Tourism Search Engine Optimization Tips – Get More Bookings in 2024

Are you using tourism search engine optimization?

The tourism and travel sector continues to dominate, poised to achieve $11.1 trillion in earnings in 2024. Being such a lucrative industry, it’s also got lots of competition, making now the time to focus on SEO.

What is SEO and why is it so important in the tourism industry?

Tourism search engine optimization dictates how your website ranks for specific keywords. It affects how visible you are online, which directly translates to the amount of website traffic, social media followers, leads, and bookings you receive. You can increase your ranking by focusing on local keywords, quality backlinks, and voice search, among other tactics.

Since SEO is such an impactful part of your tourism business, you need to know how to navigate it and use it to your advantage. Fortunately, Mediaboom’s insights can help you do just that.

1. Optimize for Local SEO

Most people who learn about local businesses rely on the internet to do so, with upward of 98 percent of consumers discovering brands that way in 2022.

Tourism search engine optimization must include a local SEO component to reach that valuable portion of your audience.

Optimizing your local SEO looks a little something like this:

• Begin with an SEO audit to determine your strong points and weak areas.
• Research relevant, tourism-related local keywords, then sprinkle them across your website, including your page titles, URLs, headers, website content, alt tags, and meta descriptions.
• Claim your Google Business Profile and update it, then encourage your happy customers to leave reviews and share images and videos.
• Use local business schema or structured data markup code that explains to search engines what your business is about.

Discover more local SEO ranking factors courtesy of Mediaboom here.

2. Create High-Quality Content

Content is still king in 2024, so your tourism business must have a content marketing strategy ready to go.

Interactive, highly visual content will connect more meaningfully with your audience, such as:

• Infographics
• Videos
• Interactive eBooks
• Interactive checklists
• Calculators, such as a vacation budgeting calculator
• Interactive maps

Content needs to be valuable above all else, which means digging deep into your audience data and understanding their pain points.

The content must also be targeted to specific audience groups to drive engagement.

3. Mobile Optimization

The next can’t-miss element of tourism SEO is mobile optimization.

Statista broke down the data for which devices people used to get online the most in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Mobile phones were the top response, with 95.3 percent of users, followed by smartphones at 94.4 percent.

Desktop and laptop users lagged behind at only 63.4 percent, proving the importance of mobile optimization ahead of your SEO campaign.

Some strategies you can use to optimize your tourism website are as follows:

• Improve your loading speed to no more than eight seconds.
• Optimize your images.
• Rework your navigation so it’s UX-focused and easy to use.
• Produce content designed for mobile users.
• Use a mobile-friendly web host.

4. Use Long-Tail Keywords

Here’s another tip catered to tourism SEO content production: focus on long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are longer search terms that offer more specificity compared to short-term searches.

“Tourism agency in Miami, FL” is an example of a long-tail tourism-related keyword, as is “tourism agency with custom itinerary.”

The results a searcher gets with long-tail keywords are a lot more fine-tuned compared to general searches like “tourism agency” or “cruise ships,” which are short-term searches.

5. Build Quality Backlinks

While any website can generate backlinks, there are correct and incorrect ways to go about it.

You’ll hurt your tourism search engine optimization position if you use black-hat measures, as search engines frown upon these tactics.

Instead, you should organically build backlinks. One way you can do that is by getting on industry directories.

Becoming an authority in your industry is also another way to generate higher-quality backlinks, so focus on producing in-depth content, from whitepapers to case studies and infographics.

Skyscraper content is another type that’s popular for boosting your backlinks.

This form of content utilizes a proven framework that has driven results for your business in the past and should do so again.

6. Leverage Social Media

Your tourism agency needs a social media presence in 2024.

It will benefit your business in many ways beyond your rank, as being on social media will also help with lead gen, customer retention (through engaging with them), and bookings.

Businesses often wonder what to post to make an impact on social media, so here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Share fun facts related to your industry.
• Upload photos and videos of people enjoying vacation and travel experiences facilitated by your tourism agency.
• Post exclusive special offers.
• Take your followers behind the scenes to learn about what a day in the life of a tourism agent is like.
• Offer interactive content like contests or polls.
• Host a giveaway or contest.

7. Optimize for Voice Search

Voice search is one of the most up-and-coming SEO and digital marketing trends, so it’s one your tourism agency must pay attention to.

It’s expected that this year will bring in 8.4 billion voice assistant units sold. By comparison, the amount in 2020 was only 4.2 billion.

With so many people having access to Siri or Alexa, the way we’ve searched has changed.

Today, voice searches are dominating search engine results pages.

More conversational than a traditional text-based search, you can optimize your tourism site for voice search in a few ways.

First, research the most relevant conversational keywords in your industry, using SEO tools to determine how viable the terms are for your campaign. Next, insert the keywords naturally across your website.

Additionally, you can optimize your content, especially longer-form pieces. Incorporate the long-tail conversational keywords as questions, then present the answers thoroughly and encyclopedically.

8. Use Schema Markup

One of the most important elements of tourism search engine optimization is schema markup language. This is the language of search engines, telling them what the contents of your website are and how to navigate it.

If there’s a language barrier, per se, between your website and the search engine, the search engine crawler won’t get a full picture of your site. As a result, your ranking won’t climb.

Although it’s considered a technical aspect of SEO, you must manage your schema markup, improving it so search engine crawlers can understand it.

Tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper Tool make it easier to navigate this tricky area.

Become a pro at technical SEO with Mediaboom’s golden insights.

9. Enhance the User Experience (UX)

The user experience or UX must be at the top of your priority list.

A tourism and hospitality search engine optimization agency like Mediaboom can assist you, improving the following areas of your website design:

• Visual hierarchy
• Booking process and efficiency
• Calls to action, including button placement, text, and shape
• Mobile responsiveness
• Website loading time
• UX-friendly search filters
• Image and video quality (it should be high-res but not drag down your site loading speed)

Split testing these various elements will help you carve out a more UX-focused website that will appeal to your prospective customers.

10. Regularly Update Content

Every six to 12 months, it’s time to review your current crop of content and determine if anything needs an update.

You can choose to update content if its ranking has dropped, its performance was good but isn’t anymore, or if the content is out-of-date.

Updating content maintains your status as an authority in the travel and tourism industry.

Additionally, you’ll make the user experience better and potentially rank higher.

New 2024 Trends to Boost Your Tourism Website’s Ranking

As with all areas of SEO, tourism search engine optimization has had a lot of exploding trends in 2024.

Here’s what’s on the horizon and what it means for your campaigns.

Automation and Personalization

SEO is taking an increasingly hands-off approach thanks to automation.

Software and tools are designed to tackle the most time-consuming tasks on your to-do list for you.

For example, today’s tools can automate keyword generation and research as well as content ideas and outlines.

More so, you can rely on these tools to determine where your site is ranking and monitor issues related to your SEO that you can fix before your rank drags too far behind.

The content and keyword research produced by these tools is personalized to your business needs and the needs of your audience, making automation valuable for any campaign.

Voice Search Optimization

You already know how voice search has crashed upon the SEO world like a tidal wave.

Finding the right conversational keywords will put your tourism agency in a better position to rank when a voice assistant searches for those terms.

If you’re still struggling with where to use your voice search keywords, try creating FAQ pages with rich snippets.

This valuable content should enhance your rank.

AI and Chatbots

One can’t talk about SEO trends without mentioning artificial intelligence. AI has become a marketer’s best friend.

Your tourism agency can rely on AI to create content ideas, write outlines and briefs, produce and schedule social media posts, and make predictive analytics based on historical data.

It’s also increasingly being used in customer service, acting as an all-knowing rep when implemented as a chatbot.

You can teach AI to respond to your audience about any type of query through machine learning. Its capacity to answer questions accurately will improve with time.

Local SEO and “Dupes” Trend

An emerging trend in local SEO is dupes, short for duplicates. From service area pages to directory listings, testimonials, reviews, NAP information, blogs, and landing pages, all are duplicatable, but should you?

Not when it comes to service area pages, you shouldn’t. Writing unique content for each area you serve rather than copying and pasting the same format showcases your local expertise.

The same goes for area-centric landing pages.

You also shouldn’t reuse the same article or blog format, as that will get boring to read quickly and you could lose engagement among your audience.

However, NAP content should be the same, and that also applies for directory listings.

Content That Emphasizes Experiences

Speaking of content, people want to read about the experiences of others.

They want to know how booking with your tourism agency expedited their trip so they could have the most amazing vacation of their lives or a productive business trip.

This kind of content isn’t a review or a testimonial either. Think more like a guest post but written by trusted names in your orbit.

If you have brand ambassadors, they’re the perfect parties to ask to write this kind of content.

That said, experience-driven content can also be visual, such as a video.

Bleisure and Wellness Travel

The world of bleisure and wellness must be on your radar as part of your tourism search engine optimization plans.

Bleisure is a combination of business and leisure travel. That’s right, people who have to travel for work aren’t looking to stay buttoned-up day in and day out anymore.

They want to enjoy some time to relax, sightsee, and have a mini vacation before going back home.

Wellness travel is also growing. This area of tourism is concerned with connecting to one’s spirituality through activities and travel destinations.

The goal is to reduce stress and find wellness activities, retreats, lodging, and dining experiences.

Catering some of your content to these two areas of travel and producing targeted landing pages will draw more of the wellness and bleisure travel crowd to your tourism agency.

Real-Time and Last-Minute Booking Systems

Today, consumers who are looking for travel accommodations usually don’t want them next month or two weeks from now.

They want them right this moment. You brought the traffic to your website, so now you have to keep it there by offering real-time booking options to these ready-to-buy audience members.

You should also consider last-minute booking systems as part of tourism search engine optimization.

People change their mind, their plans switch, or other circumstances sometimes cause them to need accommodations at the last second.

Providing options just for this subset of your audience will continue to help your website rank.

Case Studies

Marina Inn

Mediaboom transformed Marina Inn at Grande Dunes’ online presence.

We revamped their website with a custom WordPress CMS, streamlined navigation, and a visually stunning interface.

By optimizing the sitemap and adding a mega-menu, we improved accessibility and SEO, enhancing booking experiences and reinforcing Marina Inn’s premier status in Myrtle Beach.

JW Marriot

Mediaboom partnered with JW Marriott to elevate their downtown Houston presence with a bespoke website and impactful print ads for their grand opening.

We crafted a site integrating the hotel’s history and contemporary luxury, featuring industrial elements like iron and glass, boosting web traffic.

Our print materials highlighted the hotel’s offerings, making a memorable impression on Houston’s discerning clientele.

FAQS

I. How can local SEO benefit tourism businesses?

Local SEO helps tourism businesses appear in local search results, making them more visible to potential customers in their area. Optimizing Google My Business profiles, acquiring local backlinks, and encouraging customer reviews can increase local search rankings. This is particularly important for businesses like hotels, restaurants, and tour operators that rely on local clientele.

II. What are some key strategies for effective Tourism SEO?

Key strategies include optimizing for relevant keywords, creating high-quality and engaging content, improving website speed and mobile-friendliness, acquiring backlinks from authoritative travel sites, and leveraging local SEO by optimizing Google My Business listings and encouraging customer reviews.

III. How can keyword research improve Tourism SEO?

Keyword research helps identify the terms and phrases potential customers use when searching for travel-related services. By targeting these keywords in website content, meta descriptions, and blog posts, tourism businesses can improve their search rankings and attract more relevant traffic. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and SEMrush are useful for this purpose.

IV. What role does content creation play in Tourism SEO?

Content creation is vital for Tourism SEO as it helps attract and engage visitors, provide valuable information, and establish the business as an authority in the travel industry. Regularly updated blogs, destination guides, travel tips, and visually appealing content like images and videos can boost SEO efforts. High-quality content is more likely to be shared and linked to, further enhancing SEO.

V. How can social media impact Tourism SEO?

While social media signals do not directly impact search rankings, a strong social media presence can drive traffic to a tourism website, increase brand visibility, and generate backlinks. Engaging content on social platforms can lead to higher website traffic, which can indirectly benefit SEO. Additionally, social media profiles often appear in search results, offering another way to capture potential customers’ attention.

Do you have more questions?

If you have more questions about optimizing your tourism website for search engines or need personalized SEO advice, feel free to contact Mediaboom.

Conclusion

SEO catered to the tourism industry is important to elevate your rank and improve your visibility online.

Mediaboom, your tourism and hospitality search engine optimization specialists, can evaluate your site’s current rank and recommend personalized solutions to improve your status in the SERPs.

Take your tourism business to the next level with our five-star services. Contact our experts today to begin.