A website which focuses on services related to travel is called a travel website. Usually, these pages focuses on places of interests like tourist spots, reviews of travel destinations, flight promos and the likes. Data from Forrester Research, a large independent market research firm, estimated that travel flights and bookings is the single biggest component of electronic commerce. It is estimated that in 2006 alone, more than 70 million consumers typed the keyword travel on the internet.
SEO and Tourism, Why They Need to Go Together
It is not a surprise that business owners are anxious to find top SEO providers when it comes to promoting their online pages because of conflicting mish-mash brought about by crowded SEO market. This is because almost all SEO firms and consultants use varying strategies and sometimes too complicated to be understood by business owners. Concepts like anchor texts, site codes, back links structures, titles, anchor texts, keywords, etc became too complicated, and it’s maddening. And at the same time, major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo continually alters and improves their algorithms to outdone scammers and shady practices and to bring excellent user experience. The dynamics between SEO practitioners and search engine engineers become circuitous which has brought to some conflicting strategies and methods for search engine optimization.
The biggest mistake of not only of most online travel marketers, but perhaps most of SEO practitioner is that they have perfected the optimization of their sites for the search engines but not for the travelers. This has resulted to the sites poor- unclear expertise, poor products and lousy brands – due to the over-eager attempt to please the algorithms of search engines to bring traffic. Yes, this can bring customers to sites but the poor user experience will eventually caught up, jeopardizing possible client conversion. We should bear in mind that SEO is not really for search engines. SEO is about the internet users who are the ones putting on keywords on these search engines because they want to find great travel experiences, best hotel deals, best place to unwind and to collect beautiful memories. The site should focus on giving searchers correct and relevant information. SEO providers should bear in mind that the changes in search engine algorithms are also intended to give highest quality, credible and informative search results for travelers.
Search Engines, specifically Google, constantly releases updates of its algorithms to give genuine results to its users. Big G, for example, give more importance to pages which publishes new and quality contents, strong social media presence, excellent branding, good design framework and sites with numerous link referral from other websites (inbound links). This is to reinforce your page authenticity just like how users would like to find your pages.
Ultimately, focusing on the details of the technical aspects of SEO is sometimes the reason why business owners and SEO practitioner misses the big picture. Since we already discussed the reasons why search engines always release updates as guide for websites optimization, below are some of the basics to ensure the optimization of your website is relevant and is people friendly.
- Fresh and good content is the key to successful inbound strategy. This is the sure way of connecting with your current and potential customers because great content can capture and hook them in your sales directory. Creating good content for your travel website has two essential considerations. First, determine the travel planning of your searcher and match its every travel stage with appropriate keywords that might be used by the would-be traveler will be looking for. Once keywords are identified, do not over-stuff them on every pages of your site. Second, always provide quality and relevant content enough to keep your audience looking for more. Once they find your content offers reliable and up to date information, there is a high probability that they will keep coming back at your site.
- Make sure that you optimized your site’s key backend elements. Providing enough great contents may not be enough. Secure that your meta tags and description, alt tags and title tags are optimized too. Make sure that you properly filled-out your 301 directories and XML site maps. Fill them up with threads of page descriptions that would resemble the appropriate keywords that would-be travelers are looking for.
- Provide blogs for your site and constantly update them. Part of criteria of search engines for site prioritization is the timely provision of up-to-date contents. Search engines prioritize sites that often releases fresh contents over ones that remains idle and static. Blogs that contains contents that are updated regularly is crucial in making your travelers’ site noticed. Aside from providing a venue to post up-to-date contents, blogs creates a medium where you can talk directly to searchers and patron users of your online travel site.
- Search engines updates their algorithms to reflect the trends in widely used social media like the famous Facebook, Twitter and Instagram among others. These platforms or channels are largely factored in by giant search engines like Google. Anchoring your site with these channels will like give positive results for optimization. Incorporating “like”, “share”, “dig” etc buttons on your site which could be readily clicked by users can add a “pull” to search engines rankings because these features makes your site shareable to other users.
Web Presence and why Travel Companies Need to Employ SEOs
But why are you going to consider hiring an SEO for your travel website? Below are some of the important reasons why your online travel page must definitely invest in page optimization to achieve high page ranking in an organic or unpaid search.
- Search Engine Optimization as a strategy is still relevant. It works, and will be here to stay. Yes, Google and other search engines may have tweak their system on how to rank pages, but the current practices and strategies of SEO remains effective. Looking at the trend and development, SEO will still be the strategy of choice for online enterprise. Interestingly, searches for audios and videos largely depend on keywords as much as textual contents. This trend ensure that as long as these contents exists, SEO as a method for marketing will still be relevant.
- Pay per Click (PPC), Social Media Marketing or lead purchasing methods are expensive compared to SEO. It is cost-effective as it can deliver good return on investments. Yes, it might be true that social media can give a positive image to your firm and Google’s PPC may give more revenue to your firm, SEO is still considered the foundation of the online presence of your online investment.
- It is estimated that more than 80% of online customer uses review pages before purchasing anything online. This figure is considerably big and is expected to rise. It is expected that almost all people will check online reviews before purchasing anything online.
- Your competitor is doing SEO. If you are not optimizing your page, you will get behind by your companies who are executing SEO strategies. You will be out of circulation and your business will lose in no time because you failed to adapt to the environment of your business niche. Yes, you, Darwin, are right: only the fittest survives.
- The trend is going mobile and search optimization is gearing towards local matches to remain relevant to local market consumers. Mobility nowadays is too relevant to be ignored. Failing to optimize your site on mobile platforms is a sure way to lose your business.
- Unhealthy profile content can work against your firm. As many SEO gurus would say, search engines are dynamic and they are evolving in ways that can be calculated. Your constant gauge should be your healthy content because the mantra content is king will remain true for quite some time.
The current trend would tell you that you need SEO to optimize your travel website more that before. Despite the difficulty and the cost in maintaining a credible online presence, almost all online firms finding a good page ranking in an organic search, keyword targeting is still the most rewarding and has the highest return on investment marketing plan if executed correctly.
The impact brought about by the social media and the internet to the marketing of travel companies has changed the playing field. Their existence brought complex solutions to marketing problems that were not present in traditional marketing strategies such as press release and advertising.
At the end of the day, running an SEO campaign for your travel company can bring greater visibility to your site which could bring targeted traffic from giant platforms like Google, Bing, yahoo, etch. Also, running an SEO for travel sites can bring positive image and identification to your business through the social media. Yes, hiring best SEO company can cost you a reasonable amount of money that is why it is important to read some SEO provider reviews for ecommerce to secure that your investment is worthy after all.
If you are interested in best SEO company reviews, visit CrowdReviews.com to get user generated and unbiased reviews of search engine optimization companies that can cater to your travel website needs.
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