SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search

Transcription

1 HANDBOOK TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search Make SEO an Integral Part of Your Online Travel Marketing Strategy.

2 Provided by TrainingAid as part of the course SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search (TA-C503). Copyright 2015 by TrainingAid All rights reserved. This handbook or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Digital Version for Online Distribution First Published 2015 TrainingAid Hamburg, Germany

3 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 2 Introduction Make SEO an Integral Part of Your Online Travel Marketing Strategy Course Description This training course for travel and tourism industry professionals provides in-depth instructions and practical tips on how to optimize your travel websites to improve your search performance. This will help you make the most of your web content, attract more travelers, and engage your target audience with relevant content. Why SEO for Travel Websites? Many recent studies show that more and more travelers are using the Internet to find travel information and inspirations. The Internet, and - importantly - online search, has become a key part of how people look for travel ideas and plan their trips. In addition, travelers are increasingly turning to their computers and even mobile devices to book their trips. This is great news for travel brands focusing on digital marketing and promoting quality content about travel destinations, experiences, ideas and tips. But at the same time, the increasing importance of the Web in travel research and planning means the tourism businesses nowadays face fierce competition. That's why you need a focused and strategic approach to SEO, to increase the chance of your web content being found by your target audience. To do this, you need both short-term quick fixes and long-term strategic changes. This course focuses on practical steps and techniques that you can implement to make SEO a key part of your marketing and business success. Specifically, you will learn: What Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is and how it affects the performance of your website. How to research keywords for your SEO strategy that are relevant to your business goals. How to implement best practices in content marketing that help improve your search ranking. How to measure results and track your SEO success.

4 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 3 What You Can Expect Here are some steps and techniques covered in this course to help improve your SEO efforts: Indexable Content: Make sure your website content is indexable by search engines, by making your website design and structure SEO-friendly. User Experience: Optimize your website for site visitors, not for search engines. Positive user experience translates to better search performance. Keywords and Topics: Optimize for the right search keywords by targeting low-competition and high-volume long-tail keywords that are relevant to your customers' search intents. Link Building: Build a diverse inbound link portfolio, with a majority of the traffic coming from high-quality and authoritative sites. Social Media: Don't forget the impact of social performance on your SEO efforts. Social activities send strong signals to search engines about your website s authority and credibility. Web Analytics: Measure and monitor your search performance, and make smart SEO decisions based on website traffic and conversion data. Course Expert: Ferdinand Weps, Managing Partner, TrainingAid Ferdinand Weps Managing Partner and Co-Founder, TrainingAid Ferdinand brings many years of experience in organization and project management, and technology integration for both online and in-person educational programs. In his former position as Director of Membership and Operations for The International Ecotourism Society, he worked with and supported small businesses and community enterprises from all corners of the world, as well as collaborating with tourism authorities, destination organizations, and international operators. Ferdinand has a degree in Cultural Geography and Area Studies with concentrations on livelihood assurance in developing countries, sustainable tourism, urban studies, and migration research. He also has a background in hospitality management, and throughout the course of his professional career he has developed a passion for design, user experience and website development. He is a partner in the media design firm Heaven & Weps. Learn more & connect: experts/ferdinand-weps

5 Handbook TA-C506 Measuring for Success with Google Analytics 4 Index of Key Terms Covered in This Course Key Terms & Concepts Here are some important terms and concepts that are explained in this course, with a brief description of what each term means. Use this list as a reference, and to look up where in the course you can find more detailed information about these terms. Click Through Rates (CTR) A metric used to measure the ratio of clicks to impressions of an online ad or marketing campaign, e.g. how many times your page appears on SERP and out of those impressions how many result in visits to that page. See Module 1, Unit 1 Domain Authority The strength of a given website in terms of how the site is likely to rank on search engines. See Module 3, Unit 2 Meta Description A short summary of a web page that is displayed in search results. See Module 2, Unit 1 On-Page Optimization The process of optimizing your web pages for organic search rankings using such factors as HTML code, meta tags, and keyword placement - those factors that you have control over on your page. See Module 3, Unit 3 Page Authority The probability that a specific page from your site will be found on a search engine. See Module 3, Unit 2 Search Engine Crawler A program or automated script that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical manner in order to provide up to date data to the particular search engine. Also web spider or automatic indexer. See Module 2, Unit 1 Search Engine Results Page ( SERP") The listing of results returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. Website Architecture An approach to the design and planning of a website which focuses on user requirements and involves technical, aesthetic and functional criteria. See Module 2, Unit 2

6 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 5 SEO and Content Marketing Overview Keep In Mind... SEO should not be considered as website tricks you implement independent from your other marketing activities. While it s important to follow best practices to improve your search rankings, SEO is less about optimizing your content for search engines, and more about optimizing for the human searchers. The trick the search engine approach (for example, cramming keywords on your site) no longer works, and often works against you. If your business focuses on promoting quality content about memorable travel experiences and on providing great customer service - which you most likely do - this should be good news: SEO is not just about quantity, but also about quality. Don t Lose Sight of the Big Picture SEO is and should be an important part of digital marketing strategies, and effectively using SEO techniques can help improve your content marketing performance. That said, don t forget that the main purpose of your marketing efforts is to engage, inspire and connect with your audience. As you go through website optimization methods and SEO-specific tips and tricks in this course, keep in mind that SEO should not be seen as a standalone solution; your SEO strategies and tactics must be built on a solid foundation of quality product, quality service, and quality customer experience. If you have those, SEO strategies will help enhance your brand and increase customer loyalty. Remember to focus first and foremost on your site users experience, and on the wants and needs of your customers. For this, you need much more than just a great website; you need your overall business strategy to be great at addressing customers needs. And then, incorporate SEO tactics to enhance your website performance. SEO is a key part of a business overall marketing strategies, and effectively implementing SEO best practices can help increase brand awareness and customer engagement. To improve your search performance, your website content needs to be relevant and important. While implementing specific and smart SEO tactics is important, your online marketing efforts should still be about the quality of your content and the quality of your product. Search ranking won t help your business if you don t have a good product that addresses your customers needs.

7 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 6 SEO Strategy Know Your Goals, Know Your Customers Clearly Define Your Conversion Goals Define Success for Your SEO Efforts A key purpose of content marketing - or more specifically, inbound marketing (using quality content to pull customers in) - is to attract visitors from a variety of sources, and to achieve conversion goals (i.e. the goals you set for specific actions you want your site visitors to take). Conversion is a critical part of your marketing effort that you should closely monitor, as it is the most important indicator of whether the efforts that you put into creating great content and optimizing your website are actually benefiting your business. This goes for everything that you do to market your business, including, of course, SEO. When developing your SEO strategies, therefore, do so smartly by clearly defining your conversion goals and focusing on SEO tactics that help you achieve higher conversion rates. Steps to Building Your SEO Strategy 1. Target Audience Who are you marketing to? What are they interested in? And importantly, what are their needs and wants that have not yet been met? 2. Topic Areas Which questions are your potential customers asking, and which ones are you seeking to answer with your website content? Are they relevant to the core objectives of your business? 3. Competitors Who are your competitors? Who else in your field are targeting similar markets, and who are a doing good (or better) job of attracting and engaging travelers who fit your customer profiles? 4. Strengths & Opportunities Where are you achieving success and where can you improve? Which marketing channels have worked particularly well for you? What are some existing problems and challenges with user experience that you can fix and improve? 5. Plan of Attack And what next? Summarize your current opportunities and challenges with SEO and your goals. Organize your SEO goals into short-, medium- and long-term goals, and prioritize your SEO plans according to their relevance and expected impact.

8 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 7 SEO Basics SEO-Friendly Website Practices Indexable Content Can Search Engines See Your Content? One of the first steps for optimizing your website is to make sure that your content can actually be found by search engine crawlers. Indexable Content: While your website may have rich content with many visual elements that your human visitors can see, search engines only see what they can read, or the indexable part of your web content. Crawlable Links Can Your Links Be Found by Search Engines? Make sure that you re not inadvertently hiding relevant links on your webpages from search engines. The types of links that can t be found by search engine crawlers include: Links embedded within frames/i-frames; Links on protected pages (e.g. those that require contact form submission to access); Links within flash or other plugin elements; and Links on pages that have too many links (search engines will only crawl a certain number of links per page). Mark the Links You Don t Want Search Engines to Crawl Use the rel= nofollow attribute to tell search engines not to index some links. Which links should be attributed with nofollow? Some examples include: Links to untrusted content (such as user comments and guestbook entries); Paid links (as a way to disclose paid links in a machine-readable manner to search engines). The nofollow attribute may be inserted manually into the HTML code for hyperlinks, or programmed for some parts of your website.

9 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 18 Avoid Duplicate Content Let Search Engines Know What NOT to Index Pages that have the same content but different URLs (e.g. regular and print versions of the same page), or those that have very similar content (those that differ from each other by a very small amount) are problematic for search engines, and often result in all duplicate content pages ranking lower than they normally should. Solution: Canonization Canonization refers to the process of organizing your website content in such a way that each unique piece of material has only one URL, and any duplicate pages are redirected so that search engines know which URL is the right page. Canonization Method Examples 301 Redirect: By redirecting a page with 301 redirect, you re telling both humans and search engine bots that the page has been permanently moved. Instead of completely deleting the page and returning a 404 error ( Not Found ), 301 redirect is a good option for those pages with duplicate content that are receiving traffic or have inbound links. Canonical URL tag: The rel= canonical tag is inserted as part of the HTML head of a web page and look like this: <link href=" rel="canonical" />. This tells search engines (Bing and Google) that the page should be treated as a copy of the page whose URL is provided in the tag. User-Friendly Site Architecture Is Your Site Easy to Navigate? Can your site users easily find what they want right from the home page, or are you asking them to go through a few clicks (with a start page, country selection, and so on) before they get to the content they re looking for? User-Friendly Design & Navigation: Make your site architecture flat, without many levels to click through before getting to your site content. Avoid content silos by making sure that the lower level pages are linked from different sections that are relevant in content, and interlinked with each other.

10 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 9 Keyword Research Find Keywords You Want to Target Main Goals for Picking Your Keywords Which Keywords Should You Target? Keywords are a fundamental part of how search engines function and how they determine site relevance and ranking. In order for search engines to connect your content with relevant search queries, you should target keywords that are: Relevant: specific, focused on your business. Popular: receiving high enough traffic volume. Low-Competition: do not have too much competition. Likely to Convert: in line with your audience s search intent, and Related in Themes: pick group of related keywords. Focus on Long-Tail Keywords Think about the Specific Questions Searchers Are Asking Popular terms that describe general and broad categories and product types (such as travel, vacation, hotel ) make up only a small portion of searches performed online. In reality, most people search with what s called longtail search terms that are more specific and contain more information about the searcher s intent. Understanding and optimizing for long-tail keywords, therefore, is essential for your SEO success. So when you decide on which search keywords you want to optimize for, focus on terms that are more specific and relevant to your product and to your areas of expertise (e.g. walking tours in northern Italy as opposed to Italy travel"). Keyword Best Practices DO: Use keywords in a natural way, within the context of related content. When in doubt, prioritize readability and user experience over opportunities to have your keywords appear more often. DON T: Don t stuff keywords on pages with irrelevant content as such practice will be considered keyword abuse. Keyword stuffing not only won t help your ranking, but also will make your page look spammy.

11 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 10 Keyword Research Step 1: Gather Ideas Explore related keyword options and to find other relevant keyword ideas that you haven t thought of before. Use tools such as Wikipedia, Google Autocomplete, Übersuggest, KW Finder, and Quora to find ideas for search query terms that are in demand and are relevant to your business. *When researching Google Autocomplete suggestions, make sure that you are using an incognito window (or private browsing) on your browser. Step 2: Experiment with Modifiers Explore different variations of your search terms to find more specific and relevant ideas for target keywords. Some examples of keyword variation categories include: Time, Season: e.g. Thailand tours 2014, Thailand Tours Summer Quality, Features, Characteristics: Bundle keywords around travel styles, types, or activities, and add variations: e.g. Family, Single, Student, Women / Food, Adventure, Wildlife, Cultural / Sailing, Walking, Birdwatching, Cycling Search Intent: Add terms that describe what the searcher is looking for, e.g. Book Thailand Tours", "Thailand Tour Reviews Specific Location: Add the specific destination your tours are taking place in or where your accommodation is located, e.g. Thailand Tours Chiang Mai", Thailand Island Tours" Step 3: Experiment with Google AdWords Use AdWords to find out the search value for each keyword you consider. Buy test traffic ( exact match for your search query phrase) pointed to the page on your site that contains relevant content, and track impressions for at least a few hundred clicks in order to gather enough usable data. Based on the experiment, calculate the estimated value of each impression (amount of total profit generated through conversions / number of visitors that came to the page through the keyword). Step 4: Refine Keyword Themes Define the context of the keywords you want to target and to refine the themes and concepts that connect the group of keywords you are considering. Use tools such as Google s Related Searches and Google Trends to come up with additional ideas for conceptually related search terms. Step 5: Determine Competition Find out which other websites already rank high for related search terms and phrases. Evaluate the first few links listed on the search results page by asking: How are they optimized? How credible/authoritative are they? and importantly, Can I compete with them? Step 6: Select and Apply Make a list of the search keywords and phrases you want to target according to the themes you ve identified through your research, and use the list to help guide your content creation and promotion efforts.

12 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 9 Link Building Find Keywords You Want to Target Main Goals for Picking Your Keywords What s Link Building and Why Is It Important? Earning inbound links from other websites, particularly relevant and popular websites, is the best way to naturally expose your content to search engines' crawlers. To make the most of your link building efforts, aim to create a diverse link profile with the majority of links coming from high quality sites. Focus your link building efforts considering these categories, each with different approaches and with different levels of SEO values: 1. Organic & Editorial: Links that come naturally from other sites because others find your content worthwhile and want to link to your page. 2. Manual & Curated: Links that you earn by reaching out to site owners or editors and convincing them that your content is relevant and adds value to their site. 3. Manual & Self-Created: Links that you earn by adding content to other sites yourself, for example through blog comments and user profiles. Link Building Campaigns Keep In Mind as You Build Your Inbound Link Portfolio Build Links from Popular Sites: Links to your pages that come from other popular websites are important for SEO because search engines values those connections. Consider these factors when seeking out other popular websites: Globally popular sites that are linked by many other trusted sites and that have links coming from diverse sites. Locally popular sites that are popular and trusted within a topic-specific community that is relevant to your field. Build Links from Trusted Sites: Links from trusted and authoritative domains improve your search ranking. Highly trusted sites are those of trusted and recognized organizations and individuals (e.g. a well-known university, government, or a prominent blogger). Links from spammy sites, on the other hand, place your website in an untrustworthy link neighborhood and damage your search ranking. Pay Attention to How Your Pages Are Linked Having links coming to your site is good, but having links to your site with the right keywords is better. The anchor text (the text part of the hyperlink that people see) used to link to your site is another important factor signaling to search engines that those incoming links are quality links.

13 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 12 Link Building Best Practices DO: Invest time to develop your own organic and manual link building strategies to earn links from popular and trustworthy sites. Link building can often be a timeconsuming process, but the results on your search ranking, when successfully implemented, is definitely worth it. DON T: Don t overdo one thing, which can make your site appear spammy and negatively affect your rankings. For example, don t focus too much on blog comments with back links. This would make your link portfolio look suspiciously unbalanced, which search engines may interpret as a link scheme. NOTE

14 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 13 SEO Checklist Make Sure You re Optimizing Smartly Overall Goals & Objectives Website: Social media: My ideal customer: Digital marketing objectives: Topic areas: Competitors: Search-Friendly Site Design & Structure Sitemap: Does your website have a sitemap for search engines, for example, an.xml site map? Indexable Content Formats: Make sure key information is not hidden in formats that cannot be seen by search engines such as Flash. Indexable Links: Make sure the links on your pages can be found by search engines, and not hidden in web elements that cannot be seen by search engines such as i-frames, plugins. Links per Page: Don t include too many links on one page. Canonization: Are you using canonization methods such as 301 redirect and rel=canonical to avoid having duplicate pages? Targeted Keywords Relevant Keywords: Are your web pages currently appearing on search results page for relevant keywords? Keyword Research: Identify keywords and search phrases that are high-volume, low-competition and relevant to your areas of expertise. SERP Listings: Are you using your targeted keywords in the page title and meta descriptions that appear on the search results page?

15 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 18 On-Page Optimization URL Structure: Is your page URL user-friendly, short and concise? Does it include your targeted keyword(s)? Page Titles: Are you using your target keywords in the early part of the title? Headings: Does your page have an appropriate number of H-headers including relevant keywords? Body Copy: Are you using your target keywords and their variations in a natural way within the body copy? Alt Tag for Images: Are the images on your page appropriately tagged with <alt> attribution including your target keywords? On-Page Optimization Example: A sample web page using key on-page optimization techniques to optimize the page for the search query term wildlife travel. (See Module 3, Unit 3 for detailed explanations of the on-page optimization steps). Inbound Links Inbound Link Portfolio: Is your website receiving different types of inbound links, including organic, editorial, and manually-built links? Inbound Link Sources: Are most of the inbound links you receive coming from high-quality, authoritative sites? Anchor Text: Are you getting inbound links with appropriate anchor text, with enough variation to ensure the links are not seen by search engines as spammy link-building schemes?

16 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 18 Quality Content Relevant Content: Does the page provide information that s relevant to the search queries/keywords used to arrive at the page? Search Intent: Does the page content address key questions that your target audience will likely have (e.g. cost, value, social proof)? Quality: Do you have high-quality, professionally-written, reliable and valuable content that is relevant to your specific areas of expertise? Appropriate Multimedia Usage: Are you using multimedia content in a way that assists the site visitor s experience without interfering with the page flow or readability? Landing Pages: Are your landing pages (linked from advertisements, campaigns, etc.) optimized for the specific purpose of each page and focused on clear calls to action? Fresh Content: Are you keeping your website content fresh with up-to-date information, and providing timely content that s relevant to your audience? User Experience First Impression: Does your website make a good first impression? Is it attractive, uncluttered, and professionally designed? Site Architecture: Does your website have accessible and flat site architecture? Are you interlinking lower-level pages to avoid content silos? Navigation Menu: Is your navigation menu easy to navigate? Does it help the site user find information in a simple and intuitive way? Page Load Speed: Are you minimizing page load time to allow for a smoother user experience? Calls to Action: Are you guiding your site visitors to clear calls to action, and can they easily find where to click if they want to take the next step? Social Signals Social Strategy: Are you targeting the right audience on the right social platform, and using social media effectively according to your business marketing strategy? Social Media Traffic: Are you receiving incoming traffic to your website through social media sites? Strong Social Presence: Are you effectively engaging followers with relevant content on your social media pages?

17 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 13 Wrap Up & Next Steps What Now? Your Notes & Course Handbook Review Your Notes: Revisit some of the key learning points and questions you've written down during the course, and take your notes with you as you work on improving your SEO practices. Use the Course Handbook: Download and keep your copy of this Course Handbook, so that you can easily revisit what you've learned from this course and come back to it in the future. Revisit the Course: You have lifetime access to all of the course materials, which means that in the future, whenever you want to, you can come back to the course pages. Keep Learning Follow Us: Look out for marketing related blog posts ( Want to share your example on our blog? Talk to us Join the Conversation: Continue the discussions related to the topics and questions from this course by staying in touch with fellow professionals through the Discussion forum. Find Other Courses: Keep an eye out for upcoming courses ( in Marketing & Communications and other categories that will address related topics that may also be of interest to you. Time to Celebrate (and Share) Write a Review: If you would like to help others considering this course by writing and publishing a review, please see the "Review" link under "My Courses" > "completed". Share with Friends: Help your colleagues who may benefit from this course by giving them a discount! Simply pass on the code SEOCourse and they'll get a 10% off when purchasing this course. Send Your Feedback: Please send any questions and requests related to this course, as well as suggestions for improvement, to the TrainingAid team at feedback@trainingaid.org. *Don t forget: You can download your Certificate of Completion for the course "SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search" (TA-C503) from "My Courses" > "Completed". SAMPLE

18 Handbook TA-C503 SEO for the Travel Industry: How to Optimize Your Website for Search 18 Course Add-On Option: One-on-One Advice & Guidance This customized one-on-one advice and guidance option is designed to help you make the most of the SEO for the Travel Industry course. We ll walk you through the course, address your questions about the course materials, and help you apply the tools and tactics introduced in the course to your specific needs. What You Will Get In addition to lifetime access to the online course, you will receive the following with the add-on option: 1. Review: A checkup of your website and digital presence to review your current SEO and marketing practices. 2. Report: A summary writeup with recommended action steps for optimizing your website and improving your content marketing efforts. 3. Consultation: Face-to-face time or a call (2 hrs) with the course expert, who will answer your questions and offer tailored advice. What You Will Gain 1. Understand Better: Maximize the benefit of the SEO course by tailoring the learning experience for your specific needs. You ll be ready to get started on optimizing your website to be found by your target audience. 2. Apply Smarter: Take your training a step further by applying your knowledge and implementing key action steps. You will receive honest advice on your current search performance, how your site compares to your competitors, and where to focus your efforts in order to achieve meaningful results. 3. Improve & Grow: Find out which steps to implement for both short-term and long-term results on your search performance. Some steps will be easy to implement with immediate outcomes, others will require more planning and programming experience. For more information on the add-on option and to submit your interest, please go to:

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