Property type
SEO for pubs with rooms and inns: two businesses, one listing, and the rooms hidden behind the menu
A pub with six rooms is two businesses sharing one Google listing, and the listing can only have one primary category. Set to Pub, it gets the food features and none of the room ones: no class, no check-in times, no price list, no free booking link. Set to Inn, the rooms appear in the hotel module with a price. Most of the pubs with rooms we audit are set to Pub, sell the rooms through Booking.com because nobody can find them on the site, and lose a sixth of every room night as a result. From £399 a month; the listing build alone is £250.
Two businesses, one listing
How Google treats a pub with rooms, and what to set
| Search | What Google shows | What the listing needs |
|---|---|---|
| "Sunday lunch near me", "dog friendly pub Llangollen" | The local pack: three places with a rating, hours and "open now" | Pub or Bar as a category, food photos, the menu link, hours exact including the kitchen's |
| "pub with rooms Llangollen", "inn near Offa's Dyke" | The hotel module: a map with prices, then the panel with a price list | Inn as the primary category, class, check-in times, room photos, your own rate in the price list |
| The pub's name | The knowledge panel with both: hours, menu, reviews, and the room price list if the category allows it | Everything above, plus the rooms page linked from the site's main menu |
We set the primary category for the business you want to grow, keep the other as an additional category, and make sure the food reviews and the room reviews both land on the one listing, because the module reads the total.
The rooms page
Out from behind the menu, with a rate on it
On most pub websites the rooms are a paragraph under “About” with a phone number. The guest searching at ten at night cannot see a price or a free night and books through the OTA that can. The fix is a rooms page in the main menu, one section per room with the bed, the bathroom, the noise from the bar on a Friday stated honestly, a from-rate, and a way to book now: a simple engine, or for four rooms a form and a rate typed into the Google listing.
Tied tenants often have a template site from the pub company with limited editing. We work within it where the rooms page can be built, and where it cannot, a small rooms site on your own domain is the answer, quoted separately.
The searches an inn wins
Walkers, cyclists, dogs, match days and the wedding up the road
- “pub with rooms on the Offa's Dyke path”
- “dog friendly inn with log fire North Wales”
- “somewhere to stay near Wrexham for the match”
- “inn near Ruthin Castle for a wedding”
- “pub accommodation for cyclists Horseshoe Pass”
- “Sunday lunch and a night, Shropshire hills”
Each is a page: the route, the distance from the door, the drying room, the early breakfast, the packed lunch, the rate. No OTA has written it.
The trade that already knows you
The local bookings that should never cost commission
A pub's rooms fill from people who already know the pub: the family visiting for a christening, the wedding guests from the venue up the road, the contractors on the site in the next village, the regulars' relatives at Christmas, the away supporters on a match day. Every one of them searches the pub's name or asks at the bar, and every one that ends up on Booking.com is a commission on a guest the pub found itself. A card on the bar with the rooms link, the venue's recommended-stays list carrying your rate, and the name search landing on your own price list stop it.
The numbers for your own rooms are in the calculator on the pricing page.
A month for an inn
- Listing checked: category, kitchen and reception hours, the price list with real dates
- The rooms page rates matched to the engine or the rate card
- Food and room reviews asked for the same way, replied to within two days
- One page a month: a route, a season, an event, a reason
- The venue, the route sites and the town's visitor page carrying the rooms
- The report: room nights by source, what the listing sent, what is next
Questions hotel owners ask us
Should the Google category be Inn or Pub?
It depends which business you want the listing to grow. Google's lodging features, the class, the check-in times and the price list, attach to a lodging category, so if the rooms are the growth, Inn is primary and Pub or Bar is additional. If the bar is the business and the rooms are a bonus, the reverse. We choose by the bookings you want and say why.
Do we need a separate website for the rooms?
Not usually. The rooms need their own pages on the pub's site, with rates and a way to book, linked from the top of the menu rather than buried under it. Where the pub's site is a brewery template that cannot carry that, a small rooms site on your own domain is the fix, and it is quoted separately.
We take room bookings by phone. Is that enough?
For four rooms and a landlord who answers, sometimes. The trouble is the guest searching at ten at night who cannot see a price or availability, and books the OTA that can. A simple engine on the rooms page and a rate typed into the Google listing catches those, and the phone bookings still count as direct.
Does the food side help the rooms rank?
Yes, twice. Food reviews lift the listing's rating and count, which the hotel module reads, and the Sunday lunch, the quiz night and the beer garden are the reasons people search the pub by name, which is the search that should book the room direct.
Find out whether your rooms appear on Google at all
Send us the pub's name. We check which category the listing is set to, whether the rooms show in the hotel module with a price, and where the name search sends a guest who wants a room.