We all know that a travel content strategy with SEO is a worthwhile investment to build your brand awareness. SEO marketers from a travel digital marketing agency can help you rank higher in search engines, bring quality traffic to your website and separate you from the competition.
There are two types of SEO: on-page and off-page (also known as on-site and off-site SEO). And yet, while so many brands are aware of the importance of on-page travel SEO services – think optimising your travel website’s pages and using keywords – they remain in the dark when it comes to using off-page SEO.
Yet off-page SEO also plays a pivotal role in a website’s performance. You need to get your travel content strategy right – including those off-site elements – to have a positive effect on your rankings and the flow of traffic to your travel website.
So, what is off-site SEO?
While on-site SEO refers to the optimisation of a travel website and its content, off-site SEO refers to tactics and techniques that are applied externally to a website, in order to increase its visibility and improve its rankings.
The main purpose of off-site SEO is to show users that the travel brand is trustworthy and has authority.
The key elements of off-site SEO include:
Building backlinks
Encouraging brand searches
Increasingly engagement and shares on social media
Gaining exposure
Off-site SEO: Why is it important?
Search ranking systems are designed to measure whether a site is providing helpful, relevant information for the user. They use specific parameters to find out how useful your content is.
Google sets out quality content guidelines using the E-E-A-T acronym – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
One of the best ways to demonstrate E-E-A-T and your value to users is through off-site SEO. For travel brands, factors such as reviews, recommendations, backlinks, and social media shares are all key when it comes to your travel website’s ability to rank.
Peer reviews and recommendations are a hugely critical part of today’s marketing strategies for tourism. Embracing them gives you the opportunity to build your brand's profile in a way that appeals to potential customers.
Link building
What is link building?
Link building is the process of linking from other websites to your own. This is considered a vote of confidence and demonstrates to search engines that other companies and sites trust your content. It also helps you build authority.
Some of these links are deliberately built, which involves travel SEO services such as enlisting travel content creators to write guest posts on reputable sites linking back to your site.
You can also reach out to suppliers and ask them to backlink to your website. Another way to increase your number of backlinks is to find relevant listicles that could include your products or services (e.g. 10 best travel companies in the UK), and ask them to link to your website. This can also involve a cost, depending on the site.
Other links to your website are created organically. This comes about through producing great travel content that inspires other companies and travel content creators to link to your website naturally, using it as a reference.
Why invest in link building?
Having a lot of high-quality links from relevant publications leading to your website will improve the ranking of your travel website. Essentially, you're showing that other people have confidence in your brand.
How to build links
Link building involves a whole variety of different tools and techniques, from finding simple ways to link back to your site to travel digital marketing, social bookmarking and even earning reviews online. Here are some key ways to promote your travel content strategy:
Content Marketing
Ask others to link to your website. This could involve the likes of guest posting and blogger outreach strategies, which involves creating travel content yourself or having others create content that includes your brand and links back to your website.
Quality content
Create inspirational, informative travel content that’s ‘linkable’ and generates organic traffic. This could include data-driven studies, in-depth guides and compelling visual content.
Get featured on resource pages
These are curated lists that direct users to relevant content with links to external websites. Find resource pages that match your products and services to optimise your flow of organic traffic.
Repair broken links
Broken links can harm your SEO and prevent your site from reaching your intended audience. A site audit will help you identify and repair any broken links on your website.
Optimise your most popular content
Find the content that has created the most organic backlinks, improving it, then publicising it.
Take a lead from competitors’ links
Find the key backlinks to their websites using Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool and reach out to companies asking for links to your site.
Get listed
Join a respected association or chamber of commerce and make sure they link to your company. Also, make sure your travel brand is accurately listed on online business directories such as Google Business, Yelp, Facebook, and Foursquare.
Social media for travel
Promote your travel content on social media to get traction and increase the chance of people linking to your brand or your content.
Use social bookmarking
Target sites like Tumblr, Reddit, and others by posting your own travel content - make sure it is of value to the readers. This appeals to the niches that your target audience is interested in.
Cultivate a feedback culture
Incentivise your customers to post reviews. This helps show your brand to be trustworthy and serves to build better connections with your audience.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO for hospitality involves improving your ranking and visibility for location-specific search results. More and more people are using the internet to find a business in their immediate area. And, according to Google, 76 per cent of users who search for a local business visit the place within 24 hours, with 28 per cent of those searches resulting in a purchase.
Google sorts results into a Local Pack, for top recommendations based on relevance, distance and prominence, using location-specific keywords and Google Business Profiles for reference. Local SEO involves using various techniques and strategies, including location-specific keywords, to attract potential customers in the local area.
With the rising popularity of “near me searches” – a 100 per cent increase globally – driving awareness of your travel brand on a local level is more important than ever.
Plus, with travellers increasingly looking to sample local, authentic experiences in favour of well-trodden tourist trails, the right off-site travel content strategy is now essential for modern-day travel brands.
Put your brand in the hands of the travel SEO experts, working hand in hand with experienced travel copywriters. At Peregryn travel marketing agency, we optimise your hotel’s online presence, with an off-page service package designed to grow your brand and cement your reputation, while increasing your visibility.
We provide expert SEO services for the travel industry, with years of experience working with some of the world’s biggest brands. From building your off-site travel keyword strategy and local SEO to bespoke link-building strategies and detailed monthly reports, an SEO strategy agency will help your brand reach a wider audience and establish your reputation and ranking.
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