Effective Link-Building Strategies for the Hospitality Industry

The hospitality industry is one of the most competitive industries in the world. With so much competition, it can be hard to stand out or differentiate yourself from the rest of the crowd. Nowhere else is this more true than on the web? However, there are certain techniques and strategies that you can employ to help yourself (and your website) become more visible. One way to do this is to rank high for important keywords to your niche in Google searches. The most effective way to achieve this goal is by executing effective link-building strategies and practices.

Choosing the Right Keywords

The first thing to consider when beginning a link-building strategy for your hospitality business is which keywords are important for your niche and which keywords you should target. Choosing the right keywords is important because the ultimate goal of link building is to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for these specific keywords. There are a few different factors that should go into this decision.

First, you should brainstorm and figure out which keywords are important to your niche. For example, for a hotel in Florida, it may be “Florida hotel rooms,” or for an Italian restaurant, it may be “best Italian restaurant.” Notice that the keywords are specific to each company rather than general keywords such as “hotel rooms” or “restaurant” because these keywords are usually easier to rank for and will drive more quality traffic to your site.

Another thing to consider is what your competitors are ranking for. Take some time to research this by typing different keywords into Google and seeing where your competitors rank each one. This will help you decide which keywords you need to rank higher for and be more competitive with.

After brainstorming and researching your competitor’s keywords, you should have a pretty good idea of what keywords you want to rank for. If you still need more ideas or want to see how competitive your chosen keywords are, you can use this helpful and free Google tool.

Target Sites in your Niche

Another critical aspect of successful link building is choosing the right sites to guest post on and link to. This is also important as it will determine how helpful or potentially harmful your links will be in improving your rank on the SERPs.

It is important to target websites that are relevant to your niche and the keywords you are trying to rank for. To use the Italian restaurant example again, you would ideally target sites that focus primarily on Italian food, provide Italian recipes, etc. The more relevant the site is to your niche and keywords, the more powerful the link you establish will be.

While finding relevant niche sites can be very beneficial to your link-building cause, it is important to be aware that there are also sites that may not be so helpful. Some sites, if linked to, can actually be detrimental to your link-building project.

This is because these sites are “spammy” and may be associated with some less-than-reputable sites, which Google does not like. In regards to link building, if Google doesn’t like it, then you also don’t like it, and therefore, you should avoid these sites. An easy way to detect one of these sites is by skimming a few articles posted and examining the writing. You should avoid the website if it is incoherent or doesn’t make sense.

Choosing the right keywords and the suitable sites to place links with those keywords on are two of the most critical factors in a successful link-building strategy. If you keep the information mentioned here in mind, you should be able to effectively build links to improve your ranking in the Google SERPs. Link building is a helpful strategy for any business, but it can be especially effective in the hospitality industry, where the competition is fierce.

Author Bio: This post was contributed by Andrew Dennis. Andrew is a writer for the relevancy-first link-building company Page One Power. For more helpful articles regarding link building, check out the Page One Power Blog.