Nicole Percival Nicole Percival

We can all agree that the most stressful part of travelling is sorting dates, budgets and itineraries.

Finding the right travel business to book can help ease this stress. With the right SEO strategy, you can position your travel business’s website as the go-to place that not only has the right information but is also as relaxing to use as a Bali beach getaway.

This is why your travel business needs to prioritise travel SEO.

Find out more about our travel SEO agency services.

Why should travel businesses do SEO?

Whether your travel business handles city breaks, flight bookings, luxury cruises, hotel comparisons or holiday financing, prioritising SEO is only going to benefit you.

SEO is a bit like your personal digital travel guide, leading potential customers to your travel business. With the right SEO strategies, your website can top relevant SERPs, making it easier for travellers to find you – it’s all about visibility. The more people that see you, the more likely they are to use your services.

Think about travel SEO like packing for a trip. Proper keyword research is having the right gear – it’s essential for getting to your destination. Quality, linkable content marketing is your itinerary, guiding visitors through your site. And a fast, mobile-friendly website with an easy user experience? That’s your perfect accommodation.

SEO is an investment in your travel business’s future. It attracts customers, boosts your online reputation and visibility, and can help your profits take off.

What could travel SEO include? We have a few ideas:

  • Content creation
  • Keyword research
  • International SEO
  • Mobile optimisation
  • Off-Page SEO
  • On-Page SEO
  • Social media engagement
  • Website speed optimisation

But please remember – positive SEO results won’t appear overnight. Some SEO actions might produce faster results than others, but it could still take some time.

SEO best practices for travel businesses

Regularly audit your website

An SEO audit is essentially a health check for your travel business’s website. It looks at your site’s visibility on search engines and helps spot any pesky problems that might be holding you back from topping those Google rankings.

For a travel business, an SEO audit ensures all your content is being seen by the right people and ensures your website is easy to navigate, quick to load and looks great on mobile, too. We recommend running a full SEO audit at least twice a year to highlight what’s working and what needs extra attention.

Enhance user experience

Imagine you’re a traveller arriving in a new city. The first thing you’ll want to do is figure out an easy way to see all the sights. The same goes for your travel business’s website. Your site is a bit like your travellers’ first destination—if they enjoy their visit, they’ll stick around and maybe even make a booking.

Improving user experience (UX) is all about making your visitors’ time on your site as enjoyable and hassle-free as possible. It’s about fast page loading speeds, helpful and engaging on-page SEO content, and easy, obvious ways to get to that content.

Without it, your bounce rate might increase while your customer acquisition may drop.

Optimise your images

High-quality images should be a core part of any travel business’s marketing and branding. They can show customers what to expect, spark inspiration and bookings, and improve SEO.

Large images can slow down page loading speed, and a slow site can turn visitors away to faster, better-optimised travel websites. The wrong-size images can also appear too small or too pixelated, which could also increase the bounce rate if visitors can’t understand what they’re seeing.

By optimising your images, you ensure they load quickly without losing their quality. Also, by adding relevant keywords to your image file names and alt text, you can up your online visibility.

Provide expertise with a blog

A blog for your travel business might seem like a huge ask to a team that already has packed days, but it is worth the time and effort. Businesses with blogs receive over 55% more visitors than those who don’t.

Your business’s blog content could include helpful how-to listicles, destination guides, fun travel stories written by customers (user-generated content) and guest posts from recognised professionals.

But you need to ensure that your quality blog content is optimised for SEO. Fresh, regular content packed with relevant keywords and structured correctly keeps your site active and gives search engines more pages to index.

A well-written, informative blog can also boost your business’s credibility and showcase your expertise. (Why do you think we’re doing it?)

Use long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords involve three to five words all in a single keyword and are often phrased like questions. Because longer keywords are used for more specific searches, they have less competition and keyword difficulty, making them easier to rank for.

A good example could be “family-friendly resorts in Spain” instead of just “resorts in Spain”.

Although they get less search traffic than more generic keywords, they’re usually used by people who know exactly what they’re looking for and are ready to book. Think of long-tail keywords as your direct line to potential customers.

Improve your internal linking structure

Ever used a map to find your way around a new city? That’s a bit like what internal links do on your website. They guide your visitors from one page to another, helping them discover other related and useful content.

Improving your site’s internal link structure through technical SEO makes it easy for visitors to navigate your site, increasing session duration. Plus, it helps search engines understand your site’s content better, all of which can improve your overall SEO.

But here’s the best bit: by linking to your own pages, you can boost the importance of certain content in the eyes of search engines. This will make them rank higher. Higher rankings can mean higher web traffic and higher sales.

Use a schema markup

Marking pages as you flick through a guidebook is a great way to indicate which information is most important to you for your trip. A schema markup does the same for your website. On a very basic level, it’s a type of code that helps search engines understand your content better.

For example, your travel business writes a blog post about the best time to visit Rome. By using a schema markup, you can highlight important information, like dates or places. This helps search engines provide more useful results to people searching for the best time to go to Rome.

For a travel business, this SEO activity can be a game-changer! It makes your website more visible and can even boost your position in search results.

So how do you improve your business’s travel SEO?

Are you inspired to start improving your travel business’s SEO? Luckily, you don’t have to wait! Any time is a great time to start working on your business’s SEO.

But there are certain ways you should go about it for the best results.

Some SEO strategies, like internal link building and optimising images, can be handled in-house with minimal issues. However, some might require the professional touch of a travel SEO agency such as Submerge. Some SEO activities can have a knock-on effect on others, which could tank your results if you don’t handle them correctly. Travel SEO experts should be able to balance them out to get the results your business needs to succeed.