An acclaimed Napa Valley Restaurant, Hotel, and Spa, Auberge du Soleil recently unveiled a new FINE website redesign that is every bit as iconic as their heritage. From the stunning imagery to the seamless website functionality, it’s easy to see why this web destination continues to snap up hospitality industry awards and online reservations alike.

The new Auberge website also shines from a search-visibility standpoint. Since the launch of the new website last year, Auberge du Soleil has enjoyed highest-ever levels of natural search traffic, with huge increases in referrals from Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

• 25% INCREASES in organic traffic (average) over the previous year.
• 17% INCREASES in organic traffic (average) from previous months. From month-to-month, traffic continues to improve.

In particular, Auberge began to enjoy Increased prominence on non-branded search terms as a result of an improved focus on long-tail keywords. As website content was enhanced and optimized, a broader range of holistic, long-tail terms emerged as a key driver of search-engine traffic.

A critical component of the new FINE site was creating an online presence that wasn’t just search friendly, but search optimized. Although we can’t give away every secret of our specialized SEO approach to Auberge, FINE always pays attention to a variety of best practices during any redesign. These include things like:

• Website Architecture: FINE creates website architectures and internal linking structures that made it easier for engines to not only discover pages, but more likely for pages to get indexed – and at a higher position.
• Website Keywords: Keywords are carefully researched against core specialties and offerings, and then holistically incorporated throughout website content.
• Redesign Discovery: FINE carefully updates links, redirects page, and employs a variety of strategies to not only help maintain website positions after a redesign – but ideally to increase traffic even more.
• Analytics Insights: From measuring organic traffic to looking at online conversions, FINE helps hospitality clients understand the “before and after” of website performance – as well as next steps to improve visibility even more.

A perfect example of design working in tandem with SEO, the new Auberge du Soleil website is crafted not only to attract more traffic, but to retain and convert the additional traffic that it receives. Just as their property and service have set the standard for Napa hospitality, Auberge has become a beacon of impeccable search visibility and design in hospitality websites.

Written by Sarah Mackenzie.