When the summer season arrives and holidays are around the corner, it’s not just the elite class that pack their bags and book a flight to their planned travel vacation, but the tourism sector also prepares for a busy season.

Unfortunately, it rarely turns out to be a win-win situation for all of them. Many fall behind because of a weak SEO strategy – thus no traffic! And no traffic means no conversions.

So it’s the search engine optimization that sets the tone of your success in the tourism sector. If you are struggling to acquire traffic, let alone getting any conversion, this read will be a game-changer for you.

Read on to learn how you can outrank your tourism and double your traffic in the next few months.

1. Test & Improve Your Page Speed

The average attention span of human beings is the lowest today in history – only 8 seconds. So if your website doesn’t load in less than 5 seconds, they are going to leave in a huff.

In fact, several studies conducted in this domain suggest a website that takes longer than 5 seconds to load ends up losing 90% of its traffic. This is the worst bounce rate you can expect and eventually results in a ranking loss.

Hence, it’s important to test your website’s loading speed on different devices, most notably on the mobile phone, as more than 50% of your traffic will come from mobile devices and tablets.

2. Aim for an Unparalleled User Experience

The website of a travel agency is supposed to reflect the quality of their services. Thus, visuals prove to be a great source of customer engagement. Besides that, the ease of navigation and overall usability of the website will earn you more qualified leads.

Around 70% of online businesses that fail do so because of bad usability, you don’t want to be one of them, right? Perform a detailed UX audit, preferably hire a UI/UX design agency in Dubai to look into your website’s experience from a customer’s perspective and recommend potential improvements.

And it shouldn’t be just a one-time process. Gather customer insights and constantly work on this aspect of your website to stay ahead of the competition.

3. Invest in Content Marketing

According to a recent survey conducted by Hubspot, content creation is the top inbound marketing priority of 55% of marketers. And this is for a reason, content builds trust and loyalty – and not to ignore content’s importance for better SEO.

For travel websites and anyone providing services in the tourism sector, the content will serve as a credibility booster. Provide value through your blog to the traffic and pitch your services with content marketing.

You can write about the best travel destinations for your target audience, discuss the pros and cons of a certain place, vacation budget, etc. and target the relevant keyword in your content.

4. Pick Your Keywords Carefully

One can’t emphasize enough the importance of keyword selection in the content marketing industry – particularly when you are in a competitive niche. The same goes for the tourism sector, you must select your competitors before you compete with them.

So figure out who you are competing against, what are their USPs, what are their best-ranked keywords, and where you can budget up some space for your website in the search results.

If you are new, start with long phrases and low-volume keywords with relatively less competition. Gradually, with consistent content investment, you will see traffic coming.

Don’t rely on assumptions, use premium tools like Ahref or SEMrush to have accurate numbers before you lay out a content strategy.

5. Get High Quality Backlinks

Research shows us that top results on Google’s first SERP have 3.8 times more backlinks than the rest. That clears up all the confusion regarding the importance of backlinks; you need them for long-term results.

Fortunately, you don’t need to manually research all the backlinks your competitors have acquired after persistent effort. All-in-one SEO tools also bring you competitor insights including all their backlinks.

You can further drill down to check the quality of those links and pitch the same websites with more valuable content. But avoid irrelevant backlinks, they lead to penalization and spoil your months of effort.

6. Don’t Ignore the Google Business Profile

If you don’t have a Google Business Profile yet, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. It allows you to reach more potential customers, increase brand awareness, and get more qualified leads. In this case, you even get phone calls through your business profile.

And most importantly, keep it updated. Post relevant content (it could be an advertisement, valuable information about a popular holiday destination, etc.) to show Google you are active there.

Respond to reviews, get the negative ones sorted, and maintain a high PR at the search engines.

Final Thoughts

SEO for the tourism sector is not everyone’s cup of tea. If you are struggling to manage it on your own, hire an SEO agency in Dubai to take care of everything on your behalf.

From content creation to link building, on-site optimization to Google Business Profile management; let them manage your reputation online while you give your entire attention to catering to the customers.