The travel and tourism industry has changed dramatically over the years and your business should be aware of how to adapt to these changes.
With the rise of Google searches in recent years, SEO has become essential to work in tourism, especially when it comes to putting content online.
Using SEO to your advantage can help boost your Google search rankings.
These rankings are crucial for your tourism business as most Google users don’t look past the first search page.
Google’s helpful content update is now solely focused on ensuring suggested content and ranking is based on content created for humans.
The content update is excellent news.
If you focus on the quality of the content and how useful it is to readers, you’ll most likely land a cozy place on the first page of a Google search result.
Enable experience predictions through content
The experience prediction is about with engaging content to help users predict what their personal travel experience would be like – and that starts with properly understanding the customer journey.
Different content formats like an article, a guide, or a list of things to remember can make your content more engaging and pleasing to the eye.
Be sure to include important information like the weather, places of interest that users will see, and any other important details the reader might need.
Be aware: It’s your tours and activities that people want to book, so make sure you provide a long, well-written description of the tour and people’s experiences to give the reader an idea of what they can expect.
Since you’re focusing on your SEO, make sure you take the time to describe the experience and include relevant keywords.
You can also use keyword research to find out what your target audience is searching for and write content that specifically focuses on topics that people want to read.
Leverage user ratings and user generated content to create more helpful tour package pages
User-generated content (UGC) can influence the decisions of other users in many ways. Users who influence others mean your customers can be advocates, as word of mouth can influence a prospective buyer’s journey to purchase.
Personalized reviews from users who have experienced your tour package can help attract your readers and drive user engagement.
Allow your users to leave a review and experience your tour first hand.
However, make sure this is a monitored area and stay in control of the UGC posted if this is a forum/comment based option.
If you are unsure about using a forum/comment based option, there are other ways to promote other UGC below:
- Survey: Once a customer has experienced your product or brand, reach out to them with a follow-up survey to get ratings and feedback. Use this information to improve the customer journey for other users. Surveys are also helpful for your brand as you may find that you need to make improvements.
- membership: Offer users the option to become a member and pay monthly for membership. Build incentives with perks like free entry and exclusive members-only offers. Encouraging users to sign up can also increase your conversion rate.
- reviews: Ask your customers to leave a review based on their tour package experience. Reviews can be submitted on your website, on the Google business profile page, on Tripadvisor or on Facebook. Make sure you don’t follow up on positive feedback and publicly thank users for their excellent feedback.
- social media: This tool can attract viewers from other platforms and show how great your tour is. Tagging your social media pages and sharing location can also build on experience predictions.
The content of your package pages should be related to the experience of your customers and not just to selling the products.
Make sure you think about your audience and what type of content they would like to consume and share.
For example, it’s a good idea to share an infographic showing the most talked about travel destination for 2022 or other travel predictions, such as: B. a list of world heritage sites or other travel-related facts and figures.
Demonstrate your expertise with niche content
If you’re a safari tour expert, make sure you create niche guides specific to the trips, animals, and weather so your users can get the most information from you.
Niche guides are beneficial for users looking to improve their own experience.
Imagine what you talk about with your clients when they are on tour and write about those experiences, combining the content with your keyword search to enhance your content and make it enjoyable for the reader.
Make sure you connect with people in a similar niche or field as your business.
Connecting like this is known as link building, and organically inviting a link to your website to be added to your tour can also attract customers.
Connecting with the influencers in your industry is another great way to increase sales and conversion rates.
Also, include local vendors and partners you want to promote as part of your business.
By writing like this, you are assuring users that you know what you are talking about and that you know your destination very well.
Create experiential content
Instead of trying to sell the tour directly, base your content on the surrounding areas.
Content that discusses the local towns, restaurants, and attractions offers much more value to your audience.
By exploring the place in your content as best you can, you let people know about the potential experiences they could have and allow them to imagine themselves there.
This valuable content is essentially product information that has been expanded and enriched.
When working on travel SEO, try to include content based on the local towns, villages, and good food instead of focusing on prices, dates, and times. This will showcase the user’s imagination and build excitement.
Describe in detail the places you can travel to, means of transport and the best way to get around (e.g. trains or buses). Food is also a popular topic for travelers, so explore the best restaurants, provide an overview of the menu on offer, and add a range of dishes to attract many readers.
To ensure the best success, always keep your clients in mind when writing. Writing with your customers in mind sets you apart from your larger competition and large-scale tour and activity resellers.
When writing these posts about your travel destination or experience, make sure to use internal links and provide a solid connection between your blog post and the tour activities.
Make sure you link to the places you’ll see on the tour, and make your post interactive and easy to navigate as it makes it easy for users to explore their options.
After creating experiential content and adding plenty of internal links and graphics, you can push your content further and include videos.
Don’t do this until you’ve written engaging content, as any additional media forms will enhance your user experience and solidify the final step of your customer journey.
Conclusion
As a tour operator, you want your business to thrive and it can be challenging to keep up with the constant changes in the SEO industry. But when done right, it’s totally worth it!
Following the points in this guide will help you improve your rankings, but don’t let SEO put you off if you don’t see instant results.
Getting results with SEO takes time; You have to be patient when reviewing your results and metrics, taking your time and checking back to see where your content is performing and where it might need improvement.
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