Every month, there are over 100 billion searches made on Google, and the travel industry is the second most googled one, after retail and merchandising. Since almost 95% of travelers use their keyboard to find information about their future destinations, it’s redundant to mention why a travel agency should invest in building an online reputation.
But, building and managing your online reputation is tricky in the modern era. Everything you post online can turn against you if you are not careful. To make sure you establish yourself as a reputable travel agency, you need to ditch these following black-hat SEO tactics:
- Buying Links
There was a time when having backlinks all over the internet was the best strategy to ensure that your website is visible. Businesses were buying links thinking about only the quantity, not quality. The domain that was “recommending,” the website was not as important as long as you had plenty of links pointing to you.
The times have changed, and Google started to fight against SERP manipulation through irrelevant links. Promoting yourself through links that aren’t inserted naturally in the content of a website represents a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
So, if you are still doing the same now, better change your strategy. Make your destination proposals attractive for people by using more modern ways of promotion, such as through bloggers. Travel blogs have very targeted audiences and even though your messages might reach fewer customers, the outcome will be much more favorable.
- Faking Reviews
Travelers read around 6-7 online reviews when planning their leisure vacation, while business travelers search for around five reviews. As a result, many travel agencies use the “testimonial” strategy to convince customers to buy their vacation packages.
However, if your testimonials are not completely true, or if you use fake accounts to write them, you are on the wrong path of SEO. Search engines have already updated their spam detection algorithms, and once your website is suspected of fake content, your reputation is down.
- Duplicate Content
For cost efficiency purposes, some businesses might decide that publishing the same article on “Salzburg – the perfect Christmas destination” on different other platforms might convert into bigger reach without the extra costs for content writing.
False!
Duplicated content creates one of the biggest struggles that search engines face. For platforms such as Google, it is very difficult to decide which of the many URLs that contain the same text is more relevant for the online user.
Duplicated content confuses the search engine and provokes decrease of rankings and, therefore, traffic losses. If you are not confident that you are investing the right money for the right SEO tactics, better use the services of an external agency, such as Apollo.Agency. They have the resources and expertise to build you a relevant SEO strategy and provide great copywriting.
- Irrelevant Keywords
One of the main things that everybody knows about SEO is that you need to use as many keywords in the text as you can. Well, not exactly.
Google is very picky when it comes to keyword density, and if destination descriptions are “keyword stuffed,” your travel agency’s website could see some bad consequences.
Instead of filling your website with keywords, focus on creating useful content that has keywords relevant to the context.
- “Google Bombing”
The competition among travel agencies is strong, and the new DYI travel trend is adding more stress to the industry. Some players might think that if they “steal the light” from other travel agencies, they may convert more customers.
This is not only a total lack of fair-play but also a tactic severely penalized by the online search platform.
Google bombing represents the practice of making a website rank higher in search engine results by linking extensively. In bad competition practices, businesses try to outrank their competitors by using their names.
Even though search engines have tried to alter the algorithm to eliminate this possibility, there are still websites that manage to use this tactic successfully. But the success can only last for a couple of days. Once Google discovers this bad SEO practice, your website loses all its high rankings, and your business faces a potential reputational crisis.
The most important thing that one can do for increasing your website rank on Google is to deliver real, honest, original content. The path to a high-profile travel business that both Google and customers will love is the quality of services.
So, make sure your SEO strategy is spot on and take the time to learn the real SEO tactics that will help you grow your travel agency.
