As Google continues to toy with algorithms, there’s much speculation about how the mighty search engine values a website. Google generally stays pretty mum about the changes but has confirmed it made an update at the end of April, dubbed Google Phantom 2 by many bloggers.

A few tech-savvy souls have taken to the dashboards and produced their estimations of exactly what algorithm changes have occurred, and it’s relatively easy to sum up: Google is getting smarter about how it assesses and ranks content quality. This means that websites must strive to provide the very best user experience on both technical and content levels.

So what can hotels do to maintain their rankings in an already competitive marketplace where OTAs have an easy edge?

1). Focus on user engagement

Digital marketing company StickyEyes used their Roadmap Tool to survey a number of sites that reported taking a bit hit at the beginning of May. Their results showed that time on site and site speed appear to be likely factors in how Google has shifted its rankings.

This means that in order to stay SERP competitive, hotels must optimize engagement by lengthening time on site and reducing bounce rates as much as possible. Time on site is tricky territory, since travelers desire efficiency as much as anything else. But at the end of the day, they also spend a lot of time in the planning process so your hotel might as well get as much of their attention as possible. Interactive, unique content in the form of videos, photos, and visual representations of content go a long way toward engaging travelers.

For instance, to our point about visual content, a TrustYou study in conjunction with New York University showed that 52% of surveyed travelers agree that Meta-ReviewsTM (i.e., summarized travel review content) are the most user-friendly way to read reviews. Rather than reading line after line of full text reviews with a hotel’s pros and cons, review summaries present travelers with a drill-down of the most important things to know based on travel reviews from across the web. Then, they are presented with visual appeal.

Take the way that this Valamar Hotel presents travel reviews:

2). Get Mobile

Hotels with mobile-friendly sites should benefit from a boost on mobile search. This update, dubbed “Mobilegeddon” or “Mobilepocalypse” will adjust rankings based on your site’s usability on mobile. To quickly see how your site stacks up on mobile , you can use this mobile-friendly test tool from Google. If you fail the test, it may be time to invest in a new, mobile friendly design.

3). Know your audience

As if bounce rates weren’t cause enough for concern before, it appears that with the introduction of Google’s latest algorithm, higher bounce rates will also contribute to lower rankings. Part of dealing with bounce rates is providing better content; however, the other element is focusing on the right traveler. If your marketing efforts are more focused on volume than quality, your site will pay the price. All SEO, PPC, and social media strategies should be evaluated for the quality of the audience they bring to the website. Fortunately, quality site visits also increase user engagement and booking conversions, so make it a priority.

4). Tech review

A site review for technical elements such as load speed, errors, and whether a link strategy is serving or hindering efforts is a good idea on a regular basis anyway.

*TrustYou’s Meta-Reviews are based solely on verified travel reviews from more than 250 sources worldwide. They do not include data from TripAdvisor.