The necessity of SEO for tourism business

It used to be that your customers would walk into a travel agency, browse a catalogue, choose a destination and the agency would do the rest. Back then, there was no need for SEO for travelling. Today, people sit down at a computer, tablet or smartphone to choose a country to travel to.

The state of the travel industry

With websites like Booking and AirBnB getting bigger by the day, small travel agencies have to fight an uphill battle to start ranking and more importantly, continue selling bookings.

Before we delve into the actual ranking factors and SEO best practices for promoting a travel agency, there are a few key points to keep in mind about the niche itself:

There are two types of websites competing for the top spots: those that offer services (travel agencies, hotels, airlines, etc.) and those that promote content (personal blogs, travel blogs, review sites, etc.). To a certain extent, you will be competing with both.

Search engines have become a favourite way for travellers to do research about everything related to travel.

People are more likely to enter more general terms as a search query - they will rarely search for a specific agency or hotel - in other words, ranking for long tail keywords is crucial.

A visitor will not make a conversion on their first visit and will almost never visit just one travel website - they will do a fair amount of research, explore several options and then make their choice. Your goal is to keep them coming back, not to get a conversion as soon as possible.

The best SEO factors in the travel industry

According to SearchMetrics, the five most important ranking factors in the travel industry are:

    Word count - pages that rank in the top 10 often contain more than 2,500 words.

    Content relevancy - the information you present on a page should match the user's intent. In other words, don't try to push a sale on every page.

    Number of images. High ranking pages will have a lot of images, but that's more because of the quality of those images than the quantity. You want to tell a story, help people visualise themselves there and illustrate the destination, not clutter up random images of random beaches.

    List marker - high ranking pages will have more markers - due to the fact that people really want to find relevant, structured and useful information, information they can easily browse.

    Number of internal links - high ranking pages will have over 150 internal links (23% more than average). This is especially true for large sites with thousands of pages. In other words, make sure that your visitors can browse your website seamlessly and that your internal link structure is logical not only to search engine crawlers, but also to your potential customers.

While these factors are considered the most important, let's not forget that they are only a piece of the larger puzzle.

Auditing a travel firm's website

If you've been running a travel website for a while, you already have a lot of resources (both on and off your pages). The first step in any successful campaign is a website audit, which will tell you what to focus on to see the best results as soon as possible. This can reveal anything from duplicate content issues to broken internal links.

In fact, these are the two factors that most often cause a drop in rankings - large websites will often inadvertently have a lot of duplicate content, which is sometimes easy to fix but can also require a hefty amount of work.

Another problem we often encounter is a poorly structured website that prevents the user from being able to navigate easily. Not only will this hurt your rankings, but it will also cause you to lose customers. Which will lower your ranking.

Technical SEO

Page speed, load times, image sizes, server issues and anything that falls into the "technical" category is usually a one-time fix. In the age of mobile-friendly indexes, you need to make sure your pages are adaptive. Having an SSL certificate is just as important as ensuring GDPR compliance.

Competitor Analysis

Once we know what your assets are, we'll look at what your competitors are doing. This will include everything from the keywords they are and aren't ranking for, the destinations they are promoting, the images they are using, the stories they are telling.

Keyword research

In parallel with the competitor check mentioned above, we do keyword research for your website and your offer. This will tell us two things: what criteria you should be ranking for and what keywords you should stop chasing. You'd be surprised how attracting traffic to a page that doesn't seem to be conducive to conversions can increase bookings. If you have the right website structure and of course you give the right information.

It will also be easier, and often better, to rank for more specific keywords (e.g. "rock climbing holidays for couples" instead of "adventure holidays"). It will target the visitor at a more specific stage of the buyer's journey, when they have a clearer understanding of what they need to find. These keywords can often be less competitive, but their main advantage is that they increase conversion rates.

Pay-per-click advertising

Whilst investing in paid advertising can often lead to some quick results, we will always use our other tactics - these are more focused on the long term and will remain in place long after your PPC adverts stop showing.

Promotional mailings

Email marketing is a great way to reach out to existing and interested parties and perhaps inspire them to start planning their next trip. The main challenge here is finding the right mix of promoting your latest offers and showcasing the destination you are travelling for.

Content marketing for a travel agency

We've touched on the importance of proper and quality information several times already. In fact, storytelling is far more important in the travel industry than in any other online niche.

Even though we're discussing content marketing for travel, it's actually a step that needs to be taken somewhere between the research and marketing part of your SEO journey.

Creating landing pages that aren't aimed at selling - pages that are detailed, informative and engaging enough to capture the reader's imagination and that answer a specific query will have a much easier chance of ranking. Whilst they won't convert on their own, a well thought out internal link structure and call to action will nudge your visitors in the right direction.

Having original images is also a bonus - you can use them to add more links, and a unique photography style will help you stand out and be memorable.