Local SEO for a hotel or restaurant in Thailand

Local SEO is the part of being found that matters most to a venue, because your guests are not searching the whole internet. They are searching a place: "hotel in Sarti", "brunch near me", your own name plus the town. Winning those searches is a specific job, and most of it comes down to a few things you can control.

The two searches that bring you guests

Almost every valuable search a venue gets is one of two kinds:

• Your own name. Someone already knows you, or saw your sign, and searches you by name. You should win this every time. Losing it, to an OTA, an aggregator, or nothing at all, is the most expensive miss there is, because that guest had already decided.
• The category, in your area. "Seafood restaurant Sarti", "hotel near me", "cafe Halkidiki". These are new guests, deciding, and this is where local SEO is won or lost.

The local pack: the map and the three results

For most local searches, Google shows a box near the top with a map and usually three businesses. That box, the local pack, gets the clicks. Getting into it is most of the work, and Google decides who appears on three things:

• Relevance. How well your business matches the search. Your Google Business Profile category and information drive this.
• Distance. How close you are to the searcher or the place they named. You cannot move, but distance is only one factor.
• Prominence. How established and trusted you look online: reviews, mentions, a real website, consistent information.

You can influence two of the three, and prominence is where most venues are leaving the most on the table.

The three things that actually move it

1. A complete, accurate Google Business Profile. This is the foundation of local ranking, and setting it up properly is a job in itself. We cover it in full in the Google Business Profile guide.
2. Consistent NAP. Your Name, Address and Phone, matching exactly across your website, Google, and any directory you are listed in. When they conflict, Google trusts the listing less. When they agree everywhere, it trusts it more.
3. Reviews, and your replies. The number, how recent they are, and the fact that you answer them all feed both the ranking and the guest's decision to trust you. A steady trickle of real reviews beats a burst and then silence.

Ranking for your own name

This one is often just about having a real website that is built to be found. If someone searches your property by name and an OTA sits above you, that is a leak worth fixing first, and it is usually the cheapest to fix. A restaurant version of this, with the menu problem front and centre, is covered in why your restaurant is not showing on Google.

What helps, and what is a waste

Helps: the profile, consistent information, real reviews, a fast site built to be found, and pages written for the searches guests in your area actually type, in both languages (bilingual SEO is its own job).

A waste: paying for hundreds of low-quality backlinks, stuffing keywords into your business name (which can get the listing suspended), or a beautiful site that no one can find. Being found is not the same as looking good.

If you are not sure why you are not showing up in your own area, tell us what you are working with and we will look at where the local search is leaking. We build hotel and restaurant sites with all of this built in.