Best Way To Market A Tour Using Google

If you’re looking for the best way to market a tour, you can’t overlook Google!

Google is by far the world’s biggest search engine. Travelers use it every day to research and find inspiration. In fact, a recent survey commissioned by Google found that travelers who took a big trip in the last year spent more than 70% of their time researching their trip online. And 57% of the respondents used the internet to get inspiration and ideas for their trip.

So, how can you use Google’s suite of products to promote your tours?

In this guide, we’ll cover four great strategies you can use to build a solid online presence with Google. Use these strategies to drive more high-quality traffic to your site and ultimately sell more tours.

Best Way To Market A Tour Using Google: Four Options Explained

1. List On Google My Business

Google My Business (GMB) is Google’s business directory. If you’re looking for sure-fire ways to get more exposure for your business, start here.

Your Google My Business profile displays all of the relevant information clients need to know about your company. This includes your operating hours, a description of your business, customer reviews, photos, location, and videos, among other necessary bits of information.

It’s completely free to set up your profile. Doing so can provide your travel company with many advantages, including to:

• Improve your visibility on Google search results pages
• Help customers find the exact location of your business using Google Maps
• Boost your runnings in local SEO results. For example, if someone searches for “walking tours near me,” your GMB profile can show up (provided the listing is relevant to the nearby person).
• Establish social trust through your Google Reviews. The reviews appear on your GMB profile for everyone to see. Reviews are an essential part of marketing your tours and attracting new clients.

2. Experiment With Paid Ads

Getting free, organic traffic from Google is ideal. But this can be tricky to master, especially if you’re working in a competitive niche.

One option to maximize traffic opportunities and get seen on more relevant search results is through Google’s paid ads.

Google ads work by bidding on certain keywords.

You set an ad budget and bid on search terms that your clients would use to search for your type of business or your service, for example, “history tour London.”

The highest bidder wins the top spot in the search results, which ends up directing a lot more relevant traffic to your website.

When setting up your campaign, you can choose the audience segment you would like to get in front of. You can then set your ads to only display to people who meet specific criteria, ensuring you don’t spend money on showing ads to the wrong people.

Google has various ad options, allowing you to experiment with different campaigns. Some important options for a tour business include local service ads, video ad campaigns, display ad campaigns, and search ads.

Of course, running paid ads requires a budget and expert knowledge to run the campaign. But if you do it properly, it’s possible to achieve an impressive ROI.

Ads are also the fastest way to send high-quality traffic to your website. This is because ads are effective and visible immediately. On the other hand, SEO can take months to rank your website or landing page organically to appear on the first page of Google.

3. Explore Opportunities On Google Things To Do

Replacing Reserve with Google which only offered tickets to attractions, Things To Do is a new feature on Google that displays experiences within search results. It’s now open to tours and activities.

These listings link to your website and other booking channels, including OTAs. Travelers will be able to click on a ‘visit site’ button on the list, which will direct them to the connected URL.

With your listing, you can potentially reach millions of travelers, specifically those who are searching for what you offer. Similar to Google My Business, this listing may also benefit your website’s SEO as there will be more links pointing toward your website.

You can find out how to set up your listing by contacting Google’s partnership team.

4. Master Your Travel Website SEO

Many tour operators will agree that the best way to market a tour is through a solid SEO strategy. As Google is the king of all search engines, winning at SEO through this search engine will help you get loads of free traffic.

SEO requires a fair amount of work, specialized tools, and knowledge. Get it right, though, and you can rank at the top of search results (for free) and stay up there for a long while. This sends a lot of high-quality traffic back to your site, which can ultimately result in more tour sales.

Some SEO essentials include using the correct keywords in your tour listings and across your website. Publish lots of helpful content about your tours, and always make sure that this addresses what your potential customers want to find out.

While you probably have many competitors, investing in a good SEO strategy will help you outrank most, if not all, of them.

Conclusion

It’s important to have a diverse digital marketing strategy in place, and Google remains one of the best ways to market a tour business.

If you have a strong presence on Google and rank at the top spots for the right search queries, you will get loads of traffic heading to your website.

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