Technical SEO for Travel Websites: Tips and Best Practices

Role of Technical SEO for Travel Websites

Travel websites are all about user experience and engagement. However, before you begin working on those parameters, you need to work on making your users land on your website. This means you need to get your site ranked in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Once you get exposure in search engine results, your next step is to create the user experience. This can be possible by creating a stellar user experience. Technical SEO is a set of search engine optimization practices that involves identifying and fixing errors that could hamper your website ranking and user experience.

A better user experience equals to better ranking in SERP. 

Technical SEO Tips and Practices for Travel Websites

Lets know about some vital SEO tips for travel or tour websites.

Use Google PageSpeed Insights to Improve Your Page Load Time

A recent study by Amazon shows that it can lose $1.6 billion in sales yearly even if its site's loading speed delays to 1 second. 

The phenomenal success of short content like IG reels and Tiktok indicates that people want to consume their content as fast as possible. Nobody likes to wait in this fast-paced and highly competitive age. 

Experts say a customer loads at most 4 seconds for a page. If your page loading speed is slow, you will indeed bleed traffic. 

According to Google's standards, the average webpage load time is 3 seconds.

Considering the highly competitive nature of the traveling genre, you need an ultra-fast-loading website. You can refer to tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom Website Speed Test. You can check your site loading speed with these tools. 

These tools will scan your website and display all the factors that could slow down your site. They also provide guidance and suggestions to fix those issues.

Use Voice Search Optimization for Your Site

The voice search option has revolutionized the way people use search engines. It offers great convenience for users to use the internet while jogging, cleaning, cooking, etc., without lifting their phones. 

Voice search is an incredible option for travel websites to drive traffic to their website.

Tips on Using Voice Search Optimization for Travel Website

Do voice-based keyword research. People speak differently and type differently. If you type "best places to visit in Cabo" in the search bar, you will probably say, "What are the best places to visit in Cabo" or "Give me the name of the ten best places in Cabo." So, you can see, the search query in voice search dramatically differs from the text query.

Other than that, you should also focus on site structure and content strategy. For that, you need to implement structured data optimization. Most importantly, you need to work really hard on mobile-friendly content optimization. This is because people often search for travel-related content on their phones. 

Do an in-depth Keyword Analysis Using Keyword Planner

You need to master the art of keyword research to rank in Google. However, don't think of keywords as a vehicle to get ahead in the ranking game. You simply cannot search for some highly competitive keywords and insert them within your website's content. That is not going to work. Instead, Google can easily detect unethical usage of keywords and penalize your site.

Tools like Google's keyword planner, Ahrefs, and SEMRush can find you the top searched keywords for your traveling site. However, you need to find the intent behind these keywords and develop truthful and logical content. 

Tips for choosing the right keywords −

• Check the search volumes of the keywords. More significant search volumes lead to better traffic.

• Analyze the performance of the keyword.

• Check the competitors' keywords

• Target long-tail keywords. They have a better chance of ranking.

• Go for less competitive and high-volume keywords.

• Choose keywords relevant to your genre.

Strategize Page Title and Meta Tags Implementation

Page titles within 6-13 words generate the most traffic. Avoid using duplicate titles in your title tag. For example, if your competitor wrote an article about "10 things to do in Mexico", don't copy it. Instead, you can change the title to "10 things not to miss during your trip to Mexico".

You should also create a unique title for each page. Most importantly, go lenient on keywords. Don't stuff your content with keywords. Keywords indeed play a vital role in search engine ranking, but they can also be counterproductive. Google doesn't condone using keywords but doesn't encourage using keywords to manipulate search algorithms.

Focus on Link Building

Outbound and external links are something a site uses for adding references to its contents. When someone uses links to your content as a reference, you get a backlink from that site. It tells Google that other sites trust the content on your site. This helps you build a credible profile in a specific genre or niche. 

Domain authority plays a significant role. If you have authority in traveling blogs and content, Google will rank the contents of your site higher in SERP. 

Conclusion

Building a popular travel website is not a one-day work. It requires months and years of hard work. You must constantly create genuine and unique content that no one else offers. Then you do a bespoke technical SEO to make those content accessible for millions of needy users. If you can tick all the boxes listed above, your chances of ranking will increase for sure.