If your interest lies in increasing the traffic to your travel blog, or the sales made from your travel website, you should know that there is a clear-cut method to steady growth. Through travel SEO, you can learn to maximize the success of your blog or website for search engines. This equates to getting better traffic simply through potential customers and readers searching for particular terms.
This article is a one-stop tour of SEO for your travel website and travel blog. Read to learn about the importance of travel SEO, methods to maximize your use of travel SEO and quick tips that you can start doing today. You will also exclusively learn about common mistakes made by travel websites and the importance of travel blogging for your travel website. This article begins with SEO advice for more general blogging, so if you fit into that categories, this article is also for you.
SEO is a relatively recent and fascinating tool to get your website into higher levels of customer and financial success. Starting monetized blogs is a modern way of generating easier income and there’s a lot of unnecessary and potentially misleading information available on the internet addressing the process. SEO reduces the need to stress over a lot of this misinformation due to its ease and relevance.
Through SEO, your blog ranks higher in Google search results (SERPS, or Search Engine Results Pages). Think about when you use search engines. It’s rare that readers and potential customers click past the first or even second page on SERPs. This is why getting onto the first page of results is how to have a successful blog, and SEO guarantees better chances of it. If you want to check out the way Google is truly ranking sites for particular searches, search keywords related to your blog using incognito browsing. Incognito browsing largely eliminates user-skewed results, so you will be able to see how keywords actually affect SERPs on a time-to-time basis.
GENERAL BLOGGING SEO TIPS
WITH KEYWORDS, LESS CAN MEAN MORE
Try to use single keywords for each post to simplify them and increase your ability to promote them individually.
UPGRADE YOUR OLD POSTS WITH SEO
These tips will prove to be great for blog posts moving forward from when your read through this article. However, if you already have blog posts available, why not give your website more leverage with them. Using Google Search Console, you can notice valuable information, such as non-intentional keywords that will lead traffic to less-highly ranked websites on SERPs. Include these in your older blog posts that you haven’t applied SEO optimization to. This will increase your ranking.
Another option to properly use information about keywords from Google Search Console would be to create new blog posts around them. If you take something away about changing old posts, it is important that you also take away the fact that you should not change the URL.
INTUITIVE SEO STRUCTURING ACROSS YOUR WEBSITE
You will see internal links referred to later in this article, directed more at travel SEO. Internal linking is very important for general blogging too: as you can link old and new content together. If you have a piece of work which features broad keywords, link them to other pieces of work that relate to those keywords. This allows a lot of the blog content across your entire site to be much more accessible. Use breadcrumbs as well, so that users can easily navigate backwards through your website.
LESS OBVIOUS RANKING
Alexa ranking has become more important as the amount of Alexa users has grown. Use the free Alexa toolbar extension, which will allow you an easy way to see the global ranking of your site and different sites. It’s quite accurate and can also show you how many people with the toolbar visit particular sites.
KEYWORDS TRAVELLERS
Keywords don’t just relate to single words. Think of whole phrases, too, and even short sentences. These are the things that potential readers and customers will type into search engines and are the titles that you want to put at the top of your blog posts. It used to be the case that exact keyword matches were the most effective, though Google has become more of a personalized search engine. Users are more often shown the sites that Google considers the most relevant, over those that are the most exactly matching in terms of keywords.
A tool called Longtail Pro is great for keyword research. With regular use, you will learn about how many people from each country search for particular keywords as well as a keyword competitiveness score. If a keyword has a lower score, there is a better chance you will rank for it. Longtail Pro is a paid service, though there are many other free services that you can use for the same benefits. These include UberSuggest, Google’s Related Searches, Google Search Console and Keywords Everywhere. If you do want a paid service, an alternative to Longtail Pro for SEO optimization is Ahrefs.
Maximizing your keyword use will allow you to target obscure keywords that other bloggers may not necessarily be targeting, allowing you to reap a lot of traffic. Don’t rely on your own guesswork to maximize keyword use. This leads to poorer results and wasted time.
PERFECT CONTENT
Google, and other search engines are much more intuitive now. The algorithms use methods to evaluate if users actually find your content interesting and engaging, such as looking at whether users click away straight away or no. Because of this, ensure top quality in your blog posts, without too much jargon and keyword overloading. Pack in the information you know readers are searching for, for the best ratings on Google.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TRAVEL SEO
There are multiple benefits to travel SEO that should be understood prior to utilizing it when in the travel business.
SEO is a sure method to guaranteeing customer success
Customer success extends beyond business growth – it concerns actually interacting with customers in fruitful ways. With more interaction, you facilitate sales and reads.
The alternative is PPC (pay per click)
If you have incorporated PPC into your business promotion, you know that it can often be less cost-effective than you think it will be, especially when you have just started using it. The difference with SEO is its cost-effectiveness from the outset of incorporating it into your business promotion. SEO allows your website to appear in top results, so you don’t have to rely on PPC/ Google AdWords for traffic. These are very effective ways to receive traffic, but SEO trumps them in terms of cost-effectiveness.
With SEO, there is also less maintenance needed. If you stop using SEO, the effects of increased Google rankings still persist whereas with AdWords there is a decrease in traffic.
SEARCH ENGINE LEADS
As you probably know, SEO allows your website to have better success with SERPs, leading to more leads from search engines. Google analytics has shows that both leisure and business travellers use search engines as a main way to begin their booking process for travelling.
The overall importance of SEO, is increasing the percentage of potential customers that visit your website and decreasing the proportion that visits your competitors.
The following sub-parts of this article address methods you can use to optimize SEO for your travel website.
WAYS TO MAXIMIZE YOUR USE OF TRAVEL SEO
PROPERTY PAGE SEO
Property pages allow customers to gain the necessary information to make decisions about booking online. To maximize your conversion rate (how many potential property customers become actual customers), there is a range of things your property pages should include. Detailed descriptions, mapped exact locations and diverse image galleries are basic features. Include rates and past reviews. Live chats help people find the exact information they are looking for. Call to action features prevent loss of traffic – this should be a lead for inquiries, quotes or instant bookings. Of course, next to the call to action feature, have an availability calendar (update this regularly). Have breadcrumbs showing all the pages users have visitors since the homepage, leading to the page they’re currently on. These help visitors navigate through your website much more easily.
For example, Homepage -> England -> London -> Hotels in London -> 5 Star Hotels in London
Having unique titles for different landing pages will also help potential customers feel more attracted to your various promoted properties. Though your properties will of course, often be invariably similar, still try your best to have different features of each in their respective titles. This point must be very evident in the actual property information too. Without unique content, potential customers will be deterred by the over-standardization. Duplicated content for property information suggests a lack of personality about a travel company, which is the opposite of what your customer base are searching for when looking to book vacations. Take inspiration from alternative travel sites such as Air B’n’B that have very unique representations of each different property they promote. Of course, this is because there are different people writing each description. If necessary, give the task of writing descriptions to multiple people in your website management team. Through this method, you will have different minds crafting unique descriptions for each of your properties, maximizing your SEO as well.
Another suggestion to help your property pages reach their full potential is to have give short and rich user reviews. Select your best ones and give the most attractive couple of short sentences and have these feature on the thumbnail-descriptions of your site on SERPs. The effect of this will be to appear in the best possible light to potential customers.
TRAVELLERS BUILDING LINKS
Travel is a highly competitive industry. Off-page SEO is about improving the position of your web site in the list of results people come across on search engines (search engine results page, SERPs). As well as off-page SEO, quality incoming links are another sure method to improving rankings to move your website up on SERPs. Without great links, or with links only from other, low quality websites that may or may not be travel-related, your website can be made to have a lower ranking on Google. Read on to see ways to get better links for your website.
If you promote subjects such as go-to travel destinations and great travel deals, your website may feature on other sites that have press releases targeted at travel consumers. Feature and promote great offers and destinations for opportunities to be shown on bigger travel portals. This will gain you better publicity, and better SEO. Take initiative and connect directly with other travel websites. Mention them on your site, socialise with them through social media giants like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and provide incentives for other travel bloggers to visit your site. The above two suggestions concern external links. On-page SEO is intrinsic to building internal links. Google’s algorithms use these to gain a better insight into how it can link users to topics they search for. Use keywords for the link anchor text.
SEO IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Consider the impact of social media since its boom in usage. Most people actively spend a significant time daily on social media. Visual media is a highly influential type of media that people easily interact with and is perfect for the travel industry to use. Through visual media (film and photography, with some written media to accompany), it becomes easier to connect to other travel bloggers and website owners within the industry. Additionally, social media has become a prominent way to verify websites and bloggers. Many of your customer base will search through your social media when they find you on search engines. For this reason, update your social media profiles regularly with relevant posts.
Your social media profiles should be oriented to travel business and fully SEO optimized. Travel tips and interesting activities are popular reads for regular visitors.
Widely used tip is to have a dedicated fan page for your main social media profiles, such as Facebook. Also, have an allocated monthly budget for promoted ads across more than one social media site.
USING SEO ON YOUR HOMEPAGE
As mentioned, visual media is very effective at keeping traffic on your website long enough to attract their attention to useful information. Combine that information with your visual media and you you’ll pass two milestones with one step. Ways to upgrade the content on your homepage is to include attractive photos of people enjoying themselves either socially or alone at the destinations you promote. Promote the holiday destination properties you advertise, as well as large signs showing special offers you currently have. People visiting your website might now even know you have a blog, so promote the most popular written piece on your homepage for ease of access.
Allow your homepage to tell Google exactly about your business using SEO. Increasing the chances of your homepage being shown on immediate search results can be done by making your homepage titles and descriptions eye-catching. For example, give descriptions including well-searched for terms:
Unique tourist destinations in Ecuador with gorgeous landscape views and activity bundles. Book early for exclusive discounts.
USING SEO FOR DESTINATION PAGES
With intuitive structuring, your page will have landing pages for every different city, area and property type. From your home page, branch out to cities, then to specific areas and then to property pages. The easier that visitors can navigate through your website, the more they will want to stay on your website. Ensure all the landing pages of your website are SEO optimized, with original titles, content and H1 tags. Give mapped areas for every property. Include specific areas in landing page URLs.
LOCAL SEO
This allows your website to be optimised when people local to where you are based search for travel results. This relates to your actual business address, so if you are based in South Carolina, local SEO will promote your website more to the residents of South Carolina. There are a few things to help you get started with local SEO, that include having a Google My Business account, verifying your personal business address as well as contact information and other information related to your business. This information should include accurate descriptors featured on your account profile, as well as phots. External links to your site will increase your ranking on Google. Finally, ensure your business details are standardized across all platforms you use: your website and any social media sites your business features on.
OTHER SEO TIPS YOU MAY FIND USEFUL
Form connections to travel bloggers in real life and through press releases Ensure your website is optimized for easy mobile use Secure your website with a https URL Reduce the loading time of your website Evaluate the ability to optimize your SEO when choosing a platform for digital content promotion
Travel websites that do not use the information in this blog likely make the following mistakes.
Firstly, you can easily identify those travel websites that don’t use the SEO tips listed above, because they have poor traffic and rankings. Usual mistakes that you may currently be making or may be aware of start with simply not using SEO optimization. If a website is not SEO friendly, it won’t matter how many features you put up on your website, because you won’t be reaching all the potential customers you should be reaching. Your website’s ultimate goal should be to make the maximum amount of bookings possible, and SEO is key to that.
Another terrible mistake to commit would be to ignore customer interaction. Comments and reviews are amazing for the main reason of increasing your reputation. Don’t pass by that opportunity for your brand! A sure way to lack customer interaction is to lack a social media presence. Social media marketing does not directly increase bookings, which may make it appear as a waste of time. However, the two powerful tools of digital content marketing through social media and social media analytics will take your customer success to the next level.
A final great mistake is to be lackadaisical with your content across different platforms. Optimize content for the platform it is featuring on. For example, on your actual website, go in detail with property descriptions. On Twitter, give emotive, short snippets of description. On Facebook, opt for lengthier, but very succinct descriptions with images.
ANOTHER MAIN WAY TO UPGRADE YOUR TRAVEL WEBSITE IS TO HAVE A TRAVEL BLOG.
Individuals looking for memorable vacations look for destinations and properties that have been tried and tested by others. The most successful travel websites have blogs that can show potential customers how great their destinations and properties really are. Again, visual media is amazing at showing people what you have to offer. Blogging (and after, content marketing) combines the best of written and visual media for the most successful travel promotion.
Through SEO, your rankings and traffic will definitely increase, increasing the general success of your website. However, this article is dedicated to improving your customer success, not just your general success. If you want your travel website to take the next step past general success, blogging and content marketing are two of your best consecutive options.
If you are stuck for blog post ideas, think both inside and outside the box. Typical things are typical for a reason: they are popular. Atypical topics attract a wider reader base though. Topics you should keep in mind are travel tips and interesting activities, popular tourist locations within areas, and local guides including local eats and night clubs. Target some blogs to specific demographics. Dedicate some blogs to families by writing about the best locations and activities for children. Additionally, optimize some blogs for young adults who will mostly be looking for more excitement, and some blogs to the elderly, who will mostly be looking for more peaceful holidays.
With a well-written, attractive and intuitively-organized blog, your website will be the perfect place to do many things:
Building internal links to landing pages for destinations and properties. Provide fresh content to update your social media pages with. Promote your blogs across multiple social media platforms to reach more than one target population. Promote services from your competitors on a commission to earn extra income with minimal effort. Show potential customers more personal reasons to visit the specific locations and properties that you promote. Show potential customers the personality in your brand. This will especially attract higher paying customers. If you find ways to mention great deals, you can use your blog to also attract potential customers with narrower budgets.
