What is SEO?

For those who are still wondering, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process of optimizing your web presence so that you appear before your competitors on search engine result pages.  

Having a search engine optimized website will help you boost your search rankings and drive more web traffic to your site. This will in-hand grow your organic traffic and help you increase your online exposure to potential customers.

If you’d like to have a clearer understanding of SEO and how search engines work, check out our SEO Masterclass here. You’ll find the latest digital marketing tips to help you boost your SEO score.

What’s the difference between SEO & Local SEO?

SEO is the process of boosting your overall search ranking to increase your website traffic. Local SEO is the same thing, except it focuses more on users searching from areas near you.

For example, someone searching for wine tours in Sydney, Australia, and another person searching in Sicily, Italy will be provided with different results based on their location. This is where having a local SEO marketing strategy in place will help you stay competitive on search results.

Why is Local SEO for tour operators important?

When it comes to search queries, there are three kinds of queries a person can search for online:

3 main search queries when it comes to SEO for tour operators

Informational Queries are searches for more information. For example, “What is an escape room?”

Navigational Queries are searches for direction or geographical information. For example, “How do I get to Reactor Escape Room?” or “Escape rooms near me”.

Transactional Queries are searches a user makes for information regarding a transaction they’re about to make. For example, “Escape room prices Sydney.” or “Reactor Escape Room space escape package price”.

Of those 3 categories, navigational and transactional searches are the most valuable for your business. This is because there is intent to purchase behind the search queries. When someone asks how to get to your business or how much you charge, it means they’re already considering purchasing your services. 

When it comes to targeting these high-quality search intent, having a local SEO strategy will improve your chances of appearing first when someone’s search queries are location-based. For example, “Escape Rooms near me” or “Escape room prices Sydney”.

The increasing importance of Local SEO for tour companies

Furthermore, with the pandemic completely obliterating the travel and tourism industry, there is sure to be a rise in demand for local travel and activities. The search volume for local experiences has skyrocketed meaning an increase in the importance of local SEO.

Local SEO for tour operators: 4 SEO tips for success

Tip 1: Find your local travel SEO relevant keywords

The first step is to figure out all the local keywords or phrases you could rank for and that people are searching for. The easiest way to do this is to consider the formula behind a typical query. 

Navigational Query:

[Descriptive Word] + [Product/ Service] + [Geographical Word]

Some Examples:

Best + Escape Room + Sydney

Cheap +  Escape Room + Near Me

Space themed + Escape Room + Sydney City

Transactional Query:

[Product/ Service] + [ Transactional Word] + [Geographical Word]

Or

[Your Company] + [Transactional Word]

Some Examples:

Escape Room + Prices + Sydney

Escape Room + Pricing + Sydney

Escape Room + Group Pricing + Sydney

Reactor Escape Room + Adult Price

As long as you keep each element of the queries in mind, you’ll be able to easily brainstorm all your local keywords. 

Keyword research tools:

Quite frankly, the most powerful tool is common sense. You know your business and the areas in which you operate best. Sit down for 30 minutes and key into a spreadsheet, all the phrases you can think of. From there, you’ll definitely be able to pick out the most important ones. Consider all the areas nearby to you and all the modifiers people might search for that apply to you.

Google Autofill

You could also use Google’s autofill feature to find a vast range of search terms. Just type half your phrase into Google Search and see what Google suggests. This is generally what most people are searching for, so it’ll give you some great ideas on what to focus on. You can even go as far as having a click-through of different page titles on the results page to gain an idea of popular phrases.

Doing this will probably get you 80% of the keywords you need, which is generally more than good enough when starting out.

If you did want to go the extra mile though, you could use tools like Answer The Public and Google Keyword Planner.

Google autofill

 

Doing this will probably get you 80% of the keywords you need, which is generally more than good enough when starting out.

If you did want to go the extra mile though, you could use tools like Answer The Public and Google Keyword Planner

Tip 2: Place your keywords on your website

Great, you’ve got your target keywords, now how does this help your local SEO as a tour operator? The key is placement: putting them in the right areas of your website. This increases the relevance of your website during local searches, boosting your search engine performance and your page optimization.

Headers

The first place you should place your keywords is within your headers. These are your <h1> <h2> <h3>, etc. tags. 

Page URL

Next are your page URLs after the “.com/”.

For example: www.reactorescaperoom.com/sydney-escape-room-group-pricing-adults

Meta Description

This is the blurb about your business users will see on the search engine results pages before they click into your website. 

Keyword Density

Try mentioning your keywords within the first sentence of your page and once every 100-150 words thereafter. 

Image Alt Tag

If you use images on your website, and I hope you do, you’ll be able to add some alt-text for each image. Use your local keywords here.

Tip 3: Remember to NAP

NAP is a critical part of SEO for tour operators

NAP stands for your name, address, and phone number. 

From everything we’ve spoken about so far, we can safely say that proximity is a huge factor that Google takes into account during local searches. Meaning your address needs to be accurate and widely available, so Google knows how close you are to the searcher. Same thing goes for your business name and phone number so you’re easily contactable.

So, where should you put your listings? EVERYWHERE!

Well, as many places as possible to be precise. The most important places are on the footer of your website and major listings such as Google My Business, Facebook Business Page, Bing Places & Tripadvisor

Once you’ve got those sorted:

Look out for more local citations

Or more minor citations such as Yelp, Yellowpages, Yahoo Local.

4: Capture backlinks from other travel websites

Backlinking is a link-building technique where websites direct back to your web page via links. So long your links are embedded onto their site, it’s considered a backlink. Whether that be on their landing page, blogs, or hyperlinks.

Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo use algorithms to gather information and rank pages. “Bots” and “spiders” are used to “crawl” your site for content and backlinks. In other words, they have technology that skims through websites to analyze their backlinks. The more backlinks coming from reputable and relevant sites, the better your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking.

A quick way to gain backlinks is to reach out to your partners and/or friendly competitors and request a backlink on their site in return for one on yours. It’s very unlikely that they’ll turn this offer down as it will help them boost their SEO too.

Another method you can implement is to link to your own pages across your site, where most suitable. This method is called internal linking and it gives search engines an idea of the structure of your website and allows them to categorize the most important pages to the least. Internal links provide search engines with an understanding of the hierarchy of your site. This allows them to feature the more important pages on its SERP. Using the right internal linking strategy can boost page SEO.

Closing Remarks: It’s not that hard.

It really isn’t! It should take you no more than a day to optimize your web presence for local SEO. If nothing else, set up your Google My Business Listing with our guide here

Local SEO is one of those quick wins every tour operator should do. And with the rise in importance of local travel, local SEO for tour operators has never been a bigger win than it is now. 

And most importantly, remember, if you don’t do it, your competitors probably will!

#together4tourism

Written By – Blake Ng– Acquisition & Content Marketing, Rezdy

Blake is a travel videographer with a love for storytelling. He has years of experience in sales and marketing from multiple travel startups and a cricket farm in Cambodia. He is currently a content marketer at Rezdy.