Onsite SEO Strategy for a large accommodation site

[SCL-SEO]

Hi All

I have been thinking about the best strategy for keyword optimisation on a forthcoming accommodation website I am involved with. This may be a bit of a newbie type question, but most of my work has been on considerably smaller sites to date....

Lets say the site will have 1 primary landing page for "Hotels in Bristol" and then 50 pages that are each for a hotel in Bristol. The aim would be for the primary page which will be a browse/search result type page to rank well for the term 'Hotels in Bristol' and other similar terms.

If each of the hotel listing pages that have a hotel in Bristol on, have the phrase 'Hotel in Bristol' contained within the title, url, page content, maybe headings/alt tags etc. will the result be that the rank for the site is 'spread too thin' across the domain? Whats the best way to drive all the relevancy and keyword usage on the 50 listing pages, to the primary page such that that is the one that ranks well? And the other pages rank more for the hotel name etc?

I guess one way would be to avoid using the words hotels and Bristol in the title/URL etc.. but the natural approach for usability (not SEO) would be to use these words i.e. http://www.newtravelsite.com/hotels/bristol/stgeorgeshotel/

Or would each of the 50 listing pages simply need a followed, anchored link pointing  the main landing page?

I'm sure there may be a fundamental technique to do this that has alluded me so far, but any help, thoughts or guidance much appreciated!

Regards

Simon

[AndyMacLean]

If I understand you right heres a few things id do:

• http://www.newtravelsite.com/hotels/bristol/stgeorgeshotel/ isnt a great url protocol as you have 3 sub folders in there i.e. /hotels / bristol / stgeorgeshotel. It would be better as something like /hotels-bristol-st-georges-hotel. Also not the spacing between the hotel name, works better for seo and will help clickthrough rate in search results.
• Optimise the Bristol hotel page for Bristol hotel phrases. Optimise the hotel specific pages for hotel specific phrases, clickthrough rate and conversion rate should be good that way. You could also mix it up a bit on the hotel specific pages e.g. if you have a hotel near the docklands, inc it in your page title/h1 etc e.g. XYZ Hotel near Bristol Docklands. That way you're actually optimising for hotel name + hotel near Bristol Docklands (which should be pretty easy to rank for).
• Inc user reviews on the hotel pages and use rich snippets for the reviews, review count, pricing - this will then show up in your search results and give you a huge lift in clickthrough rate (ive seen 30%+ on the last site I did it for). Aside from that reviews are pretty vital in the hotel decision process. Obviously if the sites new this is a bit tricky though.

Andy

[SCL-SEO]

Many thanks for the input Andy. Good call on less sub folders, have a few sites with this kind of structure, will change for some pages and monitor results... and yes, I just typed a not real example of the hotel name, totally agree spaces (dashes) are required.

Great idea with the mixing it up too, those are the perfect kind of long tail phrases that will add up and help massively.

And yes, we are looking at user reviews, but limiting it to people that have booked via the site to avoid the 'trip advisor effect' and be as genuine as possible! As for showing in the SERPs - I've seen uplift too following adding rich-snippet review data on an ecommerce site, but they are so easy to game at the moment!

Cheers

Simon