With the growing use of smartphones and other internet-enabled devices, an increasing number of consumers rely on online channels to fulfill their travel needs. As a result, travel companies must now work harder to generate online business and compete in the market.
Having an effective travel SEO plan in place is the only way to rank well in search engine results.
Insight
Without careful SEO implementation, gaining visibility on the internet is very difficult for any company, regardless of its kind or size.
While you may have designed and built an appealing website with user-friendly navigation, eye-catching fonts, a fast load time, and responsiveness, among other features, it is SEO that places your brand in front of the appropriate audience at the right time.
According to statistics, 93% of online encounters begin with a search, and 95% of natural clicks originate on Google’s first page. Google is said to handle about 70,000 search requests every second.
SEO strategies for travel websites increased online reservations by 78% and contributed significantly to the customer experience.
In the long term, when you optimize your website for SEO rankings, you will get advantages like increased brand visibility, more visitors (traffic), increased ROI (return on investments), cost reduction of client acquisition, higher website ranking (in relevant search queries), and more.
For example, Singapore is an economy based on tourism, banking, and commerce. It is one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions. Implementing travel-based SEO on their website can push their business to a higher level altogether. There are several digital marketing agencies to help them out in this situation. They can engage Digitrio for their SEO Singapore services to increase their business’s traffic, ranking, and revenues because manually doing SEO might be confusing for some.
Without further ado, let us give you some search engine optimization (SEO) tips for a travel-based website.
Travel SEO Tips
SEO is important for any kind of business. When it comes to implementing SEO strategies for a travel website, there are a few considerations to satisfy the search engine and the audience.
Page Loading Time
Your website should load in a fraction of a second since the chance of a bounce increases by 123% as the loading time increases from 1 to 10 seconds. Google recommends that web pages load in fewer than three seconds on average.
40% of visitors abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Therefore, proper management of your webpage’s load time is important because it guards against risks such as consumer discontent, client loss, damaged brand image, and decreased search engine ranking.
Indeed, Amazon recently calculated that a one-second delay in page load time would lose the company $1.6 billion in annual revenue. The reasons for slowing down your website are the usage of problematic codes, various ads, multiple flash content, JavaScript errors, and unoptimized high-resolution pictures.
Keyword Placement and Optimization
When individuals desire to travel, the first thing they do is Google their preferred destinations.
The website must understand the terms and phrases that travelers use when doing destination searches.
To improve your travel website’s ranking, you must do frequent keyword research and include the most popular ones in the content. However, remember not to over-stuff your content with keywords and irrelevant material since this may result in a Google penalty.
Travel and Tourism Related Keywords
When optimizing your content, include the most relevant keywords in your site content, social media postings, and Google My Business listings, among other places.
Additionally, just creating content for the sake of keyword optimization will not provide the desired results. When you do so, you risk being detected by Google and your website being punished. Google’s Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and Terms Everywhere, among others, provide the most relevant keywords that travelers use to do searches.
Before using SEO, you must understand the purpose behind each term. According to the traveler’s intention, search engines classify terms into three categories: navigational (to navigate a website), informative (to find relevant information), and transactional (to make a purchase).
Link Building
Outbound/external links direct visitors away from your site and to other resources. Inbound/internal links direct visitors to your website from other websites. When both inbound and outbound links are excessively or improperly utilized, you risk losing visibility on the search engine results page.
Email Marketing
Even though many people think it has been extinct for an unexplained cause, email marketing is a great method to connect with current and prospective clients and maybe encourage them to begin planning their next vacation.
Pay Per Click Ads
Sometimes, running an Adwords campaign in the travel sector is a costly endeavor, which is why further keyword analysis is important. Focus on PPC (pay per click) to determine your chances of outperforming the competition. While investing in paid advertising can often provide fast results, other methods are more long-term in nature. They will stay in place long after your PPC advertisements have stopped running.
Local SEO
Local SEO means optimizing your website to appear on the first page of Google, Yahoo, and Bing for local searches. Your address must appear in local listings on Google Maps and connect with the local market, making it easier for your customers to contact you. Local SEO employs several techniques to increase the visibility of your website on search engines such as Google.
These SEO strategies are not just important for travel websites but for small businesses as well.
Some Common Mistakes
Unfortunately, not all travel websites follow the procedures mentioned above, and as a result, they lose traffic and ranks. The most frequent travel SEO errors are as follows:
Issues with duplicate material: All content published on your dedicated property pages must be unique to your website. Utilizing material that has previously been published on other websites is a poor practice, as is syndicating your content on other larger websites.
Not connecting with customers: Ignoring customer remarks or failing to react to social media posts is detrimental to your reputation in the long run.
No Social Media Presence: While social media marketing does not immediately drive bookings, it is critical in order to create a positive company image.
Using an unfriendly platform for SEO: This is the most common error we have observed over the past couple of years. While most current booking systems provide many useful features for travel agencies, they are inadequate for SEO.
Conclusion
Now that you are aware of some of the best travel SEO practices, you can start incorporating them into your travel website. Good luck!
