In this digital age, being up to date with the latest online tools is essential for any business. For hotels and B&Bs, it’s no different. Each year, more and more people are turning to online methods for travel bookings and it’s estimated that 700 million people will be booking their hotel rooms online by 2023.
While there are many avenues to help improve your online presence, today we will be focusing on the tools that Google provides.
As of 2021, Google boasts a huge 91.45% of search engine market share. This total dominance of the search engine landscape makes it incredibly important for businesses to focus much of their effort towards Google and its tools.
Explore this guide by using the links below to jump to a certain section.
Google My Business (previously known as Google Local and Google Places) is a free tool created by Google that allows businesses to manage their online presence which can be found in Google search results and on Google Maps.
Think of it as a business directory, but with many more advantages to help you acquire new customers. You’ve more than likely come across businesses utilising Google My Business without realising.
Whether you like it or not, your B&B will more than likely get listed on Google. Anybody can register your business with Google and it of course makes sense that you, the owner, will be in charge of your Google My Business profile to ensure all the listing details are correct and up to date.
There are a number of ways potential customers can interact with your Google My Business profile, including the knowledge panel, the local pack and Google Maps.
Google My Business will be a first impression of your business to many people. We all know how important good first impressions are so making sure your profile is fully optimised will go a long way to securing new customers.
Google My Business enables you to get important information across to new customers quickly. Such information as opening hours, address, description, amenities, accessibility and health and safety.
Google My Business is ever-evolving. New features are being added periodically to help you reach the right customers with the right information.
In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing and businesses were left some-what stranded. But with the help of Google My Business, you were able to stay connected during these unprecedented times by letting customers know of any changes that may have resulted because of the pandemic.
A lot of creativity has been employed to keep businesses afloat during Covid-19. For example, some B&Bs have been using their kitchen resources to offer take-away meals to help keep the business going. Using Google My Business will certainly be a tool to help share this message and change of service.
Along with posting updates about your business, you can upload and share photos and videos to help customers get acquainted with your hotel.
“Use a video to tell the story of your business and what makes it unique” says the description within Google My Business.
Many people respond well to visual stimulation and what better way to help share what your hotel is all about than with a video tour or a 360-degree photograph.
Completing these sections will help you solidify your brand and encourage people to visit your hotel.
Reviews are also a huge part of Google My Business. Anybody can leave a review for your business and it’s highly encouraged that you respond to all reviews, good or bad.
For some people, reviews are everything and one bad review can have a hugely negative effect on a business. You can learn more about how to respond to reviews on our blog.
Let’s take a look at the three sections of Google My Business I mentioned earlier where customers may find you while searching the web.
A knowledge panel can be triggered when searching for a specific business or person. This panel will display in the top right (on desktop pages) or towards the top of the search result if using mobile.
As you can see, a huge amount of information is listed within this panel and all of this is without the user needing to click through to any links.
Potential customers can learn a lot about your B&B just from the knowledge panel alone, so making sure information is up-to-date and enticing is paramount.
Depending on the business type the knowledge panel may look different. Hotels have the option for room availability, with 3rd-party websites showing their prices for your rooms.
Hotel amenities such as Free-Wifi and parking can also be shown which can be a big boost in potentially securing a new patron.
Once you’ve become the verified owner of your particular Google Knowledge Panel listing (through Google My Business), it’s up to you to submit suggestions to Google to update the listing as and when required.
Monitoring your knowledge panel is of great importance. With Knowledge Panels comes many opportunities for user-generated content such as images, reviews and Q&A’s. Negative narratives can spiral out of control if you’re not monitoring your panel accordingly.
In many cases, the Google Knowledge Panel represents your businesses’ first impression. Fail with this and you may instantly lose a potential customer. Ace this test and you’ll find the knowledge panel to become a great source of business for your B&B / Hotel.
The Google Local Teaser Pack also appears on the top of search results (just like the Google Knowledge Panel), but for more generalised local searches. Here is an example of what it looks like.
Currently, four hotels are displayed here with a plethora of information in such a small place. Get this wrong and you’ll drive customers away. This information is all taken from Google My Business and the Google Hotel Ads tool (more about that later).
Everyone is competing in the same space, so mentioning all your hotel amenities and perks will go a long way to acquiring new customers.
The image above was shown for the simple Google search of “stratford london hotels”. Had I searched more specifically for “moxy london stratford”, their knowledge panel would have displayed instead.
“Near me” Google searches have been increasing exponentially over the years with more and more people expecting relevant and easy to digest information from one simple local search. Being part of that mix with your B&B / Hotel is not only wise, it’s necessary in today's busy lifestyle.
For those users wanting even more information on the surrounding area, Google Maps is the place to go.
Every hotel and B&B using Google My Business will be displayed in a local search with prices for rooms readily available to compare at just a glance if they have gone through the hotels onboarding guide.
The date, duration, amount of people in your party and price per night can all be changed in an instant and with those changes, the map will repopulate itself with hotels and B&Bs that can accommodate the user.
It’s clear to see why Google My Business is so popular within the hotel industry. While many of the business listings on the sidebar are down to proximity of the user at the time, ranking factors also help distinguish the best from the rest. This is why a fully optimised Google My Business listing is essential to help you reach more people.
Without a Google My Business listing, your B&B / Hotel won’t appear on Google Maps or any local teaser packs.
People use Google to search for directions, contact information, reviews and more. You also run the risk of a business listing for your own hotel being populated by someone not affiliated with you and the information may be incorrect.
Google My Business is a free service with no hidden costs. You will have access to every single tool as everyone else. Whether you’re a small independent B&B or a large global chain, the features you have access to are the same as your competitors. Take advantage of these tools and you’ll be able to reap the rewards.
Search Console is another free tool offered by Google which will help you understand how your website is performing organically (non-paid traffic) on Google Search and what you can do to help improve your position on the page within the heavily competitive landscape.
Once you’ve gone through the process of setting up your account and verifying that you are the owner of your website, you’ll have access to all the tools that Google Search Console has to offer. The process to verify you are the owner of the website, will likely need the help of your website developer. As it requires adding some code to your website or updating your domain name, both of which could be confusing if you are not technical.
Let’s take a look at these tools and what they can do for you.
Search Console is very data-driven. You’ll be analysing data and assessing the best route to take with all that data in mind.
The performance tab has a whole host of information displayed. Here you will see such data as what keywords your website ranks for (Where it appears on the page) in Google Search and which pages are getting the most clicks and impressions. We’ll explain about clicks and impressions later in this section.
Bear in mind that the data available will only be shown from the moment you set up and verify your account. The older your search console account, the more data you’ll have at your disposal.
Older versions of Google Search Console only allowed you to view the last 90 days of data. But with recent versions, you can now see 16 months of data.
At a glance, you can clearly start to see trends within your website's performances. “Queries”, “Pages”, “Countries”, “Devices” and “Search Appearance” are all easily accessible from this tab.
Each query, page, device or rich snippet is accompanied by its “impressions”, “clicks”, “average CTR” (click-through rate) and “average position”. But what does this all mean? We’ll explain each of these below.
The index coverage tab is more technical than the previous one and holds some very important information.
What you will find here is how many pages are indexed by Google since its last update, how many pages aren’t indexed and how many errors and warnings have been found which are causing Google problems while indexing your pages.
A page gets indexed by Google if it has been visited by the Google crawler, analysed for its content and meaning and then stored in the Google index. Successful completion of this action then allows the indexed page to be shown within Google Search Results.
In the above image, you can see that a trend graph is shown to display the history of your errors, valid and excluded pages.
You should attempt to fix errors as quickly as possible as this can have a huge impact on your website and for its users.
Regular checks of this section should be undertaken, but you should receive a notification by email to let you know if new errors have popped up.
The trend graph is a good indication of issues or if Google is doing well at finding new content that you’re adding to your site.
Should you be adding new content to your website but the amount of indexed pages isn’t increasing, you may have a problem. Common issues that may be blocking Google from indexing new pages are changes to your robots.txt or your web server may be down.
The URL inspection tool allows you to analyze specific web pages (URLs) individually. If you’ve just published a new webpage on your hotel’s website explaining new improvements that your guests can enjoy, you can submit the URL to signal to Google to go ahead and crawl the page.
Google will automatically crawl your website but this tool allows you to get the jump start on important new pieces of content that you’ve published.
You can also compare the differences between Google’s indexed version of your page and the current ‘live’ version of your page. Big sweeping changes to a URL may require Google to re-index your page and you can perform a ‘live test’ to see whether this needs to happen.
Possible reasons to ‘live test’ a URL and potentially request a fresh index:
If you’re looking to improve how your site performs, look no further than the enhancement tab. This tab boasts a huge amount of tools that will provide you insight into such things as core web vital and mobile usability.
Introduced in May 2020 in place of the Speed Report, Core Web Vitals lets you know of any issues regarding loading (how fast your web page loads), interactivity and visual stability of your site.
URLs that are listed as poor should be tackled first and the tool will allow you to resubmit within Google Search Console to see if Google will accept the fix you’ve applied.
This report is quite self-explanatory and will give you the opportunity to troubleshoot any design and development issues you may have that spring up for mobile users, people browsing your website using a mobile device (i.e. iPhone, iPad etc...).
70% of last-minute hotel bookings are made on mobile devices (Intelity.com), so having a fully functional website for mobile users is very important.
Common errors mobile users may come across:
A review snippet is described as a short excerpt of an existing review or rating on your website (usually the combined scores from many reviewers). The review is usually taken from the reviews from your Google My Business page or another trusted review source such as TrustPilot or Feefo.
The review snippets tab will allow you to monitor errors, warnings and valid pages for markup. Many hotels can live and die by its reviews and displaying them correctly can bring in new patrons.
As with other sections within the “Enhancement” tabs, you can let Google know you’ve attempted to fix a particular issue and trigger them to go ahead and validate that fix.
Links are still very important in the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). The links section shows you how many links are pointing to you from other sites, how many internal links (links that connect pages on the same website) you have and where they point to and what your top linking anchor text (the clickable text in a hyperlink) is.
Links are a source of validity on the internet. Generally speaking, the more links a page has, the more validity a page is given. That being said, the higher quality a link is, the better. There is much debate surrounding what constitutes a high-quality link, but in short, it’s a link that comes from a domain with high authority and is well trusted, such as https://www.bbc.co.uk.
Link building is a practice of acquiring links to your website (specific pages) in order to boost your domains ranking. This section of Search Console can help you identify if your efforts of link building have been a success or not at acquiring the desired high-quality links.
The Manual Actions tab is the scariest tab to view as anything within here will notify you that your website has been penalised by Google.
Ultimately, you want to see nothing here other than “No Issues Detected”.
There are a number of manual actions which can be applied to your website. Here are a few instances which can occur.
Keyword Planner is another free tool available to Google account users which helps you research keywords for your search campaigns (more on search campaigns later).
Using Keyword Planner in conjunction with your Google Ads and Hotel Ads strategy is a great way to ensure you’re targeting the very best keywords to help you generate more clicks and conversions.
This keyword research can be vital to the success of your Google search ads and is a good starting point to lay the groundwork for your campaigns.
It’s important to note that the success of an ad campaign is not absolute after using Keyword Planner. It’s there to provide insight and discovery of new keywords but performance depends on a variety of factors such as your bid, product, customer behaviour and competition within your industry.
Not only can you use this keyword research for search campaigns, but you can also apply the knowledge you’ve gained by integrating that into your website’s landing pages.
Not every customer searching for hotels and B&Bs are in the same place on their booking journey. Some may just be starting the research phase, using broad search terms such as “london B&Bs”, while others may be further along in their journey using long tail keywords such as “victoria park london hotel with swimming pool”.
Competition for broad keywords is fierce and generally more expensive due to the number of searches these keywords generate. The more competition a keyword has, the pricier it will be. Finding those long tail keywords with a relatively high search rate and low competition is the key to a healthy Google Adwords account.
Google Ads (originally called Google Adwords until the name change in 2018) is a paid advertising platform where you bid on specific keywords in an effort to reach the top of the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
Over 25% of people click on the first organic result on a Google search. However, with Google Ads, you could be placed on top of that pile depending on your bid, resulting in a huge amount of targeted clicks.
Google Ads is a tried and tested method of acquiring qualified, good-fit customers to your hotel’s website. While the organic side of Google is more geared towards the larger businesses due to their domain authority, Google Ads allows businesses of all sizes to be able to compete fairly for the clicks.
Before diving into devising your first Google Ad, you will want to plan what type of campaign you want to run. Google provides a selection of campaign types, depending on who your target audience is and where on the web you want to reach them.
As a hotelier, there are 3 campaign types you typically want to get yourself familiar with;
No doubt you’ve seen a search ad (or text ad) before on Google. They appear prominently at the top of Google's SERPs.
Let’s take a look closely at the anatomy of a typical search ad.
The ad above has been highlighted so we can clearly see where all the elements of the ad start and finish.
There are many other ad extensions that can become part of your text ads. You only have to apply them to each of your text ad campaigns and Google will dynamically show various extensions based on where, when and who they are showing the ad to.
Here is a list of ad extensions that may be helpful for B&B / Hotel search ad campaigns;
Not only will you provide more information to potential customers using these ad extensions but you will also take up more retail space within the SERPs, meaning the larger your ad is, the more likely someone will click on it.
The Google Display Network helps you reach a targeted audience while they’re browsing their favourite websites, watching YouTube or using mobile phone apps.
Websites and apps can opt in to show ads from the Google Display Network and you can take advantage of this and put your ad in front of their eyes while they’re in the ‘buying phase’.
Find new customers using ‘similar audiences’ which will target people who are similar to those already engaging with your B&B’s site.
Alternatively, or alongside, you can opt for automatic targeting where Google will expand its reach to help find more high-value traffic to help drive conversions.
It’s likely you’ve come across Display Ads before while browsing the web. Using Google’s Display Network is how businesses are finding you like that.
If the ad is shaped and designed correctly, you could see an upsurge in conversions.
Here are a few ways in which the Display Ads Network can help your B&B.
While the search network (text ads) will target people while they are already searching for your specific service, the Display Network will help target people and bring people’s attention to you earlier in that buying cycle.
You can help cement your brand in people’s minds while they go about their business on the web. Perhaps they were looking for great restaurants in your local area and noticed your beautiful ad for a quaint little B&B.
You can also use the remarketing strategy with Display Ads to target people that have already been to your website. Remind them of you and your B&B. People who have already visited your website are more likely to return and convert due to familiarity.
Video Ads are arguably the hardest to master. Creating a compelling video ad that serves to provide conversions is a tough but rewarding job.
Google owns the world’s largest video sharing platform, YouTube. People love YouTube. So much so that every day, people watch 1 billion hours of videos via YouTube. Advertising is all about putting your ads directly in places where your customers might be - with YouTube being one of them.
There are various video ad formats available from within Google Ads, so let’s address them now;
Taking advantage of the Google Hotel Ads platform is of great importance. The booking phase for a traveller is not very linear. People search in a myriad of ways to find the right place and Google Hotel Ads lets you appear in front of them throughout various points of their research.
Your hotel information such as room availability, prices and ratings will appear on Google Maps, Google Search and in Google Assistant.
With Google Search ads, you will craft the ad copy yourself and bid on specific keywords in an effort to produce maximum performance. But with Google Hotel Ads, there are no keywords or ad copy associated with it. It’s all done dynamically based on your hotel’s current availability and location.
These two methods serve different purposes. Google Search works best for building brand awareness and messaging within results, while Google Hotel Ads serve in a “transactional” nature that thrive on getting people to book rooms.
Sites like Booking.com and Hotels.com have almost exclusively on the front page of Google for many top searches regarding travel. Their websites boast huge authority and it can be tough for independent B&B owners to get their foot in the door.
Google Hotel Ads allows you to compete on the same level as these bigger websites and will enable you to capture bookings straight from Google’s search results.
The image above is an example of what might appear should you be looking for a B&B in a certain location. You will arrive here after clicking on a hotel within the Google Local Teaser pack which we learned about in the Google My Business section of this guide.
This will then land you directly in the Google Hotels section where you will see an array of hotels and B&Bs within the area you searched for.
The prices available first are from Google Hotel Ads and these will take you directly to your booking engine. Google Hotel Ads works seamlessly with almost any booking engine, allowing you to fully control the process.
While Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s) have their purpose and can be a huge source of income for small hotels, B&B’s and independent inns, bookings made through them result in less control that you have for your guests' experience.
Once they book directly through you instead of an OTA, you are now the point of contact and you can ensure every need of your guests is fulfilled.
While you may not be in charge of the ad copy per se, you are in charge of the information that will be dynamically dealt to the end-user.
Information your Google Hotel listing may have:
Analysing the metrics of your website and how people behave on your website is of paramount importance to your success.
Google Analytics is a free tool that gives you an extremely in-depth look at your website and it’s performance. This tool can seamlessly integrate with other Google tools such as Google Ads, Search Console and Hotel Ads, making it a popular choice for anyone who is using multiple Google tools.
For an in-depth guide on how to correctly set up Google Analytics for your B&B website, check out Hootsuite’s ‘How to guide’.
Your B&B’s website is a go to source of information and guidance for potential new guests. Sometimes your website will be the first impression you may have on someone and you need to make their impression matter.
Using Google Analytics will allow you to understand how your website is running and how visitors are using your website.
Here is a list of the many questions that Google Analytics can answer for you.
Having your website goals well defined will enable you to focus on specific parts of your website that you want to improve.
Let’s for example say that you would like to increase bookings for wedding receptions at your B&B. This would be classed as a macro goal. The primary goal. However in order to help facilitate achieving this goal, you could lay out micro goals to accomplish that will indirectly help you achieve the overarching primary goal, such as:
How you track these goals would be by implementing Google Analytics Goals within your account to monitor and record when a certain goal is complete (such as booking a room, submitting an enquiry form or when a specific page has been visited).
A lot of your time spent with Google Analytics will be within their reports section. This spans a large array of reports that can help you understand how people using your website are finding you and once they’re on your site, how they are engaging with it.
The reports section is broken down into 4 main categories, each housing sub-sections that look more closely at certain aspects of your visitors metrics.
Let’s take a look at each report section.
The audience reports will tell you everything you need to know about your visitors. You will find interesting reports such as demographics (the gender and age of your visitors), geo location (where in the world they are accessing your site from and what language they speak, behaviour (how often they visit your site) and technology (what devices they are using to view your site).
The acquisition report is all about what drove your visitors to your website. Within the “All Traffic > Channels” section, you will see metrics for a specific time period that will show you how much of your traffic is coming from which channel. These channels can consist of organic search, paid search (google ads), direct, referral, social and display.
Linking your Google Analytics account to your Google Ads and Google Search Console account will enable you to view lots of information tied to those accounts right within Google Analytics as well.
The behaviour reports section details everything about the content on your website. What pages are getting the most views? Which pages do people stay on the longest? What pages do people bounce off the quickest?
All these questions can be answered within these behaviour reports.You can also learn how fast your website loads and which pages generally take the longest for people to load. Following this, Google will offer PageSpeed Suggestions to help you decrease the take it takes for people to load your web pages.
If you’ve set up your website’s goals (which we went over earlier), you will find how many conversions your website has made in relation to these goals here in the conversions report.
Many of these goals can be compared to different metrics within the acquisition and behaviour reports. For example, you can see how many wedding brochure downloads were converted by people who found your website on Facebook.
Use these reports to your advantage to tweak and optimise your website to help boost performance.
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