Is your agency ready to help travel clients boost rankings and profits again? The world is slowly opening up again, and you need to prepare for it.
Travel SEO clients were silenced during the new normal in 2020 due to travel restrictions and social distancing. As everyone starts coming out of quarantine in 2021, travel is returning, opening up opportunities for companies that lost business last year.
A strong focus on travel SEO for 2021 and content creation is crucial to put travel companies back on the map. Get your travel clients moving again with these straightforward tips for success.
Perform a Detailed Tech Check
The first step is performing a technical SEO check to ensure the travel website is still healthy. Even the best websites are imperfect and keep post-Covid evolutions in mind. Examine the site’s architecture, infrastructure, and traffic and perform a competitor analysis to stay ahead of the curve. Points to consider include:
- Examine the target market and determine how the volume of traffic the site draws.
- Perform competitor analysis to find potential keyword opportunities.
- Fix site errors, such as broken links and duplicate content.
- Review website security and ensure the site is HTTPS:// secured.
- Optimize title tags, heading tags, and metadata.
- Include relevant internal and external links in existing content.
- Verify the website is mobile-friendly to capture more leads.
Remember to search for other opportunities, such as Schema, that help search engines recognize and understand site content. For example, benefits of a Schema markup include improved brand presence, increased CTR, improved ranking, and eligibility for SERP features for greater exposure in the SERPs.
Google’s Need for Speed
Are your travel clients ready for the Google Page Speed update coming up in May? The new Google algorithm implements Core Web Vitals to consider the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metric, the First Input Delay (FID) metric, and the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) metric. The bottom line is travel sites must be fast and interactive.
Visit Google PageSpeed Insights to check a site’s speed to determine where to make improvements. Page speed is crucial for rankings and conversions. The focus is on delivering the best user experience, so visitors stay rather than surf away. A few ways to improve site speed include:
- Enable compression
- Reduce redirects
- Optimize code by minifying CSS, HTML, and JavaScript
- Optimize images
- Look for performance bottlenecks to improve server response time
- Use a content distribution network
- Consider browsing caching and how to reduce data use.
Periodically review site speed to ensure an optimum user experience every time. A few simple fixes go a long way to consistently improving ranking and conversions.
Think Global, Act Local
While travel is a global industry, localized business is essential for many companies to succeed. Focus on local SEO optimization to drive more targeted traffic to your travel clients’ sites. Is Google My Business updated for each client? GMB provides basic facts about companies, such as contact information and hours, and helps drive more local traffic to the site.
With more locals finding the company, ensure the site is mobile-friendly to capture leads on the go. After consumers search for something local on a smartphone, 76 percent of them wind up visiting the business within a day. A total of 78 percent of consumers searching locally make online and in-store purchases from companies. On a global level, 56 percent of shoppers will buy locally, both online and offline.
While SEO gives companies a golden opportunity to attract consumers worldwide, local searches continue to generate targeted leads and sales. Ideas to attract local searchers include:
- Create and optimize a GMB page.
- Generate reviews on sites such as GMB, the business site, and Yelp.
- Check the business name, address, and phone number (NAP) for accuracy across the web.
- Locally optimize the home page’s metadata and title tags.
- Sprinkle local keywords related to the business in web and social media content.
- Submit the business to relevant directories, such as Yelp.
- Consider paid local Google Ads for more targeted traffic.
Stimulate Demand
As people emerge from behind their masks and consider travel, it’s crucial to stimulate demand. Remember to lure travelers with incentives such as contests and customized offers to save money off vacations. Give travelers a reason to take action to help hesitant consumers take the plunge in traveling again.
Market research matters because society’s actions and attitudes changed after COVID-19. For example, National Geographic examined travel behaviors post-pandemic and found out that sustainability and joyful travel experiences will be more critical than ever before. Travelers are going for local excursions and road trips. Focusing on preferred travel experiences helps agencies drive more targeted traffic to their client’s site when everyone starts to emerge from quarantine.
Encourage travelers to book trips with discounts and incentives. Work with other local travel companies to create irresistible offers to attract more travelers. Use strategies such as customized email, text, and snail-mail offers. Create a travel club with exclusive discounts to encourage repeat adventures. Limited time offers encourage consumers to take action immediately.
Content Audit
After a new normal, the world changed its behaviors and attitudes. Perform a content audit to determine if the site content is still relevant. Should it be updated to coincide with the new times where people are focused on safety? Are there opportunities to prune and refresh? Focus on adding memorable travel experiences (MTEs) to the content to entice travelers to be adventurous and take action.
With many people still hesitant to travel, exciting content hubs are crucial to reassure consumers and get them back into life. Provide firsthand accounts of traveling post-COVID and the latest travel experiences based on safe practices. Use MTEs to encourage people to take steps to travel safely and have unforgettable adventures.
After quarantining for months, people are eager to resume their favorite activities. Create travel content around exciting experiences such as ziplining, backpacking, fishing, and golfing that are still possible as people come out of quarantine. Discuss safe dining practices and ways to socialize on vacation without feeling unsafe.
Making Travel SEO for 2021 Memorable
Beyond overcoming consumers’ concerns about travel is the concept of helping them create fantastic memories. MTEs are based on an MDE scale that defines seven key components to incite travelers, including:
- Hedonism to thrill travelers with the concepts of excitement, fun, fantasy, and sensory stimulation
- Novelty to provide once-in-a-lifetime excursions based on distinctive cultures, customers, and sights
- Local culture to promote positive recollections of the area for travelers
- Refreshment from everyday work, lifestyle structures, and the pandemic to make travelers feel liberated and empowered
- Meaningfulness to help travelers find out new things about themselves coming out of quarantine
- Involvement to make tourists feel connected and involved with the vacation they wanted
- Knowledge enables travelers to participate safely in a variety of activities to expand their talents
Anticipation is another factor to consider when crafting SEO content to encourage post-pandemic travel. Research revealed travelers coming out of quarantine are seeking travel advisors. Become a valued advisor by developing meaningful, optimized content that resonates with travelers.
Time is of the essence now that the world is coming out of a pandemic and ready to travel. From seeing family and friends for the first time in months to breaking out of quarantine monotony for adventures, travel is picking up fast. Effective travel SEO strategies today will help fuel the MTEs – and profits – of tomorrow.
Now is the time for agencies to focus on SEO for travel clients to be well-prepared for travelers as they seek new experiences. The experts at Galileo are strategic partners with the expertise to help you to help your clients move forward with enthusiasm.
With travel coming back to the forefront, we can help you put your travel clients back on the map. Contact the professional team at Galileo today to find out how.
