Updated: May 2024
As Marriott updates its systems and new websites, it’s important to stay current on understanding the process, creating an SEO strategy, and implementing best practices for your hotel.
First of all, Marriott changed their URL structure in 2022. It’s important to know about this change because you’ll want to audit all of your listing’s URLs and backlinks to ensure that all platforms and listings in line have the new URL. The difference between the old and new structure is minor and is highlighted below.
The old URL structure is: www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/yhzmc-halifax-marriott-harbourfront-hotel/
The new URL structure is: https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/yhzmc-halifax-marriott-harbourfront-hotel/overview/
Even when done correctly, changing your URL structure requires Google to re-index your website and can take time. Make sure your hotel website is indexing all the value pages that are important to your organic search ranking. Using a tool like Moz and SEMRush or running a tool called Screaming Frog can help distinguish which pages are indexed and which are not.
What it means when a page isn’t indexed: A page that isn’t indexed means Google can’t find it. With any new URL structure, if there has been no traffic to your internal m.com pages, you need to identify why Google can’t find your page. There are several reasons why this happens. For example, it could be due to crawl errors, broken redirects, content quality, etc.
With a new URL, this also means you need to update all your backlinks by implementing a backlink outreach strategy with the updated URL to ensure you’re capturing value. Requesting an inbound link is literally as easy as emailing a website contact and politely asking “Can we put our name on your site on page X and have it linked to this page on our place.”
If you haven’t updated the quality links that link to your hotel website (i.e. your CVB listing, any local sites your hotel appears on, etc.) with the new URL structure, your future guests will get a 404 error or not. -Existing website. If you haven’t created a backlink outreach strategy, audit the backlinks from the old URL and contact relevant link contacts with an updated URL, or find a service provider that can handle it for you.
Another very important change that happened recently is that Marriott just launched the EPIC system where some of the SEO updates were done and the product catalog was introduced.
Making the most of Marriott’s SEO opportunities is just one differentiating technique understand where brand marketing stops and individual hotel marketing begins.
Whether you do it yourself, hire Marriott Digital Services or an outside agency, keep these factors in mind when doing search engine optimization (SEO) for a Marriott-branded hotel.
Factors in Marriott SEO
To make it easier for us, we divide our SEO strategy into 3 sections:
Onsite: What you do on your website to optimize search Offsite: What you do on other websites to optimize search Technical: The back-end aspects you can’t easily see to optimize search
Extracting data for analysis:
Before doing any of the above, determine what your current site is ranking for and pay close attention to what’s already on page 1, what’s on page 2 that could be boosted, and everything else.
If you use Marriott Digital Services (MDS), they use a tool that can provide you with these data points. If not, using a service like Moz, SEMRush or Ahrefs will help.
— Source: Cogwheel Marketing
If budget is a factor, you can open an incognito window and do manual searches. Be prepared for this to take a while!
For Marriott hotels, it’s hard to tell the difference MRDW to see what works and what doesn’t. The ECM report1 it shows total organic traffic, but nothing deeper than that. You can track visits per page, but not the source of that traffic.
You should also take a look at what terms you’re looking for in your title/meta description tags to see how that affects your keyword rankings. You can check them using a website crawler such as Screaming Frog.
Next, determine your hotel’s unique selling propositions (USPs) and what sets them apart from the rest of the competition. Next, list your top demand generators that generate revenue for your hotel. These tend to drive transient businesses and are rarely businesses or offices.
Marriott Onsite SEO
Do keyword research to identify missed opportunities using a tool like Moz, SEMRush (paid), or Google Ads (free). Look for keywords that may be less competitive such as “hotels near demand generator”. Choose one keyword per page with the most closely aligned terms. Include your keyword and hotel name in a unique title tag per page of up to 60 characters.
Write a meta description that tells why they should click on your website. This is where your USPs come into play. For example, when writing the meta for your rooms page, include unique room features for your hotel. Google uses meta titles and meta descriptions in the actual search results. It’s like your chance to write a free ad. Putting your USPs drives this home.
You can also update the SEO for the modules once they are live. The page will be published with the default meta, and then you can submit changes after the release. These pages can also be indexed in search with more content opportunities, so leverage these pages for your meeting, wedding and restaurant space.
Once you have a plan, submit your new title tags and meta descriptions via mPortal. The form you would use is the main hotel website maintenance request form and then select the hotel. Then the request itself is called HWS Content Requests, where you select HWS Metadata Request.
Next, you’ll need to make updates to your website content and header tags, if applicable. This will be done at the new Marriott Product catalog which has replaced EPIC. Keyword density is less valuable than it used to be and you definitely don’t want to put keyword stuff in, ie put “hotel in new york” 6 times on the page. But if you include a keyword in your title tag and header, you want to casually work it into your content as well.
For example, if you target a keyword with a demand generator on the local area page, make sure that the demand generator is mentioned in one of the local area highlights of the product catalog displayed in the brand website.
Then circle towards the pages that have a header tag to edit in the product catalog.
These headers are currently H2 on the following pages: General Information, Accommodations, Restaurants and Bars and Experiences. Any title in the property message also appears as an H3. On the dining page, the site’s dining options are named H3. On the Fitness page, the title of the pool is an H3, and where we normally put “indoor” and “heating”, etc. Not applicable to the Meetings and Weddings page.
A Marriott site is quite small, in terms of pages, but it uses linking when available. For example, on the Accommodations page, the highlighted elements allow a (preferably internal) link to another page. Property messages also allow hyperlinking. There are other sections where you can embed links to other sites, but linking to other sites will not provide you with any SEO value and takes them away from your site. Some examples of this are Member Information, Spa, Restaurants and Featured Experiences. Alternatively, if you list a local business or restaurant on your site, this can be used as leverage to ask them to add your link to their site, giving you an additional backlink. All of these links can be updated to Product catalog now and no longer need to fill out a form in mPortal.
Marriott offsite SEO
A backlink is any other relevant site that has a link to drive traffic to your website. The more related and reputable backlinks to your website, the higher it will rank.
How many of these backlinks do you need?
Our suggestion for a backlink target: More than direct competition. We consider direct competition for SEO to be different from your typical competitive set. Search for terms that commonly appear on Google and select hotels that are often found near you in those searches. The volume of backlinks varies greatly depending on the market and type of hotel. A full service hotel will have more than a select service as there are more opportunities for backlinks when there are more restaurants, meeting spaces, etc. An independent boutique will have more than a branded hotel simply because these hotels have to work harder to get traffic to their site as opposed to being with a brand. Having a tool like Moz Link Explorer or SEMRush Backlink Analytics is helpful for this research. As a Marriott hotel, you have the advantage of being linked to the 92nd out of 100 domain Marriott.com, which also helps rank your hotel website.
Asking for backlinks should be a natural extension of the sales team. If you don’t have the sales resources, contact your agency or PR partner for help. It is effectively extending your personal relationships into the online space. Be sure to take advantage of CVB and state tourism website opportunities by listing a property’s evergreen packages.
Build relationships with local demand generators and access their website. If a demand generator has keyword search volume, create a bundle. Create packages around tickets or savings to a local attraction, shopping gift card at a local mall, etc. Your package can be optimized in MBOP.
You can roll one ECM3 report from MRDW and see if these new online partnerships drive traffic. This is how you extract this report:
Channel > Ecommerce > Add New Property Report > ECM3 (Campaign Detail) > Traffic Source = Non-Paid Referral.
Operations teams it can also help a hotel rank better in Google Search by focusing on Google reviews. Also, make sure Google reviews are answered regularly, this can be done at SEO RIVER. Yes, getting Marriott Medallia reviews is important, but so are Google reviews.
Marriott Technical SEO
Unfortunately, this is out of your control for Marriott hotels as they do not allow any code modifications. You can use a free tool like gtmetrix.com to test and check for yourself.
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All of these components combined are essential when optimizing your Marriott brand website through search engine optimization. When you’re done here, take note optimize your OTA listingsthat doesn’t cost a penny!
Stephanie Smith
Founder and Digital Matriarch
+1 540 239 1052
Cogwheel Marketing
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