Search engine optimization is not just something you need to learn if you’re working in marketing or sales, though travel agencies should see their job as including these things. Let’s learn why a travel agent would need an SEO training course.
Local SEO Matters as Much as Conventional SEO
Travel agents need to use local or location based search engine optimization far more than the average business. When you’re posting on social media about a great vacation package, you need to include hash tags and search terms related to the destination. This is on top of the local SEO required to attract local clients to your service-oriented business.
You Have to Differentiate Your Business from the Competition
The travel industry is diverse. You’re competing against airlines, cruise lines, hotels, resorts, and travel bloggers for traffic. This is why you need to be able to do detailed analysis to find out what key search terms are used by your target audience, whether it is college kids planning a Spring Break trip or retirees ready for the trip of a lifetime. You can’t risk your ads and content being outranked by RVers with better social media branding or travel bloggers who make money from paid endorsements.
Furthermore, you want to stand out relative to the competition based on your distinguishing characteristics. It doesn’t matter if you offer unique luxury trips or budget travel. Ensure that your key characteristics are prominent in your SEO so that you capture the right audience. Travelers who want to travel in luxury who land on a budget travel service homepage will bounce away, hurting your reputation with search engines.
SEO Is Essential in Visual Marketing
Visual marketing engages the audience, because humans are a visual species. Here is the high resolution picture of the view from our resort. Here’s the amazing cliff diving, scuba diving and fishing available on our premium package. This is the theme park within walking distance of our luxurious hotel rooms. You’re posting pictures. However, it is has tags and keywords included in the description of the post and its title that will bring people to your visual marketing pieces. If you rely on one or two place related hash tags, your visual marketing will literally be lost in a sea of images.
It Is Cost-Effective
Online ads are expensive. Paid placement of links can be expensive, and it isn’t always effective. Upping your SEO game is one of the most cost-effective marketing solutions available. If you attend a SEO training course, you’ll be able to improve the SEO of everything from new marketing content to social media posts to your homepage.
Furthermore, you can go back and improve existing content based on what you’ve learned. Tweak a title. Change the first few sentences to better impress readers and increase your search engine results page rankings. Or learn how your content generation needs to change so that you’re not downgraded because of a spam penalty. This can happen when you stuff the content with too many keywords, especially if it interferes with the readability of the content. Learn how to add related keywords that help search engines show your article in relation to people planning a trip to Athens, Georgia instead of Athens, Greece.