Search Marketing for Hotels: Paid Placement or Natural Optimization?

Industry studies show that search engines account for the large majority of traffic to most hotel websites.  Of course, this is hardly surprising.  Search engines are the most popular way for internet users to find information.

With this in mind, how can you position your hotel to capture a larger share of search engine traffic?  There are two broad approaches to search engine marketing (SEM), which I’ll explain in this post.

1. Natural (Organic) Optimization

All search engines will include your hotel website somewhere in their results pages – it’s just a question of how far from the top.  The natural approach to ranking high involves optimizing your website, and getting other popular sites to link to you.

The advantages of organic optimization:

• Getting visitors from natural searches is totally free for you
• The people coming from search engines will be actively looking for you
• A higher placement conveys authority for the term searched for

The disadvantages of organic optimization:

• It can take a while to reach the top for your core keywords
• In some markets, the competition can be very intense (lengthening this time even more)

2. Paid Placement

It is possible to pay to appear in search engine result pages.  Usually, this is accomplished by using pay-per-click services such as Google AdWords.

The advantages of paid placement:

• It’s possible to instantly appear at the top of search results
• It can potentially be a very cost-effective way to attract guests (usually under $1 for each visitor)
• The ability to measure campaign success (more than any other advertising medium)

The disadvantages of paid placement:

• Your campaign can cost a relatively large amount (depending on the strategy you use)
• Ongoing management of your campaign is needed

In future posts, I’ll discuss in greater detail how to design and launch a campaign using both of these types of search engine marketing.  Stay tuned!

Let me ask you this: Which search marketing strategy does your hotel focus on?