SEO for Travel Companies & Professionals

[Artem Zahrebelnyi]

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As a travel company - whether you're a tour operator, travel agent, hotel, transportation provider, destination management company, or whatever - or  you are certainly wondering how you can get the most out of search-engine optimization. With a well thought out SEO strategy, you can win over users. In addition, they rank higher in Google searches, which generates additional traffic.

Search-engine optimization (SEO) basically includes all measures that help to improve the ranking of your website. In general, there are the following to consider: the content and structure of your website as well as a few technical factors. Overall, the user experience is of great importance. Here we'll outline briefly how you can best proceed.

The Content of Your Website

The best way to optimize your content is with the help of keywords, which form the core of SEO. We recommend a tool called Ahrefs, which for a fee, will help you to find important keywords for certain travel topics. So if you enter a search term on Ahrefs, you get a lot of information back - for example, you can see how high the search volume of this term is or how difficult it is to rank highly with this term.

In addition to the information about the term you are researching, Ahrefs provides you with further input with insight as to what questions users have asked that contain your search term or what other terms they've entered; you can then answer these questions on your website. The tool also gives you tips on which similar search terms achieve a high search volume; if you then incorporate these terms into your text, the chance of ranking higher increases.

It's also important to always create a certain amount of content. As a travel company, you cover a lot of topics that users search for online. The continuity of your contributions ensures that the number of website users can be increased, and in this way your domain gains popularity and notoriety. With consistently regular posting you also ensure that your website and your content appear more credible and reliable.

Finally, when it comes to content, it's important to make sure that it is of course credible and of high quality. For example, you can also report on your own experiences in certain target areas in order to make them more attractive to users. Make sure that you structure your articles or blog posts well so that the user wants to linger on your website.

 

Building Your Website

In addition to the content, a logical structure is important for SEO. That means paragraphs should be well structured and not too long. Here care is taken to ensure that the user experience is guaranteed so that they stay longer on your website and, if necessary, visit it more often or use your services.

Your website should therefore be geared towards maximizing the user experience. This also includes that your domain be suitable for mobile devices, as the majority of users eventually go to websites on their smartphones to search for information. Here it would be good if you pay attention to the formatting and layout.

Another plus is the use of pictures or videos, either explanatory of the content or simply accompanying it. Here you could, for example, use images that depict a specific region that you are reporting on. This makes the articles more attractive and the user can better imagine what it looks like in this destination. After all, as a travel company you want to make a target area attractive to your customers or users.

 

Technical Know-How

When it comes to SEO, a degree of technical know-how is also important in creating a website. The most important point here would be that you make sure that your website loads quickly. If it doesn't, the user will be less motivated to access your website after just two seconds and will instead choose the competition. This can be due to pictures or videos that are too large, for example, or errors in the URL. You can read out and recognize these on Google, for example - such as the typical 404 error.- with the free tool Search Console.

 

More Tips & Tricks

In order to gain popularity, you can also cooperate with other websites that may already be better known. These collaborations could include guest articles, for example; this increases awareness of your website and helps to gain credibility as well as a positive image. And with backlinks that lead to your site, you generate further traffic and attract attention.

This is one of the off-page SEO measures, which do not run directly through your website and therefore provide the opportunity to draw attention to yourself outside of your website. With any activities that you do outside of your own domain, you will receive more traffic and gain trust from users. Of course you should make sure that you only cooperate with credible websites and those that fit your content in an appropriate way.

 

Summing Up

Search-engine optimization is essential for every company, and keyword research can be of great importance especially for travel companies in order to see in which context users are searching for certain terms, so you can adapt your content to user demand, design it accordingly, and get higher traffic. SEO-optimized articles are therefore the be-all and end-all of your website. (Incidentally, one German-language site that will teach you more about SEO is Werbepresse, which has helped many local businesses rank high on Google Search.)

In addition to keywords, you should also pay attention to a logical, comprehensible structure of your website. Find out in advance about technical factors that are relevant for a smooth user experience. Lastly, it's important to make a name for yourself through other means, such as creating guest articles. Thus you increase your traffic even more. So with all these tips and tricks, you can pursue an SEO strategy that suits you.