Riviera Travel
SEO & Content Marketing
Print Design
Created a blog platform delivering more than 100 in-depth travel guides which saw organic traffic increase 1,200% year on year.
Client
Riviera Travel
Year
2018-2020
Services
SEO strategy
Content marketing
Print design
Technology
SEMrush
One of the UK's leading escorted tour operator, Riviera Travel engaged Submerge to provide an SEO and content strategy to increase organic search and attract new customers. We implemented a new blog on the site, delivering over 100 travel guides targeting high-performing keywords.
The strategic challenge
Riviera Travel is a £200m holiday brand for the over 50s with a strategic push to move to direct sales via digital channels following decades of affiliate sales via newspapers. It needed to acquire passengers in volume to purchase worldwide holidays and river cruises.
“We’ve been delighted with Submerge and their wealth of knowledge of SEO, content and digital marketing. They’ve helped transform our approach to content, helping us increase traffic by over 1,200% y-o-y from all channels including email, organic and social in just 12 months. They’re a pleasure to work with, providing strategic thinking, in-depth SEO and content that works. Thoroughly recommended.”
Marie-Clare Dixon, Head of Digital, Riviera Travel
Our approach
Pivoting the brand to digital meant a ground-up build of the customer journey, including digital and offline channels. We worked with stakeholders – from agents to tour guides – to build a complete view of the journey, as well as laying the foundation for fully automated marketing and retargeting.
Working with the in-house team, we identified high-priority keywords, set up monitoring and restructured travel pages. We created a weekly content programme working across website and social channels, delivering over 120 inspirational travel guides, video tours and interactive tools.
We create a content calendar specifically targeting high volume, highly relevant search terms, providing top of funnel content that helped increase overall Domain Authority and expose the brand to potential new customers.
We also created a range of print materials and downloadable guides to river cruising, bringing together travel editors, writers and designers to create impactful guides that showcased Riviera Travel’s wonderful river cruises.
Additionally, we provided on-site workshops, brainstorming sessions and consultancy. This included competitor analysis sessions, customer journey workshops, and marketing automation support to help modernise digital marketing activities.
The result
While the Covid-19 pandemic depressed travel search in 2020, our work up to that point saw organic traffic to the site increase 1,200% year on year. The new travel magazine blog led to #1 ranking for a sizable number of high-priority keywords, a wider reach than ever before and improved customer engagement.
Organic traffic grew hugely, and the blog articles quickly achieve #1 position in SERPs for must-win keywords. Readers loved them too, with blog articles achieving thousands of likes, shares and engagement across social media and on the Riviera Travel website.
