For hotels, rankings and traffic only tell part of the SEO story. The real measure of success is whether that visibility turns into bookings and revenue.
For The Penny Hotel, a boutique hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the challenge was to grow direct organic revenue in one of the most competitive hospitality markets in the United States.
The Penny wasn’t only competing with other hotels. Major OTAs, travel publishers, review platforms, and local media were all competing for visibility across the searches travelers use when planning a trip to Williamsburg and Brooklyn.
Rather than focusing on driving more traffic alone, three&six developed an integrated SEO and CRO strategy designed to attract more qualified travelers, build The Penny’s authority around its neighborhood, and turn that demand into direct bookings.
Between March 2025 and April 2026, organic revenue increased 63%, while purchases increased 29%
Organic sessions? They increased by just 4%.
That’s an important distinction. The strategy didn’t simply generate more traffic. It generated more value from the traffic reaching the website.
The Challenge: Reaching Travelers Earlier
Our initial competitor analysis identified a clear opportunity.
The Penny was strongly associated with its brand, but had more limited visibility across the wider non-branded searches influencing where travelers chose to stay.
And those searches don’t always start with “Williamsburg hotel.”
Travelers might begin by looking for things to do, restaurants, rooftop bars, events, wedding venues, or neighborhood recommendations. Across many of these searches, OTAs, publishers, local guides, and competing hotels were already capturing demand.
Waiting until someone actively searched for accommodation meant entering the conversation much later.
We wanted The Penny to be useful earlier.
Becoming a Williamsburg Resource
To achieve that, we built a destination-led content strategy around the questions, experiences, and places travelers were already searching for.
More than 20 pieces of content were developed covering areas including:
- Dining and nightlife
- Things to do and local attractions
- Events and seasonal experiences
- Weddings and celebrations
- Local guides and itineraries
- Rooftop experiences
- Pet-friendly travel
Topics weren’t selected simply to increase publishing volume. Search demand, traveler intent, seasonality, competitive opportunity, and relevance to The Penny’s audience all influenced what we prioritized.
During the campaign period, the content program generated significant organic visibility, driving hundreds of thousands of impressions and thousands of clicks.
But traffic to the blog wasn’t the end goal.
The content was there to introduce new travelers to The Penny, build its authority around Williamsburg, and create pathways into the parts of the website that could ultimately drive a booking.
Connecting Content With Commercial Intent
Alongside the content strategy, we prioritized the pages with the greatest influence on booking decisions.
This included:
- Homepage
- Rooms hub and individual room pages
- Offers
- Amenities
- Neighborhood content
- Location-led landing pages
Each page was reviewed based on both search opportunity and its role within the booking journey.
That meant expanding content where it was needed, strengthening internal linking, improving metadata and headings, addressing technical SEO opportunities, and refining page structures and calls to action.
The aim was simple: someone discovering The Penny through a Williamsburg guide shouldn’t reach a dead end.
They should be able to move naturally from researching the neighborhood to exploring the hotel, comparing rooms and offers, and checking availability.
Growing Non-Branded Visibility
Together, these changes significantly expanded The Penny’s presence across non-branded search.
Total ranking keywords increased 20%, while non-branded keywords increased 35%.
More importantly, non-branded keywords ranking in Google’s Top 10 increased from 112 to 260 — growth of 132%.
Individual keyword improvements included:
- “best hotels in williamsburg brooklyn” — position 24 to 7
- “things to do in williamsburg brooklyn ny” — position 34 to 5
- “williamsburg new york hotels” — position 15 to 6
- “dog friendly hotels brooklyn ny” — unranked to position 5
- “williamsburg brooklyn attractions” — position 18 to 9
- “hotel rooftop williamsburg brooklyn” — position 51 to 14
The Penny was no longer only appearing when travelers were actively looking for accommodation. It was gaining visibility across the wider searches influencing a trip to Williamsburg.
Turning Search Visibility Into Bookings
Getting the right travelers to the website was only half the job.
We also needed to understand what happened once they arrived.
Monthly CRO audits ran alongside the SEO strategy, using heatmaps, scroll-depth analysis, click behaviour, engagement data, and user journeys to identify where the website could work harder.
These insights informed recommendations around booking pathways, room presentation, offer positioning, page hierarchy, calls to action, above-the-fold messaging, and mobile usability.
This created a continuous feedback loop between acquisition and conversion. SEO helped bring qualified travelers to the website, while CRO helped remove friction between discovery and booking.
4% More Organic Sessions. 63% More Organic Revenue.
This is where the impact of the strategy becomes clearest.
Organic sessions increased just 4%
Over the same period:
- Purchases increased 29%
- Organic revenue increased 63%
- Engaged sessions increased 6%
- Average engagement time increased 23%
- Events per session increased 46%
- Engagement rate reached 72.68%
The campaign delivered substantial organic revenue growth, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional revenue compared with the previous period.
The additional organic revenue generated represented a return of more than 14 times the SEO and CRO investment.
For us, that’s the metric that brings the rest of the SEO data into context.
What Can Hotel Marketers Take From This?
The Penny’s growth reinforces something we see repeatedly across hospitality search: travelers don’t begin and end their journey with a hotel search.
They research destinations, neighborhoods, restaurants, experiences, events, room types, offers, and practical questions along the way.
Being visible during those moments gives hotels more opportunities to influence where someone ultimately chooses to stay — and reduces the amount of that discovery journey being handed to OTAs and third-party publishers.
But visibility on its own isn’t enough.
The Penny’s results came from connecting destination-led content with commercial page optimization, internal linking, technical SEO, and ongoing CRO rather than treating each as a separate activity.
The result?
- 4% more organic sessions.
- 29% more purchases.
- 63% more organic revenue.
Rankings and traffic matter. But for hotels, they’re not the end goal.
The real measure of a successful search strategy is whether it helps put more heads in beds.