Is Your Hotel Website Responsive to Meet Google Requirements and Boost SEO?

When Google talks, hotel marketers need to listen, especially when it comes to responsive website design. With mobile traffic gaining market share month after month, hotels need to

ensure their desktop versions of their websites are optimized for smaller screens and deliver fast loading times. Lodging Interactive, the interactive and social media marketing agency exclusively servicing the hospitality industry and winner of numerous prestigious awards for its website design services, says the more responsive a hotel website, the higher its SEO rankings on Google, and the easier it will be to maintain.

“SEO is a core component of any business’ digital marketing strategy, and as such Google has gone so far as to call responsive web design an industry best practice,” said DJ Vallauri, Lodging Interactive Founder and President. “For hotels, this means keeping content on one website and one URL, making it much easier for travelers to share, interact with, and link to than content that lives on a separate mobile site. Some hotels have learned quickly that trying to build separate sites for mobile and tablet environments  is exhaustive for staff, and it presents potential duplicate content issues with Google which negatively effects organic search engine results.”

Responsive websites turn visitors into customers. According to a study conducted by Sterling Research and SmithGeiger for Google:

· 96% of consumers say they’ve encountered sites that were clearly not designed for mobile devices

· 75% of users prefer a mobile-friendly site

· 67% of users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site

· 61% of consumers say that they’d quickly move onto another site if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site.

· 52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company

· 50% of people said that even if they like a business, they will use them less often if the website isn’t mobile-friendly

· 48% of users say they feel frustrated and annoyed when they get to a site that’s not mobile-friendly
and if the site didn’t work well on their smartphones, it made them feel like the company didn’t care about their business
“This research confirms that mobile users actively seek out and prefer to engage with mobile-friendly, responsive sites,” Vallauri said. “Travelers attitudes about your hotel can quickly and easily be shaped by mobile site experiences. Having a great mobile site is no longer just about making a few reservations; it’s become a critical component of building a strong brand image, nurturing customer loyalty, and making the hotel’s mobile strategy work for the property and the brand.”

Source:-Lodging Interactive