Best On-Page SEO Practices For Travel Agencies

On-Page Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) refers to the optimization of individual web pages in order to rank higher in search engines and generate more relevant traffic to a website. On-Page and off-page SEO work together hand in hand to rank your website on Google and other search engines.

For travel agencies, the techniques used to promote on-page SEO - including targeting keywords, creating written and visual content, and optimizing website appearance, all work to get more leads from user-based search.

Travel agencies can use SEO techniques to rank a website and increase its traffic organically to promote visibility. This is beneficial as it means savings can be made on advertising and will also establish a brand as a trusted name in the industry to ensure its long-term growth.

We will give you an overview of how to use on-page SEO to optimize your website search engine ranking by outlining the techniques such as targeting keywords, creating content, device optimization etc. which are considered to be good practice.

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On-Page SEO Practices For Your Travel Agency Business

Optimize Your Website Pages And Layout

You need to structure your website logically so that travelers who visit your site, as well as Google, can easily navigate their way around it to find what they are looking for. Good practice is that no page is more than two clicks away from the current one.

Along with the usual home, booking, and contact pages, as a travel agency, your website template could also include pages for categories or itineraries, maps, guides, and a blog page.

Having a number of pages to accurately categorize your website and make a great user experience will increase the amount of time that travelers spend on the site.

Create Great Content

Blogs work well with travel and having a blog will do a couple of things. This is where you can create great content to market your brand. You can optimize it with targeted keywords to draw search traffic to your site from Google and other search engines.

Make sure to use your main keyword within the first one hundred words of your blog so that search engines (and people) know what your post is about.

You can create internal links within your blog to help draw your content together and guide website visitors to other relevant and informative content on your site. The longer they spend on your site, the more relevant the website becomes in Google’s eyes.

Use external links to link to other high authority websites that are relevant to your niche. This helps Google to figure out what your page is about for ranking purposes. Additionally, the website you link to may return the favor and add a backlink to your content which is an SEO win.

URL & Title Tag

For any content you post, use your keyword at the beginning of your title tag to avoid losing out on searches.

Also, make sure that your URL is neat and simple so that people can easily identify what the content on the page is going to be about.

Target Your Keywords

Keywords are the crux of your SEO on-page best practice. Target both short and long keywords in your content to guide people to your site. Essentially your targeted keywords should aim to answer the questions that travelers ask when looking for information on a search engine.

This is why it is best to include both short and long form keywords and phrases in your content. A person searching hotels in Berlin may come up with thousands of results to choose from. By targeting more specific search phrases such as hotels in Berlin next to art gallery, you may narrow down the hit list to include your listing.

Post Local Directories And Information

For a travel agency, posting local directories and information that is relevant to your travel offering is vital for your on-page SEO. As an example, if one of the experiences your travel agency offers is bike tours through Hanoi, then provide some location-specific information, maps, or travel guides to Hanoi on your site.

This will give travelers more information about their desired destination, which means they will spend a greater deal of time on your website and keep returning to view the information, all of which count as ranking points in Google.

Use Other Forms Of Media

Images and videos are just as important as your content as having highly visual, interesting, unique and stimulating imagery will reduce your bounce rate and keep visitors on your website for longer.

This being said, user interaction only happens if your images and videos load quickly. Make sure they are optimized for viewing by sizing them correctly so they load quickly and keep the user’s attention.

Make sure at least one image name includes your target keyword, and include it in the alt text description too to let Google know what the image is about.

Optimize For Mobile

When it comes to SEO travel websites need to be optimized for cross-device viewing, especially because travelers on the go often find it easier and more convenient to view and book from mobile which they always have with them.

The mobile first index that Google recently implemented ranks websites that use responsive design higher than those that don’t.

So good on-page SEO practice for travel agencies is to ensure that your website is visible across various devices as Google will rank you higher than competitor websites which are only optimized for desktop.

Make sure your pages and images load quickly on mobile and use large text and booking buttons so that people can easily perform actions without having to zoom in or click through too many pages. At the end of the day, mobile is about the convenience for the user.

Avoid obtrusive pop-up banners, especially on mobile where screen space is more limited. Users will find this spammy and Google will penalize you.

Use Social Networks

People use social networks to research trips as well as document their holidays. Promote your travel agency across your social media platforms to increase your visibility and get people noticing your offering. The more people see your offering, the more business you can drive to your website.

Use your social media platforms to interact and create a rapport with travelers too. Engaging with them will promote visibility for your business and establish that there is a person behind the brand who people can engage with.

Analyze Your Competitors Websites

Take a look at your competitors’ sites to see which keywords they are ranking for and who they are getting backlinks from.

If you notice any gaps in keywords, then grab the opportunity to rank for them. Also, websites that have linked to your competitors may want to backlink to you too if you have good enough content.

At the very least, by analyzing your competitors' websites you will have an idea of what you are up against.

Best SEO Tools For Your Website

One of the best SEO tools you can use for research and analysis of your and your competitors' websites is Ahrefs. This paid SEO tool can be used to check a number of website metrics, research keywords, analyze competitors and monitor your niche.

It also provides information and metrics commonly associated with off-page SEO, which you can read a bit more about in our article on the Best Backlinking Practices.

For on-page SEO, Ahrefs provides information on organic traffic. This is important to know because organic traffic is the number of unique, human visitors to your website every month, and if you are targeting your keywords correctly and practicing good on-page SEO techniques then your organic traffic should gradually increase over time.