For many businesses web marketing is quickly becoming a very confusing space to navigate. With so many organizations scraping for online visibility many are really ratcheting things up in order to gain digital traction. A proper hotel internet marketing strategy is one that combines good solid SEO efforts, heavy branding and lots of social media personality.

Whether you are a resort in Las Vegas or a bed and breakfast in Cape Cod you have to do something online that requires more than just a website. Sitting still because you don’t have the time or the budget is not going to help you grow. The more creative you can get with SEO & social media the better your hotel brand is going to react in the online space.

Here are some great ways you can gain traction with your hotel internet marketing strategy.

Strong Onsite SEO

We totally understand this term is thrown around very often when referring to anything web related and for most the idea of it is still hazy. The reality is that strong onsite search engine optimization techniques are crucial for a strong foundation moving forward.

Efforts like:

• Strategic robust meta data
• Well written content utilizing popular keyword variations
• Proper sitemap
• Optimized website images
• Interlinking various content and pages
• Clean URL structures throughout

Lots of blog marketing

I don’t care what it is that you offer, a blog is one of the most important tools you can have in your marketing arsenal. Your blog should be updated every single day with a variety of information your audience can find useful. Look at it this way, each blog post acts as a separate page on your website with the ability to rank in search results and act as a doorway to your hotel website. Doesn’t that sound great for website visibility?

Here are some ways to get strategic and conduct some great blog writing:

• Write about general hotel information
• Put together staff interviews
• Put together customer interviews
• Write about nearby tourist attractions
• Write about anything that people travel close by to that would require and overnight stay
• Write about local restaurants
• Write about local activities tourist can do

Get social!

The social space is huge, real huge and extremely important. Don’t let this scare you from getting involved and active. Each blog, press release and article about your hotel should be pushed through all the major social channels and bookmarking sites. This will help leverage your content and pull in steady traffic overtime. Social  media marketing can give your hotel the online personality it is looking for but first you have to take the bull by the horns and get active. Leveraging content is a great way to get your foot in the social door. Once you build up followers and fans you can start to think about different social promotions and even contests.

Get friendly with YouTube

Launching an active YouTube video channel is not as difficult as it might sound. Cameras with video recorders are cheaper than ever before and there are dozens of video editing software programs to help you do the trick. Start putting together little short videos about different video worthy areas of your hotel. Maybe you have a great bar, a beautiful pool or something historic sitting in your lobby. Shoot a video! Tap into your staff at all times. Do you have an extremely outgoing bar tender or front desk person? They might have the right personality for the camera.

Photo sharing will help

Take lots of photos of your hotel during special events, in season activities or just about anything. Launching accounts in photo sharing websites like Flickr can really help with inbound traffic. Always make sure you fill out the title and description of the photos completely and even try leaving a link in the description section back to an appropriate page on the site that might have similar information.

Hotel internet marketing does not have to be super complicated but you do have to get the ball rolling at some point. Start with the basics of your intimidated and work your way up to the more advanced efforts. Eventually you will start to see nice traffic heading in your direction.