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Welcome to our international SEO and SEM guide for Hotels! If you are a hotel owner or manager, and are
interested in luring those foreign guests, we’ve got some valuable tips for you.
To start let’s consider competition: according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, there are nearly 5
million guest rooms and over 50,000 lodging properties in the United States alone. The competition is fierce … and
without an articulated international SEO/SEM strategy, a hotel could be at a serious competitive disadvantage.
According to travel news site Skift, the most popular U.S. destinations for international travelers Miami, Los
Angeles and Orlando welcome hundreds of thousands of tourists a year, with hotels vying for their attention in
every possible way. Whether you own or manage a boutique city center hotel in the heart of a bustling metropolis
or have a coastal accommodation that overlooks the sea, international SEM & SEO can help you boost occupancy
rates, and increase repeat bookings.
Understanding International SEO & SEM is by all means not easy, but here are some basics to start with:
First Step: Define and Target Your Foreign Audience:
First, you’ll need to determine which customers you want to attract. If you own or manage a hotel in an
international city like New York City or Washington DC, for example, it’s likely that a foreign market is important to
you. And because you need the right bait to catch the right fish, narrowing your audience and defining what class
of traveler you want to target, from what country, city, language, will make things easier. The more narrow your
target, the easier it is to run paid advertising and targeted SEO campaigns.
Languagebased targeting is really important. Google AdWords lets you do this without breaking a sweat. With
AdWords you can create ads in a variety of languages, targeting a variety of locations. An ad targeting Russia,
would ideally be in the Russian language, and although you might not need to translate your entire site into
Russian, it might be good to create a Russian Landing Page to which your ads are directed to.
Expert Tip: Be sure to never use automated translated software to translate your ad copy (or any content on your
website for that matter). These tools tend to be inaccurate and Google might penalize your site’s rankings for
creating automated content which goes against their guidelines.
Focus on International Search Engines
With a domestic U.S. SEO campaign, you’ll likely focus on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. When it
comes to international SEO, things can get a little bit more complicated. If you want to increase the number of
international travelers that click on your website, you’ll need to do your research and find the search engines that
are most frequently used by the countries you are trying to target.
Here are a few examples, courtesy of SEMRush:
+ Yahoo Japan and Mixi are two popular search engines in Japan
+ Renren and Baidu are frequently used in China
+ Naver is the leading Search Engine in South Korea
+ Yandex is a popular search engine in Russia
+ Eniro in Sweden
+ Orange in France
Have a look online and find out which sites are most commonly used by the countries and international guests you
are trying to attract. The results might surprise you! Each of these international search engines have their own
advertising platforms, you will need to hire a local who is proficient with the language and culture to help you
navigate through these platforms.
You can can also use Google AdWords to target the different country coded Google engines, ie Google.com.mx (
for Mexico), and Googe.fr (for France) through any given PPC campaign.
If you want to rank organically in one or multiple localized versions of Google Search, be sure to use a country
coded Top Level Domain (read more about this below), in this case you will have to build a new website for the
specific country that you want to target.
Expert Tip: Many sites try to target a foreign country where the same language is spoken by duplicating their
content and creating two sites with different ccTLD’s. For example: www.hotelmirage.com a US based hotel,
might duplicate the whole website’s content in their new site www.hotelmirage.ca that targets Canada. The
language variations between the two countries are minimal, so duplicating most of the content would make sense,
however duplicate content goes strongly against Google’s developers guidelines and it’s not a recommended best
practice. This tactic would very likely hurt both sites’ SEO and rankings. The domain structures of this mock hotel
is appropriate, but the content in both sites should be fully differentiated and original.
Best Practices for Using ccTLD’s (Country Coded Top Level Domains)
Have you ever noticed that a lot of media and television related websites use a “.tv” structure at the end of their
domain?
As an example: https://www.ufc.tv/ might rank high in Google Search U.S. because it is a highly authoritative
media company, however they have not implemented best practices in their domain sructure. The ccTLD of “.tv”
was not created for the intent of media related websites, rather it’s a search engine country code specific for the
country of Tuvalu (a small islandnation in Polynesia).
Country coded TLD’s are intended to signal country locations (not industry verticals). If you ever travel to Tuvalu
and search for stuff on Google, you will get a lot of media related websites … so as lesson here, if you are media
company, avoid using the .tv domain extension!
So you’re probably familiar with some mayor cc TLD’s such as .uk for England, .fr for France, .mx for Mexico .br
for Brazil and so on. As an example, the site www.radisson.com.mx, has the “mx” ccTLD: therefore, this signals
that this particular site is targeting users in Mexico. For reference, here’s a complete list of all ccTLD’s. Please
note that your hotel property does not need to be located in the country of your targeted ccTLD. You can be NYC
based hotel with a separate website targeting the UK with a .uk ccTLD.
If you are thinking of targeting a new country, a completely new website needs to be developed, and preferably
hosted in the target country. The download speed of a website is an important ranking factor for search engines,
the faster a website loads, the higher it’s likely to rank on a search engine results pages (SERPS). For this reason,
hosting locally for your new country coded website will surely improve your SEO.
When creating a new website that targets a new country, just be sure to deliver the content of your new site in the
language that is most commonly used in that country. In the www.radisson.com.mx example, you’ll notice that the
content of that site is of course in Spanish as it is targeting Mexico.
Also important to consider is that ccTLD’s work well with foreign search engines. Yandex in Russia, Naver in S.
Korea, and Baidu in China — will prioritize sites that use their country coded domains when they index their search
results.
If you do develop a new site that is intended to target a foreign country, hiring a local team who is proficient in the
language and culture of the country that you are targeting is key to being successful. If you have considerable
resources, you might also want to purchase several ccTLDs to increase your search rankings around the world,
this means that you have to build a separate websites for each and hire a local team for each, so be sure to
consider your time and resources before embarking on such a large project.
Aside from local knowledge, you will also need to hire professional marketers that are knowledgeable in
international SEO and SEM. As a way to reduce this overhead, you may outsource the work to a professional
digital marketing agency who is fully adept in targeting international audiences. Here at Z Networks Group we
have helped develop and manage various hotel sites that target foreign audiences through multiple SEO and SEM
activities, we’ve done it before and can do it again for you.
Expert Tip: Some hotels target foreign countries creating webpages sourced from subdomains (fr.hotel-
mirage.com) or subdirectories (hotelmirage.com/fr). These two tactics are good, but according to many
international SEO experts, a country coded Top Level Domain signals more powerfully to search engines than
these two methods. Hence it’s best to develop a new site with implemented ccTLD’s.
Engage in International Link Building
Just like you would with regular or local SEO, you’ll need to include offpage elements to your website that will
signal to foreign search engines. Link building can help you here: focus on incorporating internal links into your
pages from the countries you are trying to target, and similarly focus on building external links that point to your
site that are sourced from the location/language that you are targeting.
Trying to attract visitors from Japan to your Philadelphia hotel? Try to find linkbuilding opportunities from high
authority Japanese sites. Although different search engines use different algorithms when indexing your site, the
fundamental concepts are pretty much the same across the board.
Expert tip: When transitioning into an international strategy, be sure to start with one country first, and then
consider a second after, this will simplify your process and budget.
International SEO and SEM by all means is not easy, the broader your audience the more complicated it becomes.
These were just some of the main tactics that a hotel can implement, but there is so much more to it.
But why stress about it? Let us offer you a helping hand. By partnering with us we can help you target your desired
audience regardless of location. For more information on the technical aspects of international SEO and SEM, give
us a call at Z Networks Group: 7862701736. Our initial project feasibility assessment is free.
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