How to rank your hotel higher on Google

Getting your property to the top of the search engine results page (SERP) can increase traffic to your website and net more direct bookings. Google understands that users are most likely to use their search engine and click on results when they can trust they’ll find what they’re looking for, whether it’s an ad or an organic result. To get your property to the top of relevant searches, you need to implement strategies that show Google that your site has exactly what its users want: helpful, reliable, quality, people-first content. 

Google is invested in serving technically sound, quality landing pages that match the context of a user’s search. Users trust Google to deliver highly relevant search results full of landing pages that are easy-to-navigate and give them the experiences they’re looking for. Maintaining this trust with its users is crucial for Google to keep its status as the most reputable and highly trafficked search engine in the world. With over 90% of the global search engine market share, demonstrable user trust is precisely what allows Google to attract its customers: the advertisers. 

At the end of the day, the real people providing value to your business are the same ones providing value to Google. So, to rank higher in Google search results, your site needs to demonstrate that it is precisely what those very real people you’re targeting are going to Google to look for.

Take a three-pronged, people-first approach to improve your search engine ranking.

1. Ensure that your site has strong technical health.
2. Optimize your site for helpfulness, reliability, and quality.
3. Provide search engines and AI bots with signals for the context of the site.

Ensure that your site has strong technical health

Before Google can show your site, it needs to establish that the users it shows your site to will have a good experience. Users are more likely to lose confidence in search results when they experience page errors, slow page load speeds, difficult site navigation, and other technical errors from pages they’ve been served by Google, diminishing their trust in the search engine. To protect user trust, Google prioritizes serving sites devoid of major technical errors.

Keep your site free of major errors like the ones listed here to make certain that search engines and AI bots can reach your content.

• Fix broken links and page errors like 404s.
• Ensure search engine crawlers and AI bots are not blocked.
• Maintain a clear, logical site structure with internal links and updated sitemaps.
• Improve mobile friendliness and site speed.
• Hide outdated content from the SERP.

A healthy site devoid of technical errors gives Google confidence that it’s serving users with a solid landing page experience and relays to AI systems that the information on the site is likely to be valuable and authoritative. Ultimately, Google sees sites with strong technical health as reliable for its users.

Optimize your site for helpfulness, reliability, and quality

At the heart of it, people go to Google to be connected with sources that are helpful, reliable, and get to the gist of their query. Design and optimize your site with the experience of the very real people that patronize your business in mind. Doing so will signal to Google that your site provides quality to users. 

Try these suggestions to improve your site’s content by optimizing for a people-first experience.

• Use human-centered content and conversational, natural-sounding copy.
• Expand content depth to provide helpful answers for your prospective guests.
• Publish content surrounding your local area and particulars about your business.
• Build itineraries and travel guides for people planning to visit your area.
• Add thorough FAQ content, including a dedicated FAQ page, Q&A sections on key pages, and applicable schema markup.

Everything you do to your site should improve your user’s experience or make it easier for them to find your content. Google rewards sites that are more likely to be relevant, helpful, and appealing to users by pushing them to the top of search results.

Provide search engines and AI bots with signals for the context of the site

Optimizing for search engines/AI and for a people-first experience are complementary pursuits. You can provide signals directly to search engines and AI bots to tell them about your site and the content on your page. While implementing these signals, it’s important to center people-first practices to not sacrifice page quality. 

Give AI bots and search engines rich, contextual signals by using the following methods:

• Practice traditional SEO strategies with a strong keyword focus and page element optimization.
• Implement schema markup across your site and on FAQ content.
• Regularly update the information on your social media accounts and local listings to ensure accuracy and clarity.
• Practice PR-minded online behaviors by engaging with content about your property on social media, in forums, and across the web.
• Keep an active online presence by responding to reviews in a timely manner, making use of Google Business Posts, and posting regular, unique content on social media and on your site.

Rich, contextual signals help search engines and AI bots to interpret your content with clarity and understand its relationship to user queries. By explicitly providing these signals, you make it easier for Google to match your property with relevant searches. These signals greatly incentivize Google to place you at the top of searches coming from users who are more likely to convert.

Is this approach still applicable with AI searches?

Yes, a people-first approach is still applicable in the age of AI. Google has even said so itself in its Google Search SEO documentation, “You can apply the same foundational SEO best practices for AI features as you do for Google Search overall: making sure the page meets the technical requirements for Google Search, following Search policies, and focusing on the key best practices, such as creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.” 

Google’s foundation of user trust has not changed. Neither has what the search engine considers to be a relevant, quality landing page. As such, a people-first approach is the best method to reach the top of relevant searches.

In your pursuit to rank your site higher on Google, the team at GCommerce Solutions is here to help. We can provide additional resources, audit your site to find how it currently matches up, and offer thorough, practical solutions to reach your goals, whatever they may be. Tell us what goals you’re pursuing, and we’ll find a way to help you achieve them.

Improving AI search visibility: A practical action guide for your hotel

We’ve all heard it by now. AI search is the future, and your hotel’s discoverability is becoming increasingly dependent on visibility within AI search results. But what can you do about it?

Like many other marketing channels, the factors that impact AI search visibility fall under a variety of categories and optimizations, requiring a comprehensive multi-channel strategy to achieve success. But don’t let that scare you! While AI search visibility isn’t an exact science, there are plenty of things you can do to improve your hotel’s standings.

Here’s our list of the most important actions to take when trying to improve your hotel’s AI search visibility.

At a glance

There are 5 main categories where your hotel can optimize for improved AI search visibility:

1. Website content
2. Local business listings
3. Schema
4. Website structure
5. Link network

We’ll dive into more detail with the rest of this article, but here are our top recommendations for each category:

Website content

AI models prioritize sources with a large volume and wide variety of content. Websites that cover a range of topics, and websites with a large amount of information to source from, are more likely to appear in AI search results. 

AI models also prefer page content that is reliable and thoroughly researched. Including links, quotes, and statistics into your web content can improve your website’s credibility, and therefore your hotel’s AI search visibility.

The contents of your website matter too. AI models prefer conversational, simple language to better align with their more casual search responses. They also prioritize easy-to-digest content, with a special preference towards high-demand items such as photos and frequently asked questions. 

Here are the immediate steps you can take to improve your hotel’s website content:

• Start a blog to broaden your website’s scope and page count.
  • Cover topics around your hotel’s offerings and special features, things to do in the area, local events, and anything else that potential guests might be searching for.
• Add quotes and statistics to your webpages.
  • For hotels, guest reviews and third-party articles are a great source of AI-friendly quotes.
• Incorporate a more conversational tone into your content.
  • If formal language is a strong part of your hotel’s branding, consider simplifying some sentences to emulate a more casual tone without sacrificing brand voice.
• Create or expand a photo gallery.
  • Prioritize high-quality imagery that features the most notable and unique aspects of your hotel. This may include dining options, waterfront views, or even amenities such as a pool or hot tub. 
• Create or expand FAQs for your hotel.
  • Develop FAQs based on actual guest feedback and your own AI searches to determine what information your hotel’s potential guests are really looking for.
  • A standalone FAQ page is most impactful and may help your hotel’s visibility in traditional search, along with AI search results.
  • It’s also beneficial to add a set of 3-5 FAQs on topically relevant URLs. For example, add a few rooms-related questions to your hotel’s “Accommodations” page or include restaurant-related FAQs on the “Dining” page.

Local business listings

When recommending businesses, AI models tend to rely heavily on local listings such as Google Business Profile. Both business information and customer sentiment from these listings are used by AI models to offer the best options to users within AI search results.

Therefore, it’s incredibly important to optimize and maintain your hotel’s local listings over time. The following tactics are likely to increase your hotel’s AI search visibility, especially when completed on an ongoing basis:

• Audit and update your hotel’s local business listings to ensure accurate and up-to-date information.
  • Be sure to prioritize listing accuracy on the following websites:
    • Google Business Profile 
    • Tripadvisor
    • Yelp
  • Sign up for a local listings management service to add and update your business information across hundreds of websites simultaneously, including those listed above. Examples of these services include:
    • Yext
    • SEMRush
    • Moz Local
• Increase your hotel’s review count across various websites. Potential ways to generate reviews include:
  • Post on-property signage asking guests to leave a review.
  • Encourage guests to leave a review within post-stay emails or receipts.
  • Provide direct review links and QR codes to make the review process seamless for guests.
  • Be cautious with incentives such as discounts, loyalty points, or giveaways based on reviews. This may violate platform guidelines or terms of service, leading to penalties for your hotel’s listings.
• Improve your hotel’s review rating across various websites. To achieve this, try the following:
  • Respond to your hotel’s reviews. For the most significant impact, follow the best practices outlined in our article on How to respond to Google reviews.
  • Provide an easy way for guests to offer negative feedback to your hotel directly. If guests can privately address issues with your staff or on your website, this may bypass the need to post a public negative review.
  • Take negative feedback from guests into consideration, and make an effort to solve recurring issues within your hotel’s operations.

Schema

Schema variables outline your hotel’s offerings and web content in a way that’s easy for AI models to read and digest. By incorporating well-structured, clean schema into your website, you increase the chances of showing up within AI search results.

Keep the following in mind when implementing schema variables:

• For hotels, the following schema types are most beneficial:
  • Local Business schema outlines information about your hotel, dining establishments, and other offerings such as spas and golf courses.
  • Product schema can be used to describe room types, offers, and packages.
  • FAQ schema is an important element for hotels, especially when used in tandem with an FAQ landing page on your website.
  • Article schema highlights blog posts, press releases, and third-party buzz about your hotel.
• Where possible, incorporate a somewhat conversational tone and allude to topics where you want to improve AI search visibility. Similar to on-page content, highly relevant and easy-to-use schema variables increase your hotel’s likelihood of appearing in AI search results.
• Make sure to keep your schema variables up-to-date with the most recent information about your hotel. 

Website structure

AI models are fairly efficient at reading website content and understanding code. However, a clean and optimized website structure reduces friction, making it easier for AI models to digest your content correctly and thereby increasing your AI search visibility.

For optimal performance within AI search results, consider these website elements:

• Add bot-friendly documentation to your website, including the following:
  • Implement an llms.txt document, used by Large Language Models (LLMs) to find your most important and relevant content.
  • Create a sitemap.xml file outlining all URLs on your website for maximum discoverability.
  • Highlight your sitemap.xml file in a robots.txt document so it’s easy for AI models to find.
• Resolve technical issues such as:
  • Redirect 404 pages to land on live content.
  • Update outdated and broken links to include up-to-date URLs.
  • Remove and redirect outdated webpages to ensure fresh, accurate content.
  • Minimize duplicate content across webpages, title tags, and meta descriptions.
• Optimize your website’s code, with a particular focus on the following:
  • Utilize a clean, intuitive, sub-folder structure so navigation of your website is seamless.
  • Ensure that website elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, and H1s are placed in the correct order and location of your code.
  • Improve your website’s average page speed to reduce friction for AI models.
• The following tools may help you maintain your website’s technical health:
  • Identify potential issues with your website’s structure using site audit and SEO crawling tools from SEMRush and Screaming Frog.
  • Yoast SEO and RankMath offer creation and management features for llms.txt, sitemap.xml, and robots.txt files.
  • The WordPress plugin Redirection can assist in cleaning up 404 pages, duplicate content, and outdated webpages.

Link network

Incoming links, outgoing links, and brand mentions associated with your hotel can improve AI search visibility by boosting website credibility, streamlining discoverability, and increasing mentions of your website within AI model databases.

To improve your hotel’s link network, consider the following:

• Incorporate internal links to other pages from your own website.
  • For example, link to your restaurant’s landing page when discussing the establishment in your FAQ or Amenities list.
• Add external links to outside resources where applicable.
  • Highlighting your hotel’s third-party awards, press features, and partnerships is an easy way to boost your external link count.
• Reach out to local businesses, blog owners, news sites, or even influencers to request a collaboration or content feature which includes a link to your website or otherwise mentions your brand.
  • Oftentimes, collaborations involve both websites linking to each other, providing the extra benefit of increasing your own website’s external link count.
• Utilize your hotel’s social media to post blogs, press features, and other links to your website. Social media links still count towards overall link building.

Takeaways

Improving AI search visibility requires a well-rounded strategy across a variety of website elements and marketing channels. While no single change is likely to move the needle on its own, a number of small optimizations working in tandem will give your hotel the best chances of showing up in AI search results.

If you want to learn more about AI search visibility or you’re ready to get started, reach out to GCommerce today. We’d love to discuss your current AI search strategy and help set up your hotel for future success.

How data platforms turn brand authority into durable AI visibility

In the first two posts in this series, "Why AI visibility ultimately collapses back to data" and "AI doesn’t rank hotels. It learns which ones to trust," we reframed how AI visibility actually works.

We explored why AI-driven discovery collapses back to data, not prompts or shortcuts. We examined how brand authority is inferred from patterns in that data rather than declared through content or optimization tactics.

That brings us to the most practical question in the series:

If AI visibility depends on performance-backed authority, how do hotels actually improve the performance that creates it?

Brand authority isn’t created in AI. It’s earned in marketing.

Most hotels already generate demand.

They attract travelers.
They invest in media.
They drive traffic.
They convert bookings.
They earn repeat stays and reviews.

Brand authority isn’t missing. It’s being earned every day through marketing performance.

The challenge is that this performance data lives across many systems and is rarely analyzed together in a way that leads to better decisions.

AI doesn’t need perfect data from hotels. It simply observes outcomes.

Hotels, however, do need visibility into their own performance if they want to improve those outcomes intentionally.

What a data platform actually does

A data platform does not aggregate the signals that power AI results. It does not feed AI systems. It does not act as an intermediary between hotels and discovery engines.

Instead, its role is upstream and operational.

A data platform ingests a hotel or resort’s own marketing and performance data and turns it into insight that enables better optimization decisions.

It helps hotels understand:

• Which channels are actually driving incremental demand
• How different media investments affect direct bookings
• Where pricing, availability, and messaging create friction
• Which efforts are efficient and which are quietly eroding ROI

In short, a data platform helps hotels improve what they already control.

AI benefits later by observing the results.

Optimization is the mechanism that strengthens authority

Brand authority is inferred from outcomes, not intentions.

Those outcomes are shaped by everyday optimization decisions:

• How budgets are allocated
• Which channels are emphasized
• How pricing and availability interact with demand
• How effectively direct booking paths convert

When hotels lack a unified view of performance, optimization happens in silos. Channels are judged independently. Success is measured locally. Tradeoffs remain invisible.

A data platform breaks that pattern by connecting marketing performance across channels and tying it directly to business outcomes, especially direct bookings.

This doesn’t create authority. It amplifies the authority a hotel is already earning.

Why direct bookings are the clearest signal to optimize

In an AI-driven ecosystem, direct bookings matter for more than margin.

They represent:

• Brand preference
• Trust in pricing and availability
• Confidence in the guest experience
• Reduced dependency on intermediaries

By ingesting media, conversion, and booking data, it enables hotels to:

• See which efforts truly drive direct demand
• Identify friction in the direct booking journey
• Optimize spend toward efficiency, not just volume
• Reinforce patterns that consistently lead to direct choice

AI doesn’t see optimization decisions. It sees the outcomes of those decisions.

Repeated direct bookings are one of the strongest indicators that a brand is trusted and preferred. Smarter decisions = stronger visibility.

Where AEO fits, clearly and honestly

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is not where authority is created. It’s where authority is expressed.

AEO helps ensure that what a hotel has earned through performance and optimization is accurately represented in AI-driven discovery environments through structured content, schema, and distribution formats.

The data platform informs AEO by clarifying:

• What actually performs
• What positioning is reinforced by outcomes
• What messages align with real demand

Without this insight, AEO risks amplifying assumptions. With it, AEO reflects reality.

Optimization strengthens authority. AEO communicates it.

From optimization tactics to durable advantage

AI-driven discovery hasn’t eliminated marketing fundamentals. It’s raised the stakes on them.

Content still matters. Media still matters. Distribution still matters.

But the hotels that win will be the ones that:

• Optimize intelligently
• Understand their performance deeply
• Invest in direct demand
• Reinforce what works over time

A data platform doesn’t change how AI works. It changes how well hotels perform.

And performance is what AI ultimately learns from.

Playing the long game

AI will continue to evolve. Interfaces will change. Discovery paths will shift.

What won’t change is this: AI infers trust from outcomes. Outcomes are shaped by optimization. Optimization depends on insight.

The hotels that win in AI-driven discovery won’t be chasing visibility directly. They’ll be investing in systems that help them make better decisions, drive more direct bookings, and strengthen the authority they already earn every day. AI visibility may feel new, but durable advantage still comes from performance.

Contact GCommerce Solutions to start connecting your AI visibility with your data.