SEO or search engine optimization is an essential part of a company’s online marketing efforts. It means optimizing your website to get more traffic through search engines like Google without having to spend too much on ads. Businesses in the tourism industry can also benefit from adding SEO to their strategy. For even better results, you can partner with a tour company marketing expert who can use SEO to boost your tour bookings.
How SEO Helps Increase Your Tour Bookings
1. Bringing Awareness To Your Brand
One of the biggest perks of a sound SEO strategy is improved brand awareness. By bringing your webpages to the top of search results, more prospects will be able to see and recognize your company’s name whenever they make a related search. Over time they will start to associate your brand with your target keywords.
2. Reaching The Locals
Local SEO is a type of search engine optimization that concentrates on making your pages (and therefore your business) more visible with local customers or customers who are looking for businesses in an area. This is the kind of SEO that uses more specific keywords like “tour agency near me” or “travel guide in Washington DC” as opposed to just “tour guide bookings” and the like.
If you want to target potential customers in your neighborhood or city, you can implement a local SEO strategy. Most tour company marketing professionals would suggest setting up a Google My Business profile. Doing so lets you display your location in Google Maps along with other details like your tour agency’s address, contact numbers, hours, reviews, and a link to your website.
3. Targeting Niche Audiences
Some tourism companies cater to specific niches like Jewish travelers, eco-tourists, our people who want to travel with pets. When yours has a niche as well, SEO can help your particular audience reach you more easily. Instead of using general search terms, you can capitalize on specific keywords like “Jewish cruises in Europe” or “ecological tours to Galapagos Islands.” This helps distinguish yourself from other companies and lets you better compete with others operating in your niche. And if there’s no one else in your niche working on SEO yet, this gives you the chance to have a headstart on monopolizing keywords.
4. Be A Trusted Expert With Content
Quality content is a large part of what makes SEO work. They contain the relevant information and keywords that are related to what your prospects have searched for. The more relevant and well-written your content, the better your ranking will be on search engines. So instead of just creating web content for content’s sake, you can make them timeless so that people can keep coming back to them for reference. Tour company marketing teams can make something like “11 Best Views in Hawaii” or “5 Reasons To Rent a Bike In Amsterdam”.
Although it may seem complicated with all the existing content out there, it’s essential to make yours as unique as possible, since it helps with building high-quality backlinks. Backlinks are links from other websites that lead to your own, usually from other articles and posts. They’re one of the factors that affect your page rankings in search engines.
When other websites cite your content for reference, this increases your tourism company’s credibility, and you’ll convince more customers to book tours with you.
5. Raise Attention For Upcoming Trips
Speaking of content, SEO is a relatively inexpensive but useful tool if you’d like to bring more attention to a special promo or trip you’re offering. For instance, if you’re a cruise line that’s trying to increase bookings for an upcoming Danube river cruise, you can plan out a temporary content strategy that focuses more on cities and other attractions in that area. You’ll also want to create a landing page that’s specific for the promo/event so that you have a higher chance of booking more customers. The content you’ve created can also be shared on your company’s social media pages for additional exposure.
6. Generates Traffic That Converts
Successful SEO strategies create website traffic that leads people to contact the tour company and successfully making a booking with them. Aside from having content that is relevant to their needs, choosing the right set of keywords is crucial in convincing a customer. For example, if a customer wants to go on a budget vacation, they might type in terms like “budget group tours” or “book affordable tours.” If your company does offer cheap tours, the tour company marketing team can use similar keywords to give you a higher chance of persuading more customers to book one with you.
7. Improves Customer Website Experience
Some people forget that SEO also entails improving your website’s design to make it attractive and user-friendly. Web design is also a factor in how search engines rank your webpages.
Some considerations you have to make include:
- Making your website mobile-friendly, since many people now use the internet through smartphones and tablets
- Ensuring that your website is easily navigable
- Using URLs that are understandable and keyword-relevant
- Fast loading times
Good web design also matters because the search engine’s algorithm observes how much time visitors spend on websites. If they don’t take too long because the website’s too slow or poorly structured, it will affect site rankings.
Think of it as making a first good impression with a customer. You’ll want their experience with your website to be smooth sailing so that they won’t have problems when they finally make a booking with you.
More people use the internet to book their vacations. It’s time for your tour company to go online too. SRJ Digital Marketing is a team of digital marketing experts specializing in several B2B industries, including real estate, healthcare, and tour company marketing. We offer services in lead generation, SEO, pay-per-click advertising, web design, and social media management. We also provide free strategy sessions and SEO audits to help you get started with your online marketing campaigns. For other inquiries, you can get in touch with us via our website.