Indexation
Learn how to optimise your website’s indexation to improve visibility and search rankings
Indexation is a critical process in search engine optimisation (SEO) that ensures search engines can discover and display your hotel’s web pages in search results. If your pages aren’t indexed, they won’t appear on search engine result pages (SERPs), regardless of how well they are optimised for keywords or user experience.
By understanding and controlling how your website is indexed, you can improve visibility, increase direct bookings, and ensure potential guests can find your hotel online. This guide will help you navigate the key concepts of indexation and provide actionable strategies for optimising it to enhance your hotel's overall SEO performance.
Understanding Indexation
Crawling
Crawling is the initial step in the indexation process. This is when search engines send out bots—often referred to as "crawlers" or "spiders"—to scan your website and discover its content. These bots move through your pages, following internal and external links, and gather information about your site. This data is then stored in the search engine’s index.
For hotels, it’s important to ensure that all your relevant pages, such as rooms, amenities, local attractions, and booking pages, are easily accessible to these bots. To facilitate effective crawling, your website must have a clear structure, with no pages buried too deeply or blocked from being crawled.
Sitemap Submission
A sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website, acting as a guide for search engines to find your content. Submitting a sitemap directly to search engines, like Google, ensures that they know which pages to crawl and index.
For hotels, this is particularly useful as it helps ensure all essential pages—such as those for special offers, room categories, dining options, and events—are properly indexed. Sitemaps also make it easier for search engines to find new or updated content, speeding up the indexation process. You can create an XML sitemap using various SEO tools or plugins, and it’s important to update this file regularly to reflect changes on your website.
Robots.txt
The robots.txt file is a powerful tool that helps control which parts of your website search engines are allowed to index. This file can prevent certain pages, such as admin panels, thank-you pages, or duplicate content, from being crawled and indexed, which is particularly useful for improving SEO. For hotels, this means you can ensure only the most relevant pages—those that help attract and convert guests—are indexed, while less important or irrelevant pages remain hidden from search engines.
Properly configuring your robots.txt file ensures that search engine bots focus on crawling the pages that matter most for your business.
Optimising Your Hotel’s Indexation
1
Create and Submit a Sitemap
A comprehensive and up-to-date sitemap is the foundation of good indexation. Ensure all your important pages, including room listings, facilities, and booking pages, are included. Submit your sitemap to Google through Google Search Console to speed up the crawling and indexing process.
3
Monitor Google Search Console
Google Search Console is an essential tool for monitoring the indexation status of your website. It provides detailed reports on indexing errors, such as pages blocked by robots.txt, crawl anomalies, or pages not indexed due to being marked as duplicates. For hotels, regular monitoring of Search Console can help you spot and fix indexing issues, ensuring that all relevant content is available in search results.
5
Improve Internal Linking Structure
A well-organised internal linking structure helps search engines understand the hierarchy and importance of different pages on your site. For example, your homepage might link directly to your most important pages, such as room details, dining options, or local attractions. Strengthening your internal links can improve the crawlability of your site, helping search engines discover and index your key pages more efficiently.
2
Avoid Duplicate Content
Search engines penalise websites that have duplicate content, which can harm your SEO rankings. Ensure that each page on your site offers unique and valuable information. For hotels, this might mean avoiding multiple pages that serve the same purpose, such as several pages featuring identical descriptions of rooms or services. Use canonical tags to prevent duplicate content issues when similar pages are necessary.
4
Fix Crawl Errors
Crawl errors occur when search engines encounter problems accessing your pages. These issues can arise from broken links, incorrect redirects, or blocked resources. For hotels, it’s vital to ensure that no important pages—such as booking forms or special offers—are affected by crawl errors. Regularly check your site for broken links and resolve any issues that prevent search engines from accessing your content.
6
Optimise for Mobile
Google now prioritises mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your website for ranking and indexing. As a hotel, your mobile site needs to be fully optimised to provide a seamless experience for potential guests browsing on smartphones or tablets. Ensure that your mobile version is responsive, loads quickly, and includes all the same valuable content as your desktop site.