From the largest corporations to small local businesses, we are all aware that the last two years have been exceptionally difficult for travel and tourism.
Most have concentrated on surviving long enough to reap the benefits of the brief periods when consumers were willing and able to venture outside of their own towns or cities.
The travel and tourism industry, on the other hand, is nothing if not tenacious. And, with road travel in the United States returning to pre-pandemic levels over the Thanksgiving holiday, there has never been a better time for brands to invest in a redesigned SEO strategy.
Consumers are already making plans for their next vacation. So, how do you make sure your business is the first one they see?
What Will the Future of DMOs Look Like?
Traditionally, attracting out-of-town visitors to a large metropolitan area has been the primary source of revenue for destination marketing organizations (DMOs).
However, as a result of state-based restrictions, organizations such as Visit Philadelphia and Destination DC took a revolutionary approach to marketing in early 2021, shifting their focus and attention to customers on their doorsteps who had previously been largely ignored: locals.
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By celebrating everything local, DMOs were able to turn an otherwise disastrous situation into widespread hometown pride and a critical revenue driver as local tourists looked for ways to staycation and explore closer to home.
Content optimization for terms like “what to do in [city] this weekend” or “best things to do with kids in [city]” remains an effective SEO strategy for DMOs.
By using activity-based terminology, the focus remains on the individual attractions and experiences that drive traffic to both the DMO site and those of their partner organizations, such as museums and restaurants.
This type of content can rank for long periods of time and across multiple audiences and query sets, making it easily evergreen.
The number of young families looking for activities near their home is likely to be significant, particularly for city-based businesses, as well as individuals looking for a fun night out with friends at a new bar or restaurant.
Remember that tourists do not always have to be from another city. Adopting a local SEO strategy is a wise decision, especially given the uncertainty surrounding pandemic-related travel.
In the long run, focusing on your local audience first, with content that can also serve as a resource for visitors from further afield, will provide you with a significant SEO boost.
Improving the Rankings of Your Tour or Experience Brand
As a tour or experience company, you may be wondering how you can create content around these popular activity-based keywords without promoting your competitors.
The solution is to conduct solution-focused searches.
While these two approaches sound similar and have some overlap, the main difference is what the user is attempting to achieve.
Consider the breakdown below:
- Activity-based – in a broader sense, the user is unsure of what they want to do or see and is seeking a variety of options from which to choose.
- Solution-based – users are looking for an answer to a very specific question or problem, and they are more focused and niche.
Whatever the size or scale of your tour or experience company, the individual experiences or travel products you offer are almost certainly tailored to a specific group of people.
For instance, your company could offer tours of different locations within the same city, but each tour is tailored to a specific interest, such as local history, wine tasting, or a deep dive into a specific period of art.
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Use each of these specific needs and audiences in your optimization – rather than trying to capture everyone with broad phrasing like a DMO, be as specific as possible with keywords like “best ways to see historic homes in Savannah” or “see the Philadelphia art museum with an expert guide.”
Consider integrating your content experience with a tool such as Google Tag Manager to view search terms in real-time and serve relevant content to interested users.
Tours and experiences are frequently booked on the spur of the moment, often less than 24 hours before the event, so it’s critical to keep your content flexible and adaptable as your SEO efforts continue.
Larger travel companies will want to ensure that their enterprise SEO strategy is up to date with recent search developments and changing consumer behavior.
Travel companies with multiple locations will want to ensure that their local SEO is consistent across the board.
SEO for Travel Ecommerce Businesses
It’s easy to forget that when no one travels, no one uses travel-related products.
However, with a recent report indicating that 40% of consumers intend to pack their belongings and travel before the end of the year, sales of suitcases, packing accessories, and road trip essentials have already increased significantly over the same period in 2020.
Because your audience may have been absent for some time, optimizing your content with product and solution keywords is an excellent way to remind them of what your product does and the problems it solves.
Phrases like “best suitcases for a cross-country road trip” or “packing cubes for a small carry-on bag” identify a consumer issue or need, which you can then address in your site copy.
Consider creating content for on-the-go travelers, last-minute planners, or those who are already on vacation.
Cadence, a travel capsule company, is particularly good at this, optimizing for phrases like “best leak-proof travel capsules.” Nobody wants to get to their destination only to find that their shampoo has exploded all over their clothes.
Consider how you might use this approach in your own marketing – where else might your users be looking for travel accessories or solutions to a very specific product-focused problem?
The more specific your content optimization, the better.
Finally, travel and tourism brands can meet users where they are and solve their problems.
By combining SEO efforts with additional digital opportunities such as social media advertising and digital PR, travel, and tourism brands are well-positioned to attract users from all angles and at all stages of the planning and traveling experience.
If we’ve learned anything recently, it’s that flexibility and agility are critical to business survival and success, especially in volatile industries.
By incorporating this approach into your SEO strategy, you will be in a strong position to weather any storm that may arise.
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