The Coronavirus pandemic has been devastating for the travel industry. Whether it is hotels, tourist destinations, travel agencies, or airlines, the entire sector has seen unprecedented losses. But now, as the lockdown eases, slowly and gradually, some movement is visible in the travel industry. As airlines resume their operations on many routes, demand for remote destination travel vacation seems to be picking up.
Adapting to new norms of social distancing and understanding the new customer needs is going to be the real challenge. With limited disposable income, if you are a part of the travel industry, the most cost-effective way to market yourself and reach out to your potential customers is through improving your visibility online by Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Research by Google on traveler’s behavior showed that a large percentage (60%) of people start their travel and booking process through search engines.
The travel SEO puts you ahead of your competitors, by helping your travel website achieve a higher ranking on the search engine result page, which means that your website gets a larger portion of potential customers and hence stands a better chance of conversions.
Here are a few essential pointers that you must follow to improve your ranking in Google and other popular Search Engine Result Pages.
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Business Listing Optimization
To ensure that your business occupies top slots on the search engine result page, you must include precise and relevant keywords and phrases to describe your business, as these keywords are picked up by the search engines and matched to your website in their search results.
Another form of SEO called ‘Local Search Marketing’ helps travel businesses appear inappropriate local location searches on Google Maps and Google search engine. Google My Business is the tool that helps you achieve this optimization.
Ensure that all your travel company necessary details are up to date and consistent all across the web. Use tools like Google Analytics to gauge your website’s SEO performance and optimization.
Submit Your Sitemap
To submit your website, so that it gets added to Google’s index, it is always advisable to submit your sitemap’s URL first. Submitting your website through Google Search Control is an excellent idea to keep track of your travel website’s search rankings.
Focus on Content Quality for Your Travel Website
Among the best practices to improve your travel website, SEO ranking is by creating quality and relatable content for your website. If your content is good and liked by your visitors, there are chances that it can be shared on social media, increasing your visibility or your website could get links from other websites. So, try to make your content unique, and if it can take the visitor through an engaging visual journey, there are indeed better conversion rates waiting for you.
Keep all the essential information clear and visible to visitors. Showcasing user’s reviews and ratings should be given due importance as this is pivotal to conversions.
Buy an SSL Certificate Security for your Travel website
Lastly, but most importantly, you can boost your travel SEO ranking by providing a secure platform to your visitors to safeguard their crucial data and win their confidence. Investing in a cheap SSL certificate is lt strong a sure way to win your visitor’s trust and increase conversions by showing that you care for their data security. Google and other search engines put a secured website on a higher SEO ranking, improving your visibility, and paving a path to business growth.
Go for Mobile Optimization of Your Website
With our changing lifestyle, mobile traffic forms a significant share of internet traffic. So, it becomes imperative to make your website mobile-friendly. Google also gives a mobile-optimized website a better SEO ranking and hence enjoys increased traffic and sales conversions.
Improve User Experience of your travel Platform
Faster loading websites and good user experience generating higher visitor engaging time on the website (minimum of 2.5 page views per visit) are among the key factors that Google uses to determine the SEO rankings of a travel and tourism website. So, the utmost importance must be given to their optimization.
Optimize Your Images
Google Images has become a new and faster way of searching for information on the web, especially with the travel industry being so visually driven. So, by adding more relevant information around the images, you can give users a quick peek into useful information. As such, Google image search becomes more useful to the user and can give quality traffic leads to your website. Optimizing images on your website for Google Images can surely raise SEO rankings and help in the growth of your business.
Link Building and Networking
Getting quality links from trusted names of the industry is among one of the most highly rated or influential factors in deciding your rankings. Connecting with big players in your industry and getting them to add a link to your website could prove as a reputed testimonial for your potential customers, in the context of building up your reputation and triggering conversions.
In conclusion, building a robust and vigorous travel SEO strategy is undoubtedly the most viable and effective way to increase your traffic and conversions, especially at a time when travel businesses are trying to regain their foothold after months of uncertainty.