The Importance of Mobile SEO for Hotels
Many people are now using their cell phones to look for places to stay, read ratings and reviews, and make reservations. As a fact, more than 50% of all hotel reservations today are made using mobile devices. If you do not have a good mobile version of the website for your hotel, you are most likely losing a good number of potential customers.
Mobile SEO will make your site responsive, fast-loading, and easy to navigate on the small screens of a phone or tablet. The implementation of Google’s mobile-first indexing has made having a mobile-friendly website no longer optional. It prefers a mobile version of a site in its rankings.
In this guide, we will consider the necessary measures that will help you enhance your hotel’s website for mobile users and facilitate high ranking of the site for mobile searches.
What is Mobile SEO and Why Does It Matter?
Mobile optimization means changing a website to be mobile-friendly. This implies that a mobile-optimized site should load fast, it should use a responsive design, and also ensure that the user experience on mobile devices is great.
Mobile SEO is important for hotels because:
- Reduces bounce rates.
- Due to the increasing number of mobile searches, Google has started indexing the mobile version of a site first and ranking it higher in the search results.
- More and more people book their hotel stays using their mobile devices.
If your hotel’s website is not mobile optimized, possible clients are bound to leave for the more accessible websites of competitors.
For more on optimizing your website for search engines, read On-Page SEO for Hotels: Optimizing for Maximum SEO Impact.
Mobile-First Indexing and Google’s Algorithm
In the year 2018, Google declared a mobile-first indexing policy. As per that policy, Google now also takes into account the mobile version of the website while ranking it. If the desktop version of your website is good but it is not mobile optimized then it negatively impacts the website ranking.
What Are the Implications Of ‘Mobile-First Indexing’ To Hotels?
- Mobile performance is key: In this case, Google will rank the site according to its mobile usability including structural aspects, speed, and navigation.
- Consistency is Key: There should be uniformity in the changes made in both the mobile site and the desktop version. Google will not rank such content that does not appear on the website’s mobile version.
With a better hotel mobile experience, it becomes easier to rank well for mobile search results leading to better booking performance.
Optimizing Your Hotel’s Website for Mobile Devices
There are a number of measures you can take to optimize your hotel website for mobile users and these steps will be useful not only to the visitors but also to enhance your position on the mobile search results.
- Use a Responsive Design
With a responsive design, the layout of your website is modified based on the different screen sizes. Because of that, it becomes easy to view and navigate the content on both mobile and desktop devices.
Advantages of Responsive Design:
- Enhances user experience for all devices.
- Made it easier for Google spiders to crawl and index the website.
- Decrease bounce rates by giving a good mobile experience.
Most website builders and CMS platforms like WordPress have responsive designs, so ensure your hotel’s website has one.
- Improve Page Load Speed
Mobile users are always in a rush, hence they want the websites to open quite fast. A site that opens slowly would lead to a high rate of bouncing back and loss of bookings. Google looks at the speed of pages as a ranking factor, especially for mobile search.
Tips to Improve Mobile Load Speed:
- Optimize Images: Large images can greatly slow down your website’s performance. You should always compress your images without losing quality.
- Reduce Redirect: Every redirect that goes through adds extra time to the overall loading Reduce the redirects on your mobile site to raise the page loading speed.
- Utilize a CDN: A content delivery network simply called a CDN ensures that the content of your website is placed on different servers so that the load time is reduced for those users who are located further away from the main server.
Learn more about optimizing your website’s technical performance in Technical SEO Tips to Improve Your Hotel Website’s Performance.
Simplifying Navigation and Booking for Mobile Users
In today’s world, especially in the case of booking a hotel, a mobile user will tend to look for the information most quickly and effortlessly. In the case of navigation or the process of booking a room if your website seems very complicated then you may lose potential customers.
How to Simplify Mobile Navigation:
- Use a Sticky Navigation Bar: As the users scroll down the content and reach the bottom part a sticky navigation bar must remain at the top of the screen. This makes it easier for them to access important pages like your room listings or booking page.
- Reduce Pop-Ups: Pop-ups are mainly suitable for desktops. But for mobile users, they can be very distracting. Thus, it is advisable to reduce pop-ups or make it easy to close on mobile devices.
- Create Clear Call-to-Actions: Call-to-Actions buttons like “Book Now” and “Check Availability” should not just be visible but also be of the proper size so that users can click on them easily.
Streamlining the Mobile Booking Process:
Make the booking process simple and quick for mobile users. Use the following tips to streamline the booking experience:
- Reduce the Number of Form Fields: Request only the information required to complete a reservation, such as name, email address, and payment information.
- Allow booking without an account: Enable guests to make a booking without the need to first create an account to ease the booking friction.
- Add mobile payment methods: Allow users to complete their bookings quickly with the use of mobile payments such as Apple Pay or Google Pay.
Voice Search and Mobile SEO
Virtual assistants such as Siri and Google Assistant become more popular. The trend of voice searches for hotel check-ins especially while traveling is increasing among most users. Generally, voice searches are used for localized searches such as “hotels near me” or “the best luxury hotel in [city].”
Optimizing for Voice Search:
- Target Long-Tail Keywords: Usually voice searches are lengthy and sound more like conversations than simple text. Consider including long-tail keywords that mimic how people speak, such as “best family-friendly hotel in [city].”
- Focus on Local SEO: As most of the voice searches are done in local areas, it is important that you also focus on Local SEO of the website. Make sure to add your city, area, and relevant things nearby in the content and the meta tags.
- Use Structured Data: Apply structured data also known as schema markup to enhance the information search engines have about your hotel. This will also assist in boosting your chances of ranking on voice search for your website.
For more on local optimization, see Local SEO for Hotels: How to Rank High in Your Area.
Mobile-Specific SEO Strategies
Aside from responsive design and reducing page load times, there are many other mobile optimization techniques that can help increase your rankings in mobile search engines.
- Implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) serves as a mobile page loading speed-increasing technology that uses a simplified version of HTML. Google gives priority to AMP pages in their mobile searches which can increase the visibility of your hotel to many customers.
- Use Mobile-Friendly Pop-Ups
In cases where users wish to gain email sign-ups or advertise offers with popups, ensure that such popups are friendly to mobile devices. Google does not encourage the use of pop-ups that cover entire mobile screens such that the user is forced to interact with them. Keep them small, easy to remove, and relevant to the user.
- Create Mobile-Specific Content
Some content is better presented on a mobile device than on a desktop. For instance, short blogs, videos, and certain types of static content such as virtual tours are more likely to be viewed on a mobile gadget. Develop ideas for content that’s specifically for mobile users.
For more ideas on creating engaging content, check out How to Use Content Marketing to Attract More Guests to Your Hotel.
Conclusion
Nowadays, mobile optimization of your hotel website has become a necessity rather than an option. With everything from responsive design to faster loading, simplified navigation, and voice search optimization, it has come to the point that following all these mobile SEO best practices will help you get more bookings as well as rank better in search results.
Next Steps:
- Internal Links Recap:
- Learn more about optimizing your website’s technical performance in Technical SEO Tips to Improve Your Hotel Website’s Performance.
- For ideas on creating mobile-specific content, see How to Use Content Marketing to Attract More Guests to Your Hotel.
- Want to boost your local search visibility? Read Local SEO for Hotels: How to Rank High in Your Area.
Internal Linking Recap:
- Link to On-Page SEO for Hotels for more on mobile optimization.
- Link to Content Marketing for Hotels for mobile-specific content strategies.
- Link to Technical SEO Tips for Hotels for technical mobile optimizations.