SEO for tour operators in the UK
As a tour operator, how do you get noticed? Before the arrival of the internet, you had to spend heavily on advertising – or have friends on the high street. Cosy up to the right agents and your brochures would appear in shops up and down the country.
Times change. The new digital economy is slowly killing the high street travel agent. Of course, some people still book holidays in shops, but the numbers are dwindling. To find travel products, people look online – even if they end up booking by phone.
Today, the technology may differ, but the challenge for tour operators remains the same – to get noticed. It's now not a question of persuading travel agents to shelve your brochures, but about getting your website onto the first page of Google.
That’s why many UK tour operators are turning to SEO – search engine optimisation – to boost the performance of their businesses online.
Is she being replaced by Google?
How to market yourself online
The problem for established tour operators is that on the web everyone is equal. It doesn’t matter that you have 30 years of experience, knowledgeable staff and an ATOL. You could still be knocked into oblivion by a few cleverly-crafted websites built by a young internet entrepreneur.
That’s because most web users associate high rankings with authority. It's a natural conclusion. If a site appears at number one on Google, it must be good, right? And if you’re languishing in the 20s or 30s, who’s going to bother to click through to you?
It is vital for tour operators, therefore, to establish the authority of their websites, just as they’ve spent years establishing the authority of their businesses. They can do this in several ways, including bidding for Google Adwords and generating editorial coverage through PR.
But the most cost effective way of promoting any business online is through ethical SEO. A relatively small investment can produce dramatic increases in traffic.
And by carefully targeting the most relevant keywords to your business, you can ensure that the traffic you generate is most likely to lead to sales.
Would you like to see proof of how tour operators can benefit from SEO? Look at this case study.
Travel SEO
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