How do you grow your travel agent business in this highly-competitive market? You need to be smarter. SEO for travel agents is the key to a successful agency. Read on to find out how to go about it.
When competition is too high, the success of any business depends on how well they can communicate with and satisfy their clients. The travel business is one that faces such high competition. And, travel agents are forced to find creative ways to stay relevant amidst the competition.
Search engine optimization is one area that businesses can take advantage of to reach their customers effectively. This is because everything is going online. Now, customers have become more reliant on web searches, especially when planning their travel.
So, how will a travel agent ensure that its business is what the customers see when they search online? How does SEO for travel agents work?
Well, it’s not much different from the usual SEO, you know. But, we have compiled the best tips for such businesses to ensure that your travel agency stays ahead of the pack.
Best SEO Tips for Travel Agents
SEO is all about the search engines and how they view your business or content. For the search engines to consider your business worth the eyes of the customers, here are a few tips you should incorporate.
1. Build an Engaging Official Website
The era when travelers used to visit physical travel agent offices is way behind us. Currently, an online presence is pretty important for any business to succeed.
That’s why an engaging website is the first step towards keeping in contact with your customers and potential new ones. Customers need to easily access your website and find what they are looking for. This way, they don’t get attracted by your competition easily and run away.
Your official website is the face of your business. It’s what determines whether the traveler will want to give you business or not. Therefore, ensure that the first impression it creates commands interest and trust.
But, how do you do that?
The first thing is to ensure that your website is attractive and everything is in order. The customer should not struggle to find crucial information about your packages, offers, destinations, etc. Also, ensure that this information is always updated.
Luckily, if you are new at this, there is always someone out there to offer the much-needed help. For instance, if you are looking for on-page or off-page SEO guidance, Ecentres has your back.
It is an Irish-based firm offering SEO services in Dublin and beyond.
2. Engaging Content
After your website is up and running, the next thing is to take care of your content. What do you post on the website? This matters a lot and will determine how long the visitors stay on your website.
Also, when it comes to visibility, search engines still consider content as king. For this reason, you need to create content that will coincide with what people are searching for. This way, Google and other search engines can see the need to put your content first.
The first tip here is always to include correct information. For instance, don’t try to trick Google into displaying your content by including celebrities or viral news unrelated to your business.
This might seem clever and attract traffic at first. However, the bounce rate will be quite high, which will not favor your Google standings. So, add the right content.
But how do you optimize your content? How do you ensure that you have the right content and that it will be displayed?
Targeted Content
Firstly, create targeted content. You need to know your audience or target market and create content that appeals to them. This is where keywords come in.
You should know the best SEO keywords for travel agents to use in your content. And this will depend on your target audience.
For instance, be specific about what you offer. If you offer specific tours to the Caribbean, write about it.
Use Optimized Images
The use of images is quite crucial when posting content. But, you should also ensure that the images you post are optimized.
For example, don’t post an image titled qwklejqlwjeqil1530.png. Ensure that you name the image depending on what it is all about. If it is an image about a visit to the Royalton Antigua Resort and Spa, name it as such.
Also, converting the images to jpg format and using the right sizes is recommended.
Get Great Content Ideas
When writing for your website, make sure you have content people are interested in. One way of doing this is looking at the questions that travelers ask online or even after you post something.
If one client asks about the best overwater bungalow in Panama with a spa, you should know that many others are also looking for that. Creating a post about this can attract more traffic to your website.
See Related: Surfer SEO Review: Is It Legit & Worth It?
3. Get Back Links
Another great way of getting your website seen is acquiring backlinks. This is when other websites link their content back to your site. It gives your content credibility, making Google rank it even better.
You can acquire backlinks using these easy ways:
Earn Backlinks
You earn backlinks when other content creators discover your content, like it, and link back to the page. They might have seen your post on Google, social media, or even a referral link.
These types of backlinks are called organic backlinks. Writing useful content that people like and trust is the best way to achieve organic backlinks.
Create Backlinks
Creating backlinks refers to manually adding links from other websites to your site. This can be done through various tricks like responding to forum threads, commenting on blogs, or submitting content to business directories.
Building Backlinks
This type of backlink acquisition is quite common but also not so easy. It requires you to contact various website owners, webmasters, editors, etc., and request them for backlinks.
The difference with this method is that you have to show value to the person giving you the backlink. How will they benefit from this transaction?
You can try these link building tips:
- Guest Posts: This involves you writing an article to post on another website, usually for free. It will be based on your agreement with the site owner.
- Broken Links: Identify broken links on a site, reach out to them, and suggest replacing them with your working links.
- The Skyscraper Technique: Search for ranking content, create a better article, and request those linking to the article to consider linking to yours.
The more backlinks your site has from high-ranking sites, the more visible your site also becomes.
4. Site Setup
Site setup is another crucial feature when working on SEO for travel companies. Nowadays, Google prefers HTTPS sites over HTTP ones.
Having an HTTPS site means that you’ve acquired the SSL certificate, and Google considers your site safe. This way, when a client searches for your site, they don’t get a warning of how unsafe the site is.
On the other hand, Google views it as unsafe if you still have an HTTP-only site. And potential clients might be turned away for safety concerns.
So, ensure that you have the SSL certification, which turns your HTTP site into an HTTPS one.
5. Work on your Landing Pages
Landing pages are paramount when it comes to internet marketing. Also known as a lead capture page or destination page, a landing page is a page that appears after an optimized search engine click result. Generally, a landing page has one purpose and one purpose only – driving conversions.
The page is meant to encourage visitors to try out a product or service. In our case, this would be your travel agency’s offerings. Since the page doesn’t have too much information on other things, it helps the site visitor concentrate on the goal without distractions.
SEO for Travel Agents: Creating the best Landing Page
If you wish to create a killer landing page and drive traffic to your travel agency business, follow these easy tips:
- Use clear Call-to-Action: These should be specific to your main goal. For instance, you can use phrases like “Buy Now,” “Travel Now,” “Book Your Flight Now,” etc. Ensure they are clear on the goal.
- Use simple forms: If there is anywhere a client needs to fill out a form, it should be as simple as possible. Ask only for the most important details. Avoid giving customers a hard time.
- Clear and concise copy: The content on your landing page should be easy to read and understand. And, it should be brief and direct to the point. For instance, make use of headers, bullet points, and bold fonts.
- Include crucial information above the fold: Your CTA should be somewhere near the top of the page. This will ensure that those visitors who don’t want to read the whole page, can buy your offering from up there.
- Use images sparingly: Don’t use too many images on the landing page. Too many images can distract visitors from the CTAs and other content.
- Use a similar look and design for your landing page to those of campaign ads: This helps the readers to be certain that they have landed on the right page when they click on emails and ads.
See related: How to Get Coaching Clients for High-Ticket Services
6. Mobile Responsiveness
Mobile responsiveness on your site is also vital when it comes to SEO for travel agencies. People want a site that they can search from their smartphones. Sometimes, they want to conclude the whole transaction on the go.
For his reason, your website should always be mobile-friendly. It is good to note that most web users are doing it on their phones. Thus, if your site doesn’t favor mobile searches, you might unknowingly lose a lot of traffic.
This is one of the SEO for travel agents tips that will surely have a huge difference on your site’s traffic. The site must be attractive on mobile devices and should also be easy to navigate and use. Being able to appeal to both worlds can double your business’ growth or even more.
How to Improve Mobile Responsiveness
Generally, mobile searches account for at least 53.81% of all web searches. If you want to tap this for your travel agent business, use these tips:
Keep it Simple
Complex things keep visitors away. Avoid using unnecessarily complex elements on your site that add no values.
Humans are known to lose attention in about 8 seconds. So, ensure that you use that time well.
Aim at providing enough information in as few words as possible.
Speed is Paramount
If your site takes forever to load, you can be sure that most visitors will get tired and leave. And, forever doesn’t mean long. One or two seconds might mean a whole lot of difference.
This means you might have taken your time to create the best website, but its slow responding design spoils your every effort. Unresponsive sites will always have high bounce rates.
Easy to Digest Content
People visiting your site do not have all the time. Therefore, they want content they can easily understand before making their decision.
Always ensure that what you offer on your website is easy to digest. This will include proper use of headers, sub-headers, and bullets. Also, don’t use too difficult language that visitors strain to understand.
The way you present your content will determine how easy it will be to understand. Remember, the customer’s decision depends on how well they understand your message.
