands to adopt new customer demands and needs.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people discovered and got skilled in new alternative ways to communicate and seek out information.
And through a new unexpected learning curve, people discovered that digital communication was putting them in control of new journeys that were unfolding in front of them daily.
People had discovered that they had to be found and seen, and brands had to work with them to earn their business.
Traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helped your hotel be found and seen. Today this has shifted and it has become more important what you are doing in collaboration with your hotel's community.
Today hotels have to learn Search Experience Optimization. Search Experience Optimization starts with building relationships and making friends first.
And hotels have to work toward building a community of people. When these people talk about you that is when Google will see your signals, and generate more traffic to your hotel's website.
Your hotel's website should become an extension of the communication with your community, and you will naturally experience an increase in direct booking.
Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is designed to help hotels with Search Experience Optimization.
It is also designed to help hotels get a better understanding of all the touchpoints during the customer's experience journey.
GA4 isn’t fragmented by platform or organized into independent sessions but looks at an event-based measurement model.
Partnerships
The future of your hotel's reputation and search experience optimization lies in new innovative experience partnerships.
Search Experience Optimization is all about value innovation that will help your hotels deliver exponential value through differentiation and cost-effective alternatives.
For many hotels traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimizations) and customer acquisition strategies have been a costly battle.
Search Experience Optimization opens a new digital front door for hotels where they can take ownership of their content in collaboration with their community.
Do you want your hotel to be seen and found? Start to create exponential?value, it’s imperative to first create an exponential?(growth) mindset. The incremental (fixed) mindset focuses on making something?better, while the exponential (growth) mindset focuses on creating something?different. Incremental is satisfied with 10%. Exponential is out for 10X!!
Start creating exponential value with your hotel's community and start to revolutionize your hotel's Search Experience Optimization and reputation.
Invest in people and your community and they will not only make sure your hotel is found and seen but also help you earn more direct bookings.
Digital transformation is a people and technology transformation. People transformation will help your hotel with a smarter and more effective technology transformation.
Are Morch ?is a digital transformation coach helping hotels open their digital front door, reimagine their processes and culture, and transform experiences in a fast-paced world!
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