Importance Of SEO In The Travel Industry

If you’re looking for a way to increase traffic to your travel website, SEO strategies are definitely the answer. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of improving a website’s visibility to search engines, so it can gain a higher position on the search engine results page (SERP). When you consider the newest online travel booking statistics, the importance of SEO in the travel industry becomes blindingly obvious. According to Google’s latest research study, “The 2014 Travelers’ Road to Decision,” search engines are some of the top sources of inspiration for travelers. In fact, last year more than half of all travelers relied on search engines when they begin to plan their trips. And online searchers tend to overwhelmingly concentrate on websites that appear among the top search engine results; more than 90 percent of searchers never even look past the first page of results. What does this mean for your travel business? If your travel website doesn’t earn a high position on search engine results, your business could be virtually invisible to the majority of travelers during their trip planning process. That’s why SEO is so important in the travel industry; it is the best, most reliable way to raise your travel website’s position in search results.

How SEO Works
When travelers enter a query into search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, the search engine uses a complex formula to compute where each website will appear in the search engine results. Search engines try to assign the highest places in their results to the websites that do the best job of providing the requested information. Search engines consider virtually every element of a website when deciding which site is the best answer to a user query, looking at page titles, keywords, image tags, Meta data, outside page links, and more. While the large OTAs are still dominating the top few spots for many travel-related search terms, by carefully applying SEO strategies to your travel website, you can still capture a place on the all-important front page of search results.

How to use SEO to increase traffic to your travel website
When correctly and consistently applied, travel SEO strategies can make a drastic improvement to your website’s performance in search results. The full range of SEO strategies can take some time to implement, but here is a quick checklist of travel SEO strategies to get you started.

• Use keywords correctly
  The guidelines for keyword usage have changed in recent years. In the past many website owners engaged in keyword stuffing to try to raise their search position; Google now penalizes that sort of “black hat SEO” behavior. Focus instead on producing great travel-related content with just 3-4 keywords on each page, and be sure to include keywords in your title, content, and your Meta Description, as well as ALT tags on your images and videos.
• Start a travel blog
  Starting an interesting, engaging travel blog is the ideal way to apply SEO strategies to your website on an ongoing basis. A weekly or biweekly blog allows you to continually add new content to your travel website (one of the elements Google looks for), keeping search engines interested and crawling your content so you stay on top of search results. You can feature new keywords according to topics trending in the travel industry, and gain new links from interested readers eager to share your content with others. If you’re new to SEO practices, use a program like Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin to check that you have properly applied SEO strategies to your blog.
• Use social marketing strategies for travel
  Social marketing strategies are a great way to publicize your travel web site, lead visitors to your blog, and generate some non-search engine traffic, which Google rewards by raising your website’s position in search engine results.
• Use a mobile-friendly responsive travel website design
  Mobile-friendliness has recently been added to the metrics Google uses to determine websites’ positions in search results. Updating your website to a responsive travel website design will help you please the many travelers who now rely on mobile devices while raising your ranking in search results so you can reach a wider audience.

Now that you have a better understanding of how SEO affects your travel website, it’s time to put your knowledge into action! Travel Tech Strategies, your one-stop travel SEO marketing agency, can provide you with everything you need to implement a complete travel SEO marketing plan including responsive travel website design, expert travel SEO content creation services, travel social marketing services and more to improve your website’s search performance.

Contact us at Travel Tech Strategies today at 954-779-2801 for help implementing an effective travel SEO marketing plan to help raise your search engine performance where it belongs!