People love to travel around the world, they want to see the beauty of mother nature, creativity, and advancement of the human being. They all are enjoying their journey because they want to get rid of their depressed routine or to take a break from their stressful life.

Countries have borders, but people do not. After this Covid pandemic, Tourism is getting popular again. It was once the greatest market before this pandemic. According to a report by Statista, tourism had a market cap of over $9.25trillion, which is almost 10% of the world’s economy in 2019.

If you are associated with the travel industry no matter directly or indirectly, you have a great chance to recover your loss and make your upcoming year more profitable which we will be discussing shortly.

Many economies in the world depend on the travel and tourism business. This business contributes to these economies somehow and Pakistan is one of those economies.

The travel industry contributes almost 7% of the country’s total GDP. Plus, it has an annual growth rate of 4.7%. This seems to be a huge growth. Tourists from developed countries are way interested in exploring the beauty of Pakistan because this is an affordable and beautiful spot on their list.

If you are a travel business who wants to get decent clients and leads for your tourism business in Pakistan without spending bundles of money on advertising and marketing campaigns, you should never underestimate the power of SEO that can boost your profit and customers.

You can never imagine how profitable a business could be through SEO. But, you need to do everything strategically with perfection. If you don’t know that much about How SEO can boost your tourism business or what is the importance of SEO for travel agencies, don’t worry.

We are here to help you out.

Interesting?

Let’s get into it deeper!

What is SEO:

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a method to bring your website/business on the very first page of Google or any other Search Engine to get more visitors, traffic, and customers to your business without spending heavy money on marketing campaigns.

This helps your potential customers get to know about your business and what you offer or how your business can overcome their needs.

Importance of SEO for Tourism Business

In this digital era, people prefer to search for everything online rather than getting into it personally or physically to get a better understanding of it. Take yourself as an example. See, you came here to get tips on how to get customers for your tourism business, the same goes for every searcher out there.

Larger companies can afford to spend money on their marketing to get more sales and customers. They have a dedicated budget for their frequent marketing spending. But, if you are a startup or small business, you don’t have an option left, except for SEO.

No matter what your business does, whether it’s dental care or plumbing, it can be a mortgage service or a travel agency, SEO is crucial and can work for all of them. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel for your every business model, but to modify your strategy a bit.

16 Reasons why SEO is best for travel business:

Whatever we do in our daily routine, it has some reasons and goals. For your business, you have a goal to get customers at low costs and more profit through SEO.

If you want to grow your tourism business whether inside or outside Pakistan, you have to realize what it can do for your business. Here, we have crafted 16 best reasons for your SEO needs, to get you a clear understanding.

1. People are looking for your business

Got amazed?
You have read it right.

People are really looking for your business. Let me explain to you. Imagine you have got an electronics shop in the center of your city, but instead of getting customers, you are still looking for them. Because you don’t have a vast and targeted market to play here.

But in the digital world, this is not the case anymore. People search for your business. Billions of people are connected to the internet and  Millions of Pakistani are using google daily which means you have unlocked more opportunities.

They use it to get information from their basics to advanced needs. They could be your potential customers and testimonials if you could match their needs.

2. Quality Traffic

Quality is everything, if you are getting 1000s of sessions and pageviews on your site but very few or no leads at all, I am sorry, you are doing something wrong. Whether your strategy is not realistic, or the information you are giving is not optimistic, maybe you don’t know the art of selling.

The traffic you get from search engines is more likely to convert than those window shoppers in your shop. SEO traffic also has an edge over the paid marketing because you will only get the person who is interested in it and that’s why they are searching for it.

3. Quality Sales

If you get to know how to optimize your SEO strategy, you are most likely to get those real people who are most interested in your travel business. This may be a hotel or shared room which they are looking for, or maybe some guide on how to travel to the northern areas like Naran/Kaghan.

But the point here is to start generating some business sales. The sales you get organically from search engines are definitely worth it. Because your customer has the intention of buying your service to give it a try instead of window shopping. They are more likely to get it again.

4. Goodbye to Traditional Marketing

Technology has made our life and ways of living quite easier and cost-effective. With a proper SEO strategy, you don’t need to run expensive TV ads, displaying banner ads, or the signboards all over the highways where no one cares about that ad.

You don’t even need to keep throwing brochures and flyers on the streets all day., which results in no big deal at all. Again if you have a proper action plan, you don’t even need to put money in ads. But if you can manage to do this as well, this would be a hybrid optimization.

5. Boost sales/Increase Profits

Now, this thing is beneficial for you if you are a bit old in your tourism business and you already have some clients or an average amount of sales, but you haven’t tried SEO yet. If you have a versatile service you can use this thing as a weapon to boost sales and increase profits.

Through your proper SEO strategy, you can link back to your former customers to leave you a review as per their experience or you can also ask for an interview if they have a strong fanbase. This way, you will be able to build some credibility which then gives you a boost in sales.

6. Decrease Cost

Not everything in this world is free, but what if I tell you that SEO is free?

This is not a joke, SEO is almost free. You don’t need to pay Google or any other search engine to give you a sponsored tag, which people don’t really care about unless you are way famous.

The only charges you may need to pay are SEO tools, your website hosting, and maybe your team members such as Social Media Managers, Content editors, or SEO experts if you think you can never survive without their help.

But still, if all of your team members are experts in their work and you have a proper strategy, you should consider this as an investment instead of an expense. But it’s better to keep minimizing your expenses.

7. Builds Trust/Loyal Customers

People trust big guys like Google and they use it daily. Once you start implementing your SEO plan properly and when they will see your brand ranking on the first page of Google, it will build curiosity in their minds, what makes this guy the best.

Later, when they come to your business website and start exploring your business they are most likely to convert, only if you are diverse and you have provided enough information. You have to make sure you are providing value to them.

This way, they will exchange their loyalty and this is the best business strategy. You may require less effort to put in because those loyal customers could become your weapons and brand ambassadors. What else do you want?

8. 24/7 Promotion

By using Paid advertising, you can stay on the top until you keep pushing money on ads. But, as soon as you stop investing money in ads, you will not be seen on far pages. This is the catch of paid ads and that’s why you should never rely on just paid advertising.

On the other hand, SEO has a great edge to keep getting visitors, leads, customers, and sales, even after a couple of months in a year and throughout the week. It has a way of longevity as compared to paid marketing.

9. Brand Awareness

Building a brand is way difficult, time-consuming, and tricky process rather than making money. The instant profit you get will never become your trademark but your brand.

If you are generating decent profit, but no one trusts you, it’s time to get serious for your travel business.

You can build your long-lasting brand with SEO, without any notable expenses. Once you start getting customers, people are way likely to memorize your brand name such as “XYZ travels”.

Even if someone kicks you out/outranks your brand website (which is quite hard for authority brands), people will start finding you by putting your brand name “XYZ travels” in google.

That will make you more credible-both in the eyes of customers as they may purchase your service again in near future, plus google is more likely to restore your brand website to top spots in SERP results. This way, you can say yourself as an established brand.

10.                  Get Offline Sales

With SEO, you can not only get sales/leads on your website, you can also start getting customers and clients to your business physically. Didn’t get it? Let me tell you.

Whenever you want to get a room near your location due to some reason, you will search “best hotel rooms near me”. Google search result will show you all the rooms located near your current location.

Now, You have found a special deal and you are going to contact them to ask the way to them or most probably, you may get this to know from google as well.

Now, what’s next? You will get to them and book a room in their hotel, that’s it. You have got a room and the hotel owner has got a customer. This is how you can acquire offline sales for your tourism or any other business as well.

11.                  Get an edge

For most of the companies, their main source of revenue is through their recurring customers, who keep using their service regularly. Now, you can offer your customers a special discount or incentives at your tourism business, which makes you more engaging.

Once a customer gets value, he is now into a customer value journey cycle and even if they have tried some other popular brands, you will have an edge on all of them that people will start finding you.

If someone has tried Airbnb for the first time and found them trustful, he may never go to booking.com, unless Airbnb does something wrong.

12.                  Get Social followers

Last week, I had to get a phone which has some latest features within a certain budget. I went through research on the internet and found a good match from Samsung through their Facebook page. But that was a bit expensive for my budget.

Even though I haven’t purchased yet, I am now following their page on an almost daily basis. Now, whenever Samsung will launch a budget phone, I will purchase that out. So, you can say that I am their potential buyer soon and one of their loyal followers as well.

The same rule you can apply to your business. You can build your social followers because your customers are using social media. You may not need to go through their shoes even if you are not a big name. This also helps Google to guess how trustworthy you are and you can even rank higher for more time.

13.                  Get Email Subscribers

Another good thing SEO can give is that it can help you build your email list fast. Sometimes, if your website has outstanding content that extremely satisfies the searcher’s intent, he is expecting to get the same content regularly.

They can sign up for your newsletter, and whenever you update your business they will get notified. This way, they will stick to your business and your website’s bounce rate will also become phenomenal, which is again a good SEO signal.

Plus, you can always upsell or down-sell to make them keep investing in your business.

14.                  Growing Industry

The SEO industry is growing rapidly. There was a time in the late ’90s that nobody was caring about it. But now, it is worth over $80 Billion. This is equivalent to the entire GDP of Latvia and Estonia collectively.

A lot of businesses have now realized that SEO is mandatory for their survival after this pandemic. They are now spending billions of dollars on SEO services. You should realize your needs as well.

Now, search competition is also increasing massively. More than a billion websites have been found indexed on Google. It means you now have strong competition against thousands of websites in your category. It’s better to reserve your spot on top of google as soon as possible.

15.                  Direct to your customers

Another beauty SEO has; it gives you the opportunity of dealing directly with your customers to satisfy them completely and to have a better experience.

Unlike traditional businesses, where your customers have to pass through a middleman to reach you which also costs high to both your business and your customer. They often try to catch them unethically by bargaining or making false promises just for their commissions.

In business through SEO, You no longer need to hire travel agents or any other marketers on a commission basis which also results in low costs and good deals. Now, You can offer even better deals at the same price and even at more profit.

16.                  Smart Decision

No doubt, SEO is a long term and slow game. You will have to wait for months if not years to make your business trustworthy and profitable. You will also have to make sure that all the things are getting done perfectly even if you don’t notice any notable performance.

But again, it is still the best option to build your business whatever you do. You can never underestimate the power of SEO even if it is a slow process.

According to a report, Websites that rank organically tend to get over 90% more actions and clicks as compared to PPC or Paid ads campaigns.

07 Step Actionable SEO Plan for travel business

1. Find profitable Keywords

Now, if you have realized the importance of SEO for the travel business, you need to act wisely on your action plan. Before starting any business online or setting a part of your business online, the first and the most important (and tricky) step is to find the best profitable keywords.

Keywords are those words, which searchers type on search engines to get a solution to their problems and requirements. If you successfully hunt profitable keywords, here you have completed 25% of SEO.

If you are just starting out, go for long-tail keywords with low search volume, high profitability, relatively less competition, and related to your business.

Don’t even dare to choose short tail queries as they are quite competitive, bring way fewer sales, and take a lot of effort to rank even in some span of years.

This will ruin your whole website before getting started. If you don’t know how to find profitable keywords, you can always hire agencies (they are a bit expensive) or you can also ask for individual freelancers which have better ratings at an affordable price.

2. Launch your Site

After you find profitable keywords that are easy to rank and are around your business, the next thing is to launch your website. If you are a small business who doesn’t want to spend a lot on this step, you can do it yourself without hiring a freelance developer.

First, you have to register a domain and purchase a hosting to host that domain and potential visitors that will be coming to your website. Now, you have to connect both your domain and hosting. Install a theme and some SEO plugins with some customization.

Make your website mobile and user friendly that loads fast. Don’t forget to install SSL certificates that will be protecting your visitors. Make your website simple but attractive and please Do not use dark & bold themes.

3. Publish Content and Information

Here comes another challenging part if you are not experienced in these things. Once your site gets published, you have to publish quality and informational content with a regular frequency on it.

Remember those keywords you had found on the first step? You just have to write content on them, as your visitors will be searching those keywords to get to your site. Add information-rich and valuable content with attractive but light graphics and charts to keep building the interest of your reader.

Write SEO friendly titles and headlines with perfect call to actions at the right place. Don’t use excessive keywords, as they look spammy and don\’t make any sense to the reader. You have to write for the customers at first, not for google or robots.

This is the most important step, so it’s better to hire a professional freelance SEO writer, who has experience in writing the best content because good content has the power to rank organically with little to none links.

4. Get Links/Build Socials

SEO has two main classifications which are On-Page and Off-Page SEO. We are done with the On-Page. Now we have to do off-page strategically. Sometimes, it also refers to Link building and google love quality links.

You should link to high authority websites in your category (niche). This creates an SEO signal, which has a great impact on rankings as Google rewards quality content and quality links tell the value of a particular page.

There are a lot of ways of building links, you can ask for guest posts on the sites with higher Domain Authority or you can also create other types of backlinks manually. Search Engines don’t really care about the number of links a website is getting but quality.

5. Upsell

Once you start getting visitors, you can opt for special deals and discounts to build trust both in the eyes of visitors and Google. Just offer a discount or valuable deal which you are best at to let them decide.

You can also ask for their emails and to like your social media, but never dare to flood their email inbox with your deals. This will create a bad impact on their minds which then leads to reporting you as phishing.

6. Update content

Now, you are consistently ranking on the top 03 spots on the first page of google. Congratulations. But, your journey doesn’t end here. You have to keep coming with new stuff and don’t forget to update your past content.

Try adding more value to your content, come out with new ideas and new things that you have not covered yet. It’s better to create a content calendar and assign it to your writer and make sure to provide content on time.

7. Build an action loop

Putting your business on the top spot is way difficult and time-consuming, but once you are done, make sure you keep managing your business site properly.

Now, you may not need to put in a lot of effort, but it’s still better to take care of your website. As you are a physical business, it\’s better to use Google Maps on your site.

Keep updating your content, add more information, build more links, work on the website structure, follow the latest SEO trends and take care of all the technical aspects such as speed, security, and responsiveness. You are all set.

The Bottom Line: SEO for Tourism Business

You will have heard that Slow and steady wins the race, but you may have never seen such things in your life.

SEO is one thing that completely satisfies this idiom. It takes almost no money, but a lot of time. But once it gets done properly, you will see a significant boost within some months.

But bear in mind that success never happens overnight. You will have to sacrifice a bit of your time and resources to grow your travel agency or a tourism business. Until you keep providing information to Google and value to visitors, you will also keep getting new customers.

Happy Business!
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