Your Competitors Are Fixing These SEO Mistakes While Your Hotel Keeps Paying OTA Commissions

The most common starting mistake in hotel SEO is going after volume instead of intent. A page optimized for 'hotel' or 'hotels in Miami' competes with Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor — sites with domain authority your property will not outrank in a reasonable timeframe.

The guests who convert at the highest rate are searching with specificity: 'boutique hotel near South Beach with parking', 'pet-friendly hotel downtown Miami under $200', or 'extended stay hotel Brickell with kitchen'. These queries have lower search volume and dramatically less competition.

In our experience working with hotel properties, the sites that generate consistent direct bookings have pages built around modifier-rich, intent-specific phrases — not just the destination plus 'hotel'. Amenity-based keywords, occasion-based keywords ('romantic anniversary hotel'), and proximity-based keywords ('hotel near [landmark]') are where independent hotels can realistically compete.

How to fix it

• Audit your current keyword targets against search intent, not just volume
• Map each page to a specific searcher need — not just a location
• Build dedicated landing pages for high-value modifiers (pet-friendly, extended stay, spa packages)
• Use Google Search Console to identify queries you're already appearing for but not ranking well — those are your fastest wins

Chasing broad terms is not just ineffective — it actively dilutes the relevance signals on your more specific, winnable pages.

This mistake is almost universal among hotels that list on Booking.com, Expedia, or Hotels.com. The OTA provides a standard room description template. The hotel copies it — sometimes word for word — onto their own website. Google sees both versions and, because the OTA has exponentially more domain authority, suppresses the hotel's page in favor of the OTA's.

The result: your own website competes against your OTA listing, and loses. You pay the commission anyway.

Duplicate content doesn't just fail to help — it actively signals low editorial effort to Google's quality systems. This is especially damaging for room pages, package pages, and wedding or event venue descriptions, which are the highest-value conversion pages on a hotel site.

How to fix it

• Rewrite every room and package description from scratch with property-specific detail your OTA listing doesn't include
• Add sensory language, specific dimensions, and unique amenity details that make each page genuinely distinct
• Include guest-perspective content: what can you see from the window, what's within a five-minute walk, what does breakfast actually include
• Run your key pages through a plagiarism or duplicate content checker before publishing

Unique, detailed room content is also one of the highest-use conversion improvements a hotel can make — guests who find specific, honest information on your site are more likely to book direct rather than validate on an OTA.

For most hotels, Google Business Profile (GBP) is the single highest-use local SEO asset. A complete, verified, actively managed profile is the difference between appearing in the Map Pack — the three-result block that sits above organic listings for location-based searches — and being invisible to travelers who are ready to book.

The mistakes we see most often on hotel GBP profiles include:

• Unclaimed or unverified profiles — the property exists in Google's database but no one has claimed ownership, so the information is incomplete or wrong
• Wrong primary category — selecting 'Lodging' instead of 'Hotel' or using a category that doesn't match the property type
• No photos, or only stock photography — Google's own data shows profiles with authentic photos generate significantly more direction requests and website clicks
• No active review response strategy — hotels that don't respond to reviews signal disengagement to both Google and prospective guests
• Inconsistent hours, amenities, or contact information — this erodes trust signals and can cause Google to suppress the profile

GBP is also where guests leave reviews, ask questions, and in some cases book directly through Google's booking integration. Neglecting it means abandoning a free, high-intent channel.

How to fix it

Claim and verify your profile if you haven't already. Complete every field — including services, attributes (pet-friendly, accessible parking, free WiFi), and check-in/check-out times. Upload at least 20 authentic photos across categories: exterior, rooms, restaurant, amenities. Establish a weekly cadence for responding to new reviews and posting updates. For more on this, see our hotel SEO resource hub.

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone number — the three data points Google uses to confirm a business's physical presence and location authority. When these appear differently across directories (Yelp, TripAdvisor, Foursquare, local chamber sites, aggregators), Google's confidence in your location data drops. This directly impacts Map Pack rankings.

For hotels, NAP errors are surprisingly common because properties change ownership, rebrand, update phone systems, or relocate shuttle services — and the directory cleanup never happens systematically. The result is a web of contradictory citations that dilutes your local authority over time.

Common inconsistencies include:

• Suite numbers listed on some directories but not others
• Different phone numbers (main line vs. reservations line) across listings
• Name variations ('The Grand Hotel' vs. 'Grand Hotel Miami' vs. 'Grand Hotel & Spa')
• Old addresses from a prior location or renovation that never got updated

How to fix it

Start with a citation audit — search your hotel's name and address variations across the major directories and note every inconsistency. Choose one canonical NAP format and update every directory to match exactly, including punctuation. Prioritize high-authority directories first: Google, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and your local chamber of commerce. Use a citation management tool or outsource the cleanup — manual updates across 40+ directories is tedious but necessary.

Citation consistency is not exciting work. It is, however, foundational — and unfixed, it caps how well your GBP profile can rank regardless of what else you optimize.

Google's goal for travel queries is to surface the most useful resource for someone planning a trip. A hotel website that only contains room pages, a booking widget, and an 'About Us' page tells Google almost nothing about the destination. That absence of context limits how broadly your site can rank.

Hotels that rank well for destination-adjacent searches — 'things to do near [hotel area]', 'best time to visit [city]', 'weekend itinerary [destination]' — capture travelers earlier in the research phase, before they've committed to a property. That early visibility builds brand familiarity and increases the probability of a direct booking later.

Thin or absent destination content is one of the clearest differentiators between hotel sites that generate consistent organic traffic and those that depend entirely on OTA referrals and paid ads.

How to fix it

• Build a destination guide section on your site covering local attractions, restaurants, events, and seasonal considerations
• Write content specific to your hotel's location — not generic city guides, but 'what to do within walking distance of [your hotel]'
• Create event-specific pages for major recurring events in your market (festivals, conferences, sports seasons) that drive predictable booking spikes
• Update destination content seasonally — stale guides signal neglect to both users and Google

This content also supports your internal linking structure. Destination guides naturally link to room pages, package offers, and the booking engine — creating a logical content funnel that mirrors how travelers actually research and decide.

A significant share of hotel searches happen on mobile devices, and Google uses mobile performance as a primary ranking signal through Core Web Vitals. A hotel site with excellent content and a strong backlink profile can still underperform in rankings because its mobile load time is too slow or its layout shifts during load.

Hotel websites are particularly prone to this problem because they're built around high-resolution photography, video backgrounds, booking widget scripts, and third-party integrations (review feeds, map embeds, channel manager plugins). Each addition slows load time. Most hotel sites are built for visual impact, not performance.

In our experience, hotel sites that fail Core Web Vitals — specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — consistently underperform organic peers with comparable content quality.

How to fix it

• Run your site through Google PageSpeed Insights and address the specific issues flagged — don't guess at fixes
• Compress and properly size all images before upload; use next-generation formats (WebP) where your CMS supports them
• Defer non-critical scripts, especially third-party booking widgets that don't need to load on page render
• Ask your web developer or agency to audit your Core Web Vitals scores quarterly — they change when you add new content or integrations
• Consider whether your current CMS and hosting can support the performance standards Google expects, or whether a platform migration makes sense

Technical performance fixes tend to have faster ranking impact than content changes because they remove a suppression factor rather than adding a positive signal. Fix the floor before you build the ceiling. If you'd rather have a team audit and fix these issues end-to-end, see our SEO for hotel services for a full strategy and execution plan.