Keyword research is the foundation of any search marketing campaign: paid or organic. I’ve spent some time discussing the benefits and practical uses of search marketing, so now I’d like to go back to the basics and show you how to actually do the keyword research.
Your goal is to find a list of terms that is:
1) Relevant to your hotel
2) Popular with searchers (potential guests)
3) Obtainable in your competitive space
In my experience, the best way to do this is with a 2-step approach.
Begin with brainstorming. As Alicia wrote earlier this week, you want to get everyone involved: from your General Manager to your front desk staff. What words describe your hotel? your guests? your experience? Come up with as many terms as you can.
Next, get technical. Use keyword research tools to determine which terms are popular and how competitive the market is for them. In a future post, I’ll share the best keyword research tools, but to begin try using Google’s free keyword tool.
Enter your keywords into the box, and click the button to get suggestions. Using the controls, you can sort by search volume (popularity) and how strong the competition (in PPC) is.
Example of Google keyword search
You will need this information in the future, so open up a spreadsheet where you can save your research. Organize the terms by categories – “keyword themes.” Under each theme, put your longer, 2-4+ word phrases. In this example, if “San Francisco Hotel” is one of our themes, we would place longer phrases underneath it:
Example of keyword theme spreadsheet
The final result will be very useful in your search marketing campaign. For organic optimization, use one keyword theme for each page. For paid search marketing, you’ll want to create a new ad group for each theme.
Related posts:
- Here’s a quick, cheap way to do marketing research (Plus: New ebook coming soon)
- Traits of an effective hotel e-marketer
- Bill Marriott: An example of effective hotel blogging
- Should you target (loosely) related keywords?
- SEO for Hotel Websites – Best Practices for (re)Starting Right
Need More Hotel Marketing Ideas?
Our new Savvy Hoteliers Guide to Hotel Marketing Ideas contains hundreds of tested tactics that work.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Josiah,
Thanks for your great blog – big fan. I thought I would add another great tip to this post which I’ve got from experience for uncovering the most effective keywords – especially in more niche markets.
Begin by setting up an adwords account and test your market for a week. By paying for placement you can not only see which keywords have the most impressions per day, but you can also find out which ones are the most effective at selling your bed bank. It helps you focus the most energy on the most effective keywords.
Duncan, great idea for performing some real market research. Thanks for sharing.