About the Client
Hotel San Luis Village is a charming beachfront hotel located on San Andrés Island in Colombia. While the hotel had an excellent reputation with travelers, its website wasn’t getting the attention it deserved. Most bookings were coming through third-party travel platforms, not directly through the hotel’s own website.
The owners wanted to improve their Google visibility, attract more organic visitors, and generate more direct bookings.
The Challenge
When we started, the website had:
- Very few quality backlinks.
- Low domain authority compared to competitors.
- Limited organic traffic and poor indexing.
- Main keywords buried on pages 4–5 of Google.
In short, the site was hard to find online, even for people who were searching specifically for San Luis Village.
Our Approach: A Diverse Backlink Strategy
To solve this, we built a diverse backlink profile using 15 different types of backlinks. This gave the site a natural mix of authority signals, which Google favors.
Here’s what we did:
- Profile Backlinks → Created branded profiles on trusted sites.
- Social Bookmarks → Shared pages to speed up indexing.
- Blog Comments → Left thoughtful comments on niche travel blogs.
- Contextual PBN Links → Added authority links from relevant content.
- Web 2.0 Backlinks → Published supporting articles on blogging platforms.
- Article Submissions → Shared informative travel-related articles.
- Forum Posts → Engaged in discussions on travel and tourism forums.
- Social Signals → Boosted brand mentions across social platforms.
- Image Submissions → Shared optimized hotel photos with backlinks.
- Business Listings → Added the hotel to trusted travel directories.
- Tier 2 & Tier 3 Backlinks → Strengthened the first layer of links for extra authority.
- Guest Posts → Published articles on niche-relevant travel sites.
- Local Citations → Listed the hotel on local business directories.
By combining these different backlink types, we created a strong, natural, and safe link profile that improved the site’s trustworthiness in Google’s eyes.
The Results
- Keyword Rankings:
- Hotel San Luis Village San Andrés → from Page 4 to Top 3 on Page 1.
- Mejores hoteles en San Andrés → from Page 5 to Page 1.
- Reserva Hotel San Luis Village → now Top 5 on Page 1.
- Branded keyword {GALAXY77} → now on Google’s first page.
- Traffic Growth:
- Organic traffic increased by 180% in 4 months.
- Direct bookings went up as travelers found the site more easily.
- Domain Authority:
- Improved from 14 → 28.
- Indexed pages increased by 35%, leading to more search impressions.
Key Lessons for Business Owners
- Diverse backlinks matter – Using many link types creates a natural, trusted profile.
- Tiered link building works – Supporting your main backlinks makes them stronger.
- Relevance is key – Placing links in travel-related content boosted authority faster.
- SEO = more direct business – The hotel now gets more bookings without relying only on OTAs.
Conclusion
Our backlink strategy transformed Hotel San Luis Village’s online presence. By diversifying links and focusing on relevance, we helped the hotel move from being nearly invisible to ranking on Google’s first page for its main keywords.
This same approach can be applied to any business website—whether you’re in travel, hospitality, e-commerce, or local services. A smart backlink strategy not only increases rankings but also builds brand trust and drives real business results.