6 Tips for Promoting Your Online Booking Site

There is no point in having a beautiful online booking site if potential customers don’t know it exists. To get people to find it and use it, you must create an effective website promotion strategy.

But where to begin? 

In this post, you’ll learn how to promote your website using six cost-effective yet powerful tactics.

6 Ways to Promote Your Online Booking Site

1. Fine-Tune Your SEO Strategy

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website to improve its visibility in search engines. It’s still the most effective website promotion strategy considering that Google is the leading source of organic search traffic. It has a market share of 63.41%.

To fine-tune your SEO strategy, focus on on-page SEO, link building, and technical SEO.

On-page SEO or on-site SEO involves optimizing multiple elements of your website with specific keywords, such as meta descriptions, website content (text, images, videos, etc.) headings, internal links and more. This will ensure that when users Google a relevant query, your site will crop up more frequently.

For instance, online travel booking site Kayak optimizes its meta description content with specific keywords such as “cheap flights “or “cheapest airline tickets”.

Here are other tips on how to optimize your online booking site for on-page SEO:

• Craft engaging meta descriptions. Descriptions should be between 155-160 characters long.
• Craft title tags with target keywords and accurately describe page content. Keep title tags between 50 and 60 characters.
• Create relevant content. It should be tailored to your target audience and include target keywords
• Utilize descriptive image filenames and informative alt tags. These should also include target keywords.

Another SEO tactic for promoting your online booking site is link-building. This off-page SEO technique involves getting backlinks from other relevant websites with a high domain authority. 

According to Backlinko, pages with more backlinks tend to rank better than those with fewer backlinks. 

Here are proven link-building tactics you can use:

• Utilize a link-building tool like Semrush to find backlink opportunities. Use the tool to find broken links on reputable sites and convince the owners to replace them with working links to your site. You can also use it to spy on your competitors’ backlink strategy, then up your game from there.
• Create high-quality content that people want to link to (we’ll talk about blogging later).
• Consider guest blogging (more on this later).

Technical SEO is another important component of SEO. It involves improving your website to meet the technical requirements of modern search engines. The better you meet their requirements, the more likely you’ll rank high in search engine results pages.

Implement a “flat” website structure as part of your technical SEO. That means you should ensure all your online booking site pages are just a few links from each other. This will make it easy for search engines to crawl your site to know what it’s about. 

Improving your site speed also helps. Google has said it takes this into account to determine search rankings. The recommended load time is a maximum of three seconds. 

You can use Google Page Insights to determine what’s causing your site to load slowly. Then follow the tool’s suggestions. It may ask you to compress images, leverage caching or minify your HTML, among others. 

Tools like TinyPNG can help you compress your site pictures. Tidio and Nostra AI, meanwhile, are popular tools for caching. Caching entails saving copies of files in a designated storage so these can be accessed easily and are no longer loaded from scratch. To minify HTML, you can use tools like HTMLMinifier or simply hire a skilled web developer. Minifying HTML involves removing unnecessary characters in a website’s HTML code.

2. Be an Active Blogger

Blogging is not only a great way to engage with potential customers, but also to increase traffic to your online booking site. More than 80% of web queries are informational in nature. That means, if you publish content that’s relevant to user queries, your online booking site can appear in search engine results pages and generate traffic. And if your blog post is any good, high-authority sites may even link to it and further enhance your site visibility (remember our point on link-building?).

Check out these informative blog posts published on the website of Siren, a beauty salon in New York:

Here are a few tips to help you run a successful blog for your booking site:

• Create valuable content around the type of services you offer. Siren, for instance, is a beauty salon so it uses its blog to offer insights into hair grooming and products.
• Use high-quality visuals. Create video content, infographics and use impactful images to make your blog more engaging.
• Incorporate relevant keywords. As mentioned, keywords help improve your blog’s search rankings.

You can also start guest blogging. This involves writing and publishing guest blogs on other websites related to your industry. These guest posts usually include links to the author’s own site. So, guest blogging is a great way to promote your online booking site and reach a wider audience. Plus, it can drive traffic to your site, while establishing your credibility and authority.

Here are a few key tips to get you started:

• Identify relevant blogs that align with your brand’s values and goals. You can use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and BuzzSumo to identify target blogs. Target sites with a domain authority of 50 and above. Domain authority is a metric developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website will appear in search engine results pages given a relevant query. 

• Alternatively, you can perform a quick Google search for “top blogs or best blogs” + “your industry” to find websites you can guest blog on.
• Reach out to the blog owners. Send an enticing pitch explaining why a guest blog on their site would benefit their readers.
• Create the guest post. The high-quality content should include a link to your online booking site.

Once your guest post is published, share it across your social media channels, newsletter, and other platforms.

3. Experiment with Other Types of Content Marketing

Content marketing is a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage your target audience. Quality content marketing can not only help you build brand trust and authority, but also engage your audience and drive traffic to your site.

We’ve already discussed two types of content marketing: blogging and guest posting.

But there are other types of content marketing you can leverage. These include social media posts, podcasts, among others. You can either create these from scratch or repurpose already-existing content.

Just like blog posts and guest posts, creating other types of content from scratch is just a matter of generating material that caters to the interests of your target audience. 

To produce different types of content marketing material from existing content, simply find your highest-performing pieces. Repurpose your most successful content to extend its reach and engage new audiences. By adapting your top-performing pieces into different formats like 

infographics, videos, or social media snippets, you can tap into new demographics and keep your content fresh and relevant.

Imagine for example that you offer eye services and have a blog post titled "Top 10 Common Eye Disorders and Diseases" that generated thousands of views. You can create social media posts for each disorder and disease with a brief description.

Don’t forget to include a link to the original site article in your post to boost website traffic. See how Family Medical Center based in Orlando did this:

You can utilize an AI article summarizer tool to create digestible summaries out of long-form blog posts for your social posts. All you need to do is paste your blog post in the input field.  

The tool analyzes the text and extracts the most important information. It then displays the resulting text in an easy-to-scan format. 

You can also convert long-form content into visually appealing infographics and videos you can share across Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, again with links to the original site content. 

Here’s another idea. Why not create a podcast episode based on your best-performing blog post? You can promote your online booking site as you give useful tips to your target audience. Then give them a link to the original blog post for additional information. 

There are plenty of options for repurposing content. All you need is to choose the option that best suits your target audience.

4. Leverage Email Marketing

Email is the preferred way for customers to communicate with brands. 

Here is the proof:

It’s also cost-effective and allows you to connect with your audience directly.

So, why not use email marketing to promote your website?

But before you launch an email marketing campaign, you’ll need to build an extensive email list. You can create a compelling lead magnet (a useful ebook, perhaps) and offer this exclusive content in exchange for email addresses. You can promote the lead magnet on social media, your podcast, and other platforms. 

You can also collect email subscribers offline. Why not attend networking and industry events? Create the best digital business card  that enables two-way contact sharing. This way, potential subscribers can access your lead capture form and share their email addresses then and there. With this innovative approach to email list building, you’re likely to stand out and generate many subscribers, too.

Once you have an email list, you can start sending email newsletters. Be sure to embed a direct link to your online booking website. You can use a clear and compelling CTA such as “Schedule a Visit Online,” “Book Your Appointment Now,” etc.

5. Engage with Your Social Media Audience

Of the 5.45 billion Internet users, a staggering 5.17 billion are social media users. 

That means social media is a great way to engage with your target audience. Interacting actively with your social media followers and encouraging discussions can build trust and brand loyalty. In the process, you can promote your online booking site, too, whether directly or indirectly.

So, respond to followers’ questions. Reply to user comments as well. Check out this example social media post. OPMT Vision Center based in Tennessee took the time to thank the user for her wonderful feedback. Even if the center didn’t directly promote its website, it did so indirectly. When people see that the center took the time to answer the feedback (and the positive feedback), they’re more likely head to the center’s website when they need eye care:

You should also respond to users if the comment is negative. Simply telling them you care about what they have to say and are finding ways to improve can help change the mind of an angry customer. It can enhance your brand reputation and, ultimately, boost traffic to your site.

You can use a social listening tool like Brand24 to track mentions of your brand across different social media sites. You can also join relevant groups and forums and interact with members effectively. 

6. List Your Booking Site on Online Directories

Get your business (and site) listed in popular online directories like Google My Business, Yelp, and others.

Getting listed in these local directories is a great way to improve your website’s local SEO strategy. It can improve your brand’s (and site’s) visibility in localized search results.

To show up on Google My Business, in particular, you can either add your business or claim an existing business profile. 

Sign in to Google Maps. If you don’t have an account yet, create one. Then choose either one of these three options to add your business:

• Enter your address in the search bar. Then click Add Your Business in the Business Profile.
• Right-click anywhere on the map, then click Add Your Business.
• Click Menu on the top left, then go to Add Your Business.

Then just follow the on-screen instructions. Make sure you include your online booking website in your profile.

To claim an existing business profile these are the steps to follow, according to Google:

• Open Google Maps.
• Enter the business name in the search bar.
• Click the business name and choose the correct one (if applicable).
• Click Claim This Business and then Manage Now.
• Choose a verification option then follow the instructions. Again, make sure you include the right business website in your profile.

Alternatively, you can use Semrush’s Listing Management tool to automate the entire listing process.

Conclusion

That’s it! These six tips on how to promote your website effectively are not just practical but are also cost-effective. By implementing these tactics, you’ll reach more potential clients by enhancing your online presence.

Keep in mind that different tactics will produce different results. Experiment with a couple of website promotion ideas and constantly measure results. You can then double down on the most effective tactics that work for your type of online booking site.

Good luck!