Is Your Hotel Making The Best Use Of Featured Snippets?

Google is always coming up with new features and tools to help making its search more relevant for users. One of its latest additions is the ‘featured snippet’ – a method of answering popular questions and queries on the search results page, rather than forcing users to click through to any of the top results that appear.

Now, there’s some debate about whether featured snippets help or harm a business’ marketing strategy. Research has shown that it can increase CTR and conversion rates, with significantly enhanced visibility for the pages chosen to appear in the featured snippet section. But some experts have posed the question: if the answer to a query is given in a featured snippet, why would the user need to click through at all?

Standing out from the crowd in a competitive industry should be a key facet of any hotel marketing strategy. So how can you use featured snippet to do so? Is your hotel making the best use of this new tool?

Identify opportunities to get featured

Featured snippets come in a variety of formats, but they all start with a question-type query, which Google will then try to answer. Take a look at your existing keyword research and identify whether you can transform some of your longer-tail keywords into queries or questions. Examples include: “What are the best places to stay in the San Francisco area?” or “How much does a three-star hotel in London cost?”

You could then enter some of these into Google to see what the existing featured snippet is. The ‘People also ask’ box just below the featured snippet is also very useful for identifying new ways to appear in that coveted ‘position 0’ space.

Make sure you’re optimized for featured snippets

While there’s no magic recipe to ensure your site will be the one chosen by Google’s algorithms, there are plenty of things you can do to boost your chances. Your on-page SEO should be spot-on, with your content structured in a way that makes it easy for Google’s bots to read and analyse.

Provide the best answers

One of the best ways to boost your chances of appearing on a featured snippet is quite simply to have the best answer to the query being searched. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Google likes to keep answers concise – down to one paragraph, if possible. This doesn’t necessarily mean you can only write one paragraph in a blog or on a page – but make sure there’s one paragraph which sums up the answer to the question.

You should also be as factual as you can – include numbers or prices if at all possible.

Look into the ‘reviews’ featured snippet

One type of feature snippet you can look into is the ‘review’. These can appear in the search results and in the sidebar. Reviews and testimonials are one of the most valuable tools in your hotel marketing strategy, and being able to leverage your reviews to secure a ‘position 0’ spot is a no-brainer for hotels trying to generate more traffic and improve conversions.