There are a huge number of searches worldwide for travel and vacation planning which makes the travel industry a booming category online. This also means that there is a lot of money online for this industry. As a matter of fact, the first source of income for travel brands is through organic traffic. Moving up on search results by just a little for their catalog of keywords can mean that the brand gets to make more revenue in millions of dollars. This is why it is of utmost importance for travel brands to have visibility in online search results.
This is why companies in this industry tend to hire only the best talents and also employ the most effective SEO tactics to make more income through organic traffic for themselves. On the basis of these, the travel industry is a very competitive one. And it takes strategic management to be on top. Travel brands do not just have each other to compete with directly, they also have a number of other businesses that are looking for the same audience.
Although there is a common argument that Google many times gives large brands the advantage. To some extent, the argument is valid. This puts the smaller brands at risk of being invisible. However, to compete with these large brands, smaller brands are becoming more strategic in SEO efforts. They know that they have to do business the right way in order to succeed.
Several tactics have therefore been developed to ensure that travel brands (especially the small brands) can compete for users through online visibility. Here are some common tactics.
Travel Influencers Are Important For New Mediums
There is a recent shift in content as regards to engaging travel influencers in this industry to gain links and brand exposure. Although smaller brands still focus on getting links and on bloggers, the big brands have moved on from this. Large travel brands now look to engage travel influencers and those in the industry that have strong online follower-ship on different social media platforms such as YouTube and Instagram.
Although the common consensus is that, it is still important to get links for Google algorithms and rankings. But it is also important that when one builds a brand, the brand receives recognition. This recognition does not happen unless the brand is featured on some of the largest travel portals. Without this as well, they would not be getting any brand exposure.
Travel brands now focus on engaging influencers that are not involved in providing written content because of the user trends which has also moved away from seeking written content as a means for discovering information.
YouTube, for instance, is fast growing as the go-to medium for information discovery for many reasons. Working with a travel influencer to make video content might not return as much link as many marketers would like to think. “But choosing the right influencers and working with them the right way will definitely yield more results for you in terms of PR and marketing. This gives your brand the desired awareness and builds the brand image,” says Kelly Right, an experienced brand and PR manager from Write My research paper.
Be Ready For New Markets And New Audience
When you are trying to engage a new market, it is important that you make yourself very visible. The use of modern devices is helping different markets to hit very high levels of internet accessibility.
The moment that you decide to expand into a new market, you must ensure that all your key SEO elements such as localized content and Hreflang are in place because they are very important. You must also make sure that you provide excellent support through customer service for the different languages and time zones.
There are a lot of travel brands that have expanded into new markets without the necessary SEO elements and the right provisions to meet the needs of their customers. Of course, you know that will never end well. At the end of the day, they gave other reasons for the failure of their expansion. But the real reason is clear. You can’t be making the same mistake.
Your Content Should Leverage On The Micro-Moments
There were four moments specific to traveling that were described by Google in the year 2016, and where each can be found in the journey of the travel customer. These four moments are:
- Dreaming moments – the “I want to get away moment”
- Planning moments – the “time to plan moment”
- Booking moments – the “let’s book it moment”
- Experiencing moments – the “I can’t wait to explore moment”
Each of these moments has different numerous intents depending on how much the user is on the journey. The travel brand also needs to understand that they have to be present at all stages of the journey.
When you create content based on the micro-moments and are also present at the different stages of their journey, the position of your brand with the traveler or user is reinforced. The relevance of your website also improves because you have content on it that is supportive and helpful for the traveler at the different stages of their journey. This will invariably lead to an improvement in your performance on organic searches.
SEO And User Experience
The constant sophistication of the search engines and their aim to please searchers and provide them with the most relevant information in their search results has made it even more important for each website to work on their user experience.
The user experience of a website has become a very important factor for ranking websites and showing them in search results. This is not specific to just the travel industry but is a standard that Google and other search engines consider for ranking websites.
This means that the engagement of the user with your website and the signals that they give can help to determine if they are satisfied with the interaction they have had with your website and this is considered as an important ranking factor.
One factor that is very important to the satisfaction of any website user is the speed of the website, how fast it loads pages. This has now been adopted as well as a factor for ranking pages.
Another important factor or signal that search engines get from website users is the dwell time. This is the length of time that a user spends on s page before they go back to the original SERP. This concept is important as search engines pick up on it as a signal for ranking websites.
Conclusion
When it comes to travel brands increasing their visibility online, common traditional SEO tactics are applied and they work. But there are also some tactics that are specific to the industry that helps them gain online visibility. Some of these tactics have been discussed in this article.
