SEO For Tourism: Get Found And Attract More Perspective Travelers

Travel and tourism industry is one of the worst affectees from COVID-19. According to statistics, the travel industry generated $712 billion in terms of revenue in 2020 but it was slashed to $447.4 billion in 2021, which translates into a 37% decline. In four months, travel industry lost 1.5% of its contribution to global GDP and if that trend continued, it could lose 4.2% of its continuation to global GDP, which is equal to the loss of $3.3 trillion 

Thankfully, that did not happen and everything started opening back up. As the world started opening and things started to normalize, the travel industry started to blossom again but the damage was so huge that it might take them a few years to fully recover from the impact of COVID-19. According to Mckensey, the travel and tourism industry can fully recover from the jolts of the pandemic after 2024.

Are you a travel agent who wants to increase travel bookings? Are you a tour operator who wants to close more deals through your travel website? If yes, then you should master the art of tourism SEO. That is exactly what this article will help you achieve.

Table of Content

What is Tourism SEO?

Why is Tourism SEO Important?

What are the Advantages of Doing SEO For Tourism?

Types of Tourism SEO

Homepage SEO

Category and Destination Page SEO

Property Page SEO

Local SEO

How To Do SEO For Tourism?

Keyword Research

User Experience

Content Creation

Build Backlinks

What is Tourism SEO?

Tourism SEO is a process of optimizing your tourism website so it can rank higher on search engine result pages and show up when a prospective user searches for travel packages, tours and activities.

Why is Tourism SEO Important?

A study conducted by Google looked at the behavior of travelers and found that 60% of leisure travelers and 55% of business travelers use search engines for travel planning. Whether they have to book tickets, rent a car or finalize their hotel accommodation, travelers are using search engines before travel apps or websites for trip planning.

Alexa report showed that more than half,(54.9%) of all website traffic to travel and tourism websites comes through search engines. With most travelers using search engines for trip planning and a large chunk of website traffic to travel and tourism website coming from search engines, you can not afford to ignore tourism SEO.

What are the Advantages of Doing SEO For Tourism?

Some of the advantages of doing SEO for tourism and travel website are::

• Generate consistent organic traffic
• Collect more leads from search engines
• Increase brand awareness
• Cost effective solution to paid advertising
• Accelerate business growth
• Builds trust and credibility

Types of Tourism SEO

It is important to understand different types of tourism SEO to optimize your travel website effectively.

Tourism SEO can be divided into four major types.

1. Homepage SEO
2. Category and Destination Page SEO
3. Property Page SEO
4. Local SEO

Let’s look at each one in more detail.

Homepage SEO

To optimize your home page for higher search engine visibility, it should contain the following:

• Images and videos of properties and people
• Details about special deals and discounts
• Top performing content from your blog
• Search bar
• Simple navigation
• Highlight the unique selling proposition of your travel business

Category and Destination Page SEO

Here are some of the best practices you need to follow to optimize your category and destination pages for SEO.

• Create a dedicated landing page for every destination, city or state
• Create a separate landing page for every area

Here is what your tourism website structure should look like.

Property Page SEO

When it comes to property pages, include specific information about properties instead of giving them generic information. Here are some of the elements your property page must have.

• Prices and availability
• Exact location of the property
• Facilities 
• User reviews and ratings
• Total capacity
• Detailed description

Local SEO

Local SEO can increase the chances for your tourism website to show up in search results when someone searches for it from your own country, state, city or area.

• Claim and optimize your Google My Business listing
• Online reviews and ratings
• Local listing
• Submit your business to online directories
• Online citation
• NAP optimization

How To Do SEO For Tourism?

Here is a step by step process to do SEO for travel agents.

Keyword Research

The first step to successful tourism SEO is to find SEO keywords for tourism. Start off by analyzing your competitors’ keywords. Which key phrases are they targeting? This will give you a better idea about what’s already working in your industry. Next, find location-specific keywords to target. This allows you to target local customers.

Don’t forget to analyze the search intent behind every keyword. Look at what’s already ranking for that particular keyword. If it is a video, you should create a video. If it is a how to guide, you should create a how to guide. There is also a seasonality element attached to the travel industry and you can take advantage of it by targeting the keywords that are in demand during a particular time period.

User Experience

Search engines like Google have started putting more and more emphasis on user signals. If your website visitors are hitting the back button and going back to search results a few seconds after landing on your travel website, this sends a clear message to search engines that users are not getting what they are looking for or had a worse experience. Search engines can use these cues to demote your website in search engines.

That is why it is important for your website to load quickly, have simple navigation and provide visual cues to guide new users through their buyer’s journey. The more time users spend on your website, the better it is for your search engine rankings. Make sure your tourism website is optimized for core web vitals and is mobile responsive.

Content Creation

When creating content for your tourism website, you should think like a traveler. Put yourself in the shoes of a traveler who is planning their next trip and look at your website content from that perspective. What information you might be looking for? What problems might you encounter? 

Your content should provide solutions to these problems. Include your target keywords in the title, meta title and subheadings of the content and break down your content into easily digestible bits with white spaces.

Build Backlinks

Once you have crafted the content, it is time to build backlinks to increase your chances of ranking higher on search engines. When it comes to backlinks, focus on quality instead of quantity. Relevancy and authority of the backlinks you build can have a huge impact on your search engine rankings. The higher the authority and relevance of the source you are getting backlink from, the more beneficial it will be for your tourism and travel business.

How do you optimize your Tourism website for search engines? Share your SEO process with us in the comments section below.