How Do You Measure a Hotel Brand’s Content Performance?

Without hotel content performance metrics, a hotelier’s marketing strategy lacks the data-driven insights it needs and leaves too much room for guesswork. Intel on a brand’s website’s effectiveness, email campaign execution, and social engagement keeps marketers in the loop on what’s working to influence future campaigns, search marketing improvements, and content creation. 

As a hotelier, you’re likely accustomed to relying on reports to measure revenue, return on investments, and guest satisfaction. Now imagine if you made operational decisions without consulting data—seems risky, right? Shifting a digital marketing strategy without consulting content metrics is a similarly dicey decision. Thankfully, there are numerous ways to monitor content performance for a hotel so you can base successes and areas for improvement on concrete information.

Performance metrics may sound like something that’s out of your wheelhouse, but that’s why we’re here. We’ll explain all the must-track metrics, tools to access content marketing analytics for hotels, and how to use the information to initiate improvements.

Track Your Keywords

Tracking your target keywords is essential for measuring SEO performance because it provides clear, actionable insights into how effectively your website ranks for specific terms. First, let’s take a look at what you should be tracking; then we’ll get into how.

Here’s a detailed breakdown:

1. Visibility in Search Results: Keywords are the terms users enter into search engines to find information. By tracking your target keywords, you can assess the visibility of your website in search engine results pages (SERPs). This visibility is crucial, because higher rankings for relevant keywords mean more potential visitors find your site when they search for terms related to your business.
2. Assessing Traffic Sources: Tracking keywords helps you understand which search queries drive traffic to your website. This information is valuable for evaluating the effectiveness of your SEO strategy in attracting users who are interested in what you offer. An increase in traffic from specific keywords indicates that your SEO efforts resonate with your target audience.
3. Benchmarking Progress: Routinely monitoring your keyword rankings allows you to benchmark your progress over time. By comparing current rankings to past performance, you can determine whether your SEO efforts are leading to improvements. This ongoing assessment helps you gauge the success of your strategies and identify areas that may need updates.
4. Guiding Strategic Adjustments: Measuring SEO performance through keyword tracking provides data that can guide strategic adjustments. For instance, if you see that certain keywords are gaining traction, you might want to focus more on creating content around those terms. On the other hand, if some keywords are losing ground, you can investigate potential reasons and make necessary changes to improve performance.
5. Understanding User Behavior: Tracking how your target keywords perform also helps you understand user behavior and search intent. If you see shifts in keyword performance, this may reflect changes in guest interests or needs, allowing you to adapt your hotel’s content and SEO strategies accordingly.

Data-Driven Performance Tracking

A website, social channels, and email marketing are profitable marketing channels for hotels, and the success of each can be measured using various metrics. When reviewing content marketing metrics, you must thoroughly contemplate what you’re trying to improve (the goal) and the key performance indicators you’ll use to determine the success of a campaign. Common KPIs for hotel content strategies include organic traffic, engagement metrics, and conversion rates. 

Tracking content marketing analytics for hotels can highlight which topics interest your customers and which campaigns draw leads and the highest conversion rates. We’ve listed some KPIs for various channels below.

Hotel Website Performance Metrics

Hoteliers should familiarize themselves with website metrics and evaluate them to determine the performance of their optimization tasks. These analytics report on traffic and the user experience, which are key to SEO and engagement:

1. Organic Traffic: Measures the number of visitors arriving at your site through search engines. This metric helps assess the effectiveness of your SEO efforts in driving traffic from search engines.
2. Bounce Rate: Tracks the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate may indicate that your content is not engaging or relevant enough, which can impact SEO performance.
3. Average Session Duration: Monitors the average amount of time users spend on your site. Longer session durations generally suggest that your content is engaging and valuable to visitors.
4. Conversion Rates: Measure the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action (e.g., making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter). Tracking conversions helps evaluate the effectiveness of your content in achieving business goals.

Social Media Performance Metrics

Success on a hotel’s social channels indicates increasing brand awareness and audience engagement. Whether you’re active on Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, or a combination of channels, you can evaluate content performance using these metrics:

1. Organic Social Traffic: Measures users who visit your website through unpaid social media channels, which indicates how well your social media resonates.
2. Engagement & Awareness Metrics: Reactions, shares, and comments indicate whether the content performs as expected on a specific social channel.
3.  Conversions: Measures how often a user takes one of your desired actions, such as booking a room, downloading your property’s app, or becoming a loyalty member.

Email Engagement Metrics

One email marketing trend for hotels is to focus more on messaging and content to better engage the audience. Tracking content marketing metrics for the hotel’s email campaigns can help direct your efforts and highlight the effectiveness of your messaging and calls to action.

1. Email Open Rates: The number of recipients who opened the email signifies the effectiveness of the subject line and their trust in your hotel to deliver valuable messages.
2. Click-Through Rates: This measures the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link in the email, indicating engaging content and clear calls to action.
3. Conversion Rate: This percentage of recipients completed a desired action after clicking through, such as booking a room or downloading the hotel app.
4. Bounce Rates: This shows how many emails went undelivered, indicating issues with the hotel’s email list hygiene.

Top Tools for Tracking and Analyzing Content Performance

A hotelier should utilize a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) to collect and analyze guest data and create a comprehensive content performance report. This tool offers insights to personalize content, foster guest relationships, and build brand loyalty. A CRM is an essential management tool hoteliers can use to organize content marketing analytics from popular tracking tools.

Google Analytics

Hoteliers should take advantage of this free service that’s part of the Google marketing platform. The reports on website traffic and campaign performance include:

• Detailed Insights: Google Analytics provides comprehensive data on user behavior, including traffic sources, user demographics, and page performance. Use it to track metrics like organic traffic, bounce rate, and session duration.
• Behavior Flow: Analyze the behavior flow to understand how users navigate through your site, identifying potential drop-off points or areas for improvement.
• Goals and Funnels: Set up goals and conversion funnels to track specific actions users take on your site and measure how well your content drives these desired actions.

Social Media Insights

Social media management platforms, like Sprout Social and Hootsuite, offer analytical tools to help hoteliers monitor their campaign performance. These tools can measure a variety of social media analytics, including:

• Engagement Metrics: Track likes, shares, comments, and other interactions on social media platforms. These metrics provide insights into how well your content resonates with your audience and its effectiveness in driving social engagement.
• Referral Traffic: Monitor the traffic coming from social media channels to your site. This helps assess the impact of social media efforts on your overall SEO and content performance.
• Audience Insights: Utilize social media analytics to gain insights into your audience’s preferences and behaviors. These metrics can inform future ideas for social media posts and adjustments to your SEO.

Moz Pro

This software suite’s features are designed to improve search engine visibility, and offer performance metrics and insights to define improvement areas through:

• Keyword Tracking: Moz Pro offers robust keyword-tracking tools that help you monitor your target keyword performance over time. This includes tracking ranking changes and analyzing keyword opportunities.
• Site Audits: Conduct comprehensive site audits to identify and address SEO issues that may affect your content performance. Moz Pro’s site audit tools provide actionable insights for improving site health and SEO.
• On-Page Optimization: Use Moz Pro to analyze individual pages for keyword relevance, content quality, and other SEO factors to confirm your content is optimized.

Semrush

Semrush provides tools and reports for SEO, PPC, keyword research, competitor data, and campaign management. Here’s an overview of a few you may find helpful for your hotel:

• Keyword Research: SEMrush provides in-depth keyword research tools that help you discover new keywords, analyze their search volume, and understand their competition level. This information is essential for refining your content strategy.
• Content Analyzer: SEMrush’s Content Analyzer evaluates the performance of your content based on various metrics, including readability, SEO, and engagement. It helps identify areas for improvement to enhance content effectiveness.
• Competitive Analysis: Gain insights into how your content compares with hospitality competitors by analyzing their keyword strategies, backlinks, and content performance. This helps you identify gaps and opportunities to outperform competitors.

Using Performance Data To Refine and Improve Content

A content audit can help a hotel decide where to start improvements based on performance metrics and relevance. Hotels should perform a content audit by first gathering and categorizing all content from their website, social platforms, and booking sites, and then evaluating the performance data, user feedback, engagement metrics, and SEO for each to identify which could be improved.

Analyze Performance Data

Routinely review performance metrics, including organic traffic, bounce rate, average session duration, and conversion rates. Use these insights to pinpoint which aspects of your content are performing well and which need improvement. A hotelier should be prepared to update their website’s content annually, especially mid- and bottom-funnel content, to prevent it from feeling stale or outdated, which will negatively impact the page’s performance. Make it a habit to track your content and revisit it frequently—even before performance metrics bottom out—to make sure it’s still helpful to the reader.

Improving Underperforming Content:

• Content Refresh: Update outdated or underperforming content with new information, improved visuals, or better structure. This can help improve its relevance and performance.
• Enhanced Engagement: Add multimedia elements such as images, videos, or infographics to content that lacks visual appeal. Enhancing content with engaging visuals can boost user interaction and retention.

User Feedback

Gather and analyze user feedback from surveys, comments, and social media interactions. Understand what users find valuable or lacking in your content to make targeted improvements.

Addressing User Needs:

• Feedback Integration: Incorporate user suggestions and address common questions or concerns mentioned in feedback. Tailoring content to meet user needs and expectations can enhance its relevance and value.
• Usability Improvements: Modify content based on usability feedback, such as improving navigation, readability, or mobile optimization to better serve users’ needs.

Engagement Metrics 

Evaluate metrics such as time on page, scroll depth, and click-through rates to determine how engaging and useful readers find your content. When deciding what the hotel should blog about, consider building off materials with higher engagement rates to deepen the connection with your audience.

Utilizing Successful Topics:

• Content Creation: If a particular topic is attracting a lot of traffic and engagement, consider creating additional related content. This could include follow-up articles, in-depth guides, or complementary pieces that explore related aspects in greater detail.
• Topic Clusters: Develop a content cluster around successful topics, where a main pillar page links to several related articles. This strategy helps build the hotel’s authority on the topic and improves link-building for SEO.

SEO Performance

Track keyword rankings and organic search performance to assess how well your content is optimized. Identify any gaps or opportunities for better keyword integration or content adjustments.

Refining Keyword Strategy:

• Keyword Performance: If certain keywords are not driving the expected traffic, revisit and refine your keyword strategy. Research alternative or long-tail keywords that may be more relevant or have lower competition.
• Content Optimization: Adjust existing content to better target keywords. This may involve rewriting headings, updating meta descriptions, or incorporating new keywords in a natural, contextually relevant manner.

For more on how to create content that ranks, check out the rest of this series.

Are you ready to start shaping your hotel’s marketing efforts around content performance metrics? Let TravelBoom help. We’re experts at providing customized insights and strategic marketing plans to drive engagement and boost direct bookings. Contact us for a free evaluation today.

Alyssa Fate is the Client Success Manager at TravelBoom Marketing. Connect with Alyssa at LinkedIn.

About TravelBoom Marketing

TravelBoom specializes in developing and executing customized data-driven marketing solutions that drive direct bookings and growth for its clients. With over 25 years of experience in digital marketing for travel and hotels, TravelBoom leverages advanced data science and analytics to uncover insights and develop strategies that greatly enhance results for our clients and reduce reliance on third-party channels. TravelBoom is also host of the world’s #1 ranked Hotel Marketing Podcast and its quarterly Traveler Sentiment Study both of which can be found at www.travelboommarketing.com.