Optimise your travel destination pages for Google

Having high ranking travel destination pages in Google can help you attract more customers. Learn how to use SEO to help your business grow.
Optimise your travel destination pages for Google

Optimise your destination pages for search engines

As a tour operator, the most important pages on your website are your destination landing pages. These are the pages that promote a specific destination that your business offers tours to.

Most people tend to focus on their home page and imagine their visitors going through their website from this as a starting point. However, in a lot of cases this is not the way a user navigates through your website. If you play your cards right, a user is sent to a specific travel destination page, straight from the Google search engine.

Let’s say a potential customer is interested in a round trip to Mexico. They will most likely use Google to search for something such as ‘Round trip Mexico’. By optimising your Mexico destination page for search engines, you have the highest chance to get a spot in the top results.

Search result Mexico roundtrip

How on-page SEO helps your business

So, how do you get that top spot? The answer is: search engine optimisation (SEO). The practice of optimising specific pages on your website for search engines is known as ‘on-page SEO’. The reason for using SEO techniques on your travel destination pages is simple: it helps your content rank higher in search engines and improve your visitors experience on a destination page.

Higher ranking destination pages means more website visitors, which allows you to:

  • Establish your brand name
  • Generate more leads
  • Grow your business
  • Save on advertising costs

7 tips to improve SEO on destination pages

So, how do you improve your on-page SEO for travel destination pages? Firstly, you should know that Google uses a great number of factors to determine its ranking. By complying with these factors in the best possible way, you’ll have the highest chance to get good ranking content.

The most important factors your content should comply with, are:

1. Have great quality content

Good quality content is what makes a travel destination page deserving of a high ranking in the search engines. Determine what value your content brings to the table. Not sure where to start? Use our ‘7 tips on how to write appealing travel content’.

2. Use the right keywords

Before you can optimise an individual page, you have to know which keywords you should use. Keyword research helps you determine how many times and if people are searching for specific keywords. Choosing more specific keywords with lower competition might increase your chances on success.

3. Improve your title, headings and URL

Once you’ve determined your keyword(s), you should think about keyword placement. An easy place to start with keyword placement is by adding your main keyword to:

  • Page title
  • Headings
  • URL of your page

4. Write a compelling meta description

The meta description is a brief summary of a page, which is often displayed by search engines. Having a good meta description can help you stand out. It’s key to use your keyword in the meta description, preferably at the beginning.

5. Optimise your images

Help the search engine find out what your images are about by:

  • Using a descriptive image name (mexico-roundtrip.jpg)
  • Adding an alt tag to describe your image (Mexico round trip with beach extension)

Another way to optimise your images is by reducing image file sizes. Images often are large in size, which makes your page load slower. Easily reduce your images’ file size by using tinypng.com.

6. Use internal and outbound links

Help search engines better understand your website’s structure by linking to relevant pages within your own website (internal links). Also, don’t be afraid to link to partner websites (outbound links). Do you suggest interesting activities during your tours? Provide your visitors with a link to them.

7. Pick up on page speed and mobile experience

It’s important, to both search engines and humans, to have travel destination pages that load (very) fast and are perfectly readable on every device (especially smartphones). If it’s too technical for you to try and comply with modern day standards, ask help from your website developer.

Start doing SEO on destination pages

Getting started with SEO may feel like a challenge. However, your travel destination pages are a great place to start.

These pages belong to the most important of your website and the extra attention you give them with SEO can directly help you attract new customers. Use the tips in this article to get started right away!

PS: applications for the free SEO-check are closed.

Responses

    1. Hi Noreen,

      Thank you for applying for our SEO check. I’ve just emailed you the report, hope it helps you improve the ranking of your page!

    1. Hi Aabiskar,

      Thank you for applying for our SEO check. I’ve just emailed you the report, hope it helps you improve the ranking of your page!

    1. Hi Johnson Manish,

      Thank you for applying for our SEO check. I’ve just emailed you the report, hope it helps you improve the ranking of your page!

Comments are closed.

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