Search Engine Optimization for Travel Agents – Content | Travel Research Online

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Search Engine Optimization for Travel Agents – Content

The first and best rule of search engine optimization for travel agencies is to have strong, original content on your site that is truly relevant and useful to your viewers. As we have discussed in our previous articles this week, smart travel agencies with web site strategies give first consideration to their human viewers and secondarily optimize the site for search engine visibility.

Begin with the central theme of your site. As we earlier indicated, niche topics can achieve a higher ranking more easily than broader, generalized topics. Within the context of your core theme, you want to write content that readers will find useful, that is updated or supplemented often. Integrate your keywords into the articles you write in a completely natural manner. Don’t force the keywords and make the text awkward and hard to read.

 

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Let’s use an example from the article you are reading. First, look at the URL and the title of the article. TRO wants to bring travel agents to the TRO site. We know that many travel agents have a keen interest in SEO and will search on terms like “search engine optimization travel agencies”. Thus, our title places the terms “Search Engine Optimization” and “Travel Agents” in close proximity to each other. Likewise, the URL includes both “travel agents” and “search engine optimization.” Indeed, Proximity is one of the principles of good search engine optimization techniques. Note how the same idea is situated in the first sentence of this article. This gets to the second principle of Density – enough mentions of the keyword to indicate the relevance of the article. However, too many mentions of those keywords will make the article appear to be search engine “spam” and the search engine algorithms will penalize the article’s ranking. They key is to keep the article readable and the Density and Proximity natural.

Focus on a single topic per page. This again emphasizes the relevance of the article to the chosen keywords. Leave articles archived on your site. Search engines like critical mass on topics and also provide some weight to sites that have a longevity with regard to particular topics.

Search engines like original content. Contrary to the advice of some “experts” you are not penalized for content found on other sites, you simply will not get any SEO credit for non-original content – it won’t help your search engine visibility. If you are willing to devote the time and energy to creating fresh, original content in a niche topic, your site will almost certainly rise in the search engine rankings. Content “borrowed” from other sites or lightly re-written will not achieve your search engine goals. Likewise, computer generated pages, article generators and other “grey” or “black hat” techniques create terrible prose, are barely passable reading and are even questionable from an ethical point of view.

The more original articles you produce for your site, focused on a niche topic, the more authoritative your site becomes both for purposes of readers and search engine algorithms. The primary objective of search engine technology is to direct a searcher to the most relevant, authoritative sites on a topic of interest.  Thus, content truly is king. Write often, write well and focus on a niche – you have the ingredients for strong organic search engine marketing for your travel agency.

By the way, look at that last sentence – a not too bad example of both proximity and density.

Writing for search engines really means little more than writing well for your readership and keeping a few key concepts like proximity and density in the back (not the forefront) of your writing style.

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