How do I choose a hotel SEO agency?
Short answer
Choose a hotel SEO agency by checking how they work, not what they promise. Ask for examples of previous work, a clear explanation of what they'll change and why, how they'll measure success and over what timeframe, their experience with hotels and your markets, and who will own the accounts and content. A good proposal starts with an audit, lists specific deliverables, and reports from real Search Console and analytics data. Red flags include guaranteed rankings, secret methods, link buying, and reports full of metrics you can't verify.
By Lodging Engine Editorial Team· Reviewed by Eric Zwanenburg· Last reviewed
Questions to ask
Based on Google's advice on hiring an SEO:
- Can you show examples of previous work?
- Do you follow Google's Search Essentials?
- What will you change on our site — and will you share every change and the reasoning?
- What results do you expect, in what timeframe, and how will you measure them?
- What experience do you have with hotels, and in our country and languages?
- How will we communicate, and how often?
Hotel-specific questions:
- How do you handle booking-engine URLs and tracking?
- How do you approach competing with OTAs?
- Who writes content, and how do you capture first-hand knowledge of our property?
What a good proposal includes
- A written scope: deliverables, hours or pages, what's excluded.
- An audit first, or a clear reason not to.
- Prioritization — what will be done first and why.
- Reporting based on Search Console and analytics.
- Ownership: accounts, content, and data belong to the hotel.
- Exit terms.
Red flags
- Guaranteed rankings — Google says to find someone else if an SEO guarantees first place.
- Secret techniques they won't explain.
- Link packages — buying links for ranking violates Google's spam policies.
- Mass-produced content with no input from your team.
- Owning your accounts or refusing to share access.
- Unverifiable metrics such as "AI visibility scores" with no explanation of how they're measured.
Give limited access first
Google suggests granting read access to Search Console at the audit stage, not write access. Expand access once you trust the provider.
Compare proposals fairly
Line up scope, not price: what exactly you'll receive each month, who does the work, and how results are reported. See how much hotel SEO costs and in-house vs agency.
Checklist
- Examples of previous work reviewed
- Written scope with deliverables and exclusions
- Reporting from real data
- Hotel owns accounts and content
- No guarantees, link buying, or secret methods
- Read-only access granted at the start
Sources
- Do you need an SEO? Tips for hiring an SEO — Google Search Central
- Spam policies for Google web search — Google Search Central
- SEO Starter Guide: the basics — Google Search Central