SEO and Tourism: Optimising Websites for Travel and Tourism Companies

Introduction to SEO and tourism

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential digital marketing strategy for travel and tourism companies. By optimising their website for search engines such as Google, these businesses can significantly increase their online visibility, attract more qualified traffic to their website and, ultimately, increase their bookings and sales.

The importance of SEO in tourism

Tourism today is largely online: travellers use the internet for everything from researching destinations to booking plane tickets, hotel rooms and package tours. That's why it's crucial for businesses in this sector to have a strong presence on search engines. Indeed, most online search users only look at the first page of results. Consequently, websites that do not appear on this first page are much less likely to be visited.

SEO and improving the online visibility of tourism businesses

SEO techniques enable travel and tourism companies to rank higher in search results, which increases their visibility and therefore their potential to attract new customers. These techniques include keyword optimisation, improving site load speed, creating quality travel and tourism-related content, building quality internal and external links, and optimising for mobile search.

Keyword optimisation for tourism websites

An important part of any SEO strategy is keyword optimisation, which involves using words or phrases that potential customers are likely to use when searching for travel or tourism services. These keywords can be used in various places on the website, such as in titles, subtitles, product and service descriptions, alt tags for images, and even in page URLs.

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Analysis of travellers' search intentions

Before writing a single word or modifying the structure of your site, it is essential to analyse the search intention. An Australian backpacker typing in "cheap hostel Berlin last minute" expects an ultra-precise transactional result, whereas a French family typing in "what to do in Lisbon in February" is more likely to be in an informational or inspirational phase. Google, thanks to BERT and then MUM is working to decode these nuances of natural language. Travel companies that want to position themselves gain by drawing up a detailed map of intentions: informational (guides, FAQs), navigational (brand + destination), transactional (booking, price comparison) and post-travel (reviews, loyalty programme). This cross-approach between SEO and UX, popularised in the tourism sector by players such as Expedia, enables sitemaps, content, call-to-actions and conversion tunnels to be aligned. A powerful semantic audit (OnCrawl, Semrush, Ahrefs) coupled with analysis of server logs to detect crawling pages by bots provides the first quantitative insights, but the qualitative dimension involves interviews and surveys via Hotjar or Typeform to understand the 'why' behind the 'what'.

Travel-specific keyword research: seasonality, long tail and persona

The power of the keyword "flight Paris New York" is obvious; on the other hand, it is on more granular queries - "going to New York for Thanksgiving from Orly" - that the margins often come into play. In tourism, the long tail is almost infinite because it combines date, location, activity, booking period and language. Tools such as Google Trends or the Skyscanner API reveal seasonal patterns: for example, "cheap skiing in the Alps in March" peaks at the end of December, while "road trip Scotland in a van" soars from April onwards. Segmenting the keyword set by persona (millennial digital nomad, senior premium, family on a tight budget) allows you to write landing pages that convert. The Airbnb site has long illustrated this strategy: each combination of "accommodation + activity + neighbourhood" created a unique URL that captured these micro-intentions, boosting organic CTR. Finally, filtering these keywords by business KPI (package margin, hotel availability, OTA commission) ensures that SEO efforts support profitability.ability, not just visibility.

Information architecture and internal networking for tourism websites

A poorly organised tourism site quickly becomes a labyrinth for users and Googlebots alike. The principle of "destination > sub-destination > product > detail" is still a safe bet, but the addition of cross-disciplinary axes (theme, season, target audience) creates contextual silos that reinforce semantic relevance. The Norwegian Tourist Board, for example, has linked its "northern lights" articles to the "winter" category and to the pages for each region to boost internal authority. On the technical side, systematic linking using breadcrumb menus, "you'll like it too" blocks and intelligent footers boosts internal PageRank distribution. Thematic clusters, in particular via their own canonical URLs (e.g. /france/cote-d-azur/voyage-familial/), facilitate budget crawling. An essential part of any redesign involves mapping 301 redirects so as not to lose the juice of old campaigns or viral articles, following the example of the transfer orchestrated by Lonely Planet when they switched their infrastructure to a JAMstack in 2022.

Inspiring and transactional editorial content: storytelling, guides and UX writing

Tourism content is no longer just a technical sheet with opening dates and prices. Travellers, particularly generation Z, want emotion and transparency. At Evaneos, each "tailor-made" tour is supported by an explorer's story, authentic photos and logistical advice. This mix inspires and reassures, creating a double impact: natural backlinks from travel blogs and a better conversion rate. Complete guides (10,000 words or more), enhanced with internal chaptering and rich media (web stories, 360° videos, Mapbox interactive maps), capture position zero and the Discover zone. On the micro-copy side, simple wording such as "Book now, flexible cancellation" reduces friction. To write at scale, content ops processes with SEO guidelines (H2/H3 formatting, LSI keyword density, Hemingway score) and expert proofreading (local experts to guarantee E-E-A-T) pay off.

Technical SEO applied to tourism: performance, mobile-first and PWA

In the travel sector, 70 % of bookings start on mobile, but 55 % end on desktop; this cross-device fluidity requires ultra-short loading times. Core Web Vitals therefore becomes a business KPI: when Ryanair compressed its WebP images and pre-loaded its fonts, the LCP fell to 2 s, while the conversion rate jumped by 17 %. Trivago's Progressive Web Apps (PWA) offer an offline mode that reassures backpackers without a stable network. In terms of crawlability, the infinite scrolling of "search for a flight" pages requires pre-server rendering (SSR) or, at the very least, the use of correctly implemented; many OTAs lost traffic after abandoning the old pagination" ?page=2 . Finally, the switch to HTTP/2 and then 3 and the use of the Brotli protocol bring micro-gains, but multiplied by millions of international sessions, they become significant on the revenue line.

Schema.org structured data for hotels, flights and experiences

Enriched tagging is the favourite weapon for capturing attention in the SERP: price, real-time availability, average rating and a short extract from a review will boost CTR. The Hotel or LodgingBusiness sub-type, combined with Offer and AggregateRating, enables you to appear in Google's hotel carousel. Let's take a look at a minimalist JSON-LD snippet for a day trip:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "TouristTrip",
  "name": "Sunset cruise on the Douro",
  "description": "Enjoy 2 hours of sailing with port wine tasting",
  "image": ["https://exemple.com/img/douro.jpg"],
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "priceCurrency": "EUR",
    "price": "49.00",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
    "validFrom": "2024-06-01"
  },
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "4.8",
    "reviewCount": "327"
  }
}

When Viator deployed this tagging across its entire catalogue, the organic click-through rate rose by 12 % without any increase in average position. It should be noted that Google is now exploring multi-day itineraries via Itinerary, paving the way for "packs" displayed directly in the SERP. On mobile devices, this data can be used to feed Things to do modules. Beware, however, of the anti-spam policy: a misleading notice or false availability can trigger a manual action deleting all rich snippets.

Local SEO for agencies and physical attractions

The online giants must not overshadow the importance of "near me". For a scooter rental agency in Menorca or a museum in Bordeaux, Google Business Profile (GBP) and local citations remain priorities. Optimising a consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) on TripAdvisor, Yelp and PagesJaunes boosts Map Pack visibility. Collecting authentic reviews, in particular via QR codes in brochures or via a post-visit e-mail, has a direct influence on local ranking: a jump from 4.2 to 4.6 stars can double the number of "Call" or "Itinerary" interactions. Some river cruise companies have added a "Wheelchair accessible" attribute to GBP, triggering display on inclusive queries ("Seine accessible cruise"). Google posts and local FAQs, which are often neglected, serve as a "mini-blog" for pushing geolocalised keywords without overloading the main site.

Multilingualism and internationalisation: hreflang, geotargeting and culture

The same content translated literally risks duplication or, worse still, cultural dissonance. The signals the right language version to Google, but it still needs to be meshed correctly. When TUI switched from a generic .com domain to a "tui.fr ," "tui.de ," "tui.es" model, the absence of a hreflang led to cannibalism between countries (German ranking in the UK). Furthermore, search habits vary: in Spanish, "viaje todo incluido riviera maya" performs better than the literal translation "viaje con todo incluido a la riviera maya". The images also need to be localised (Caribbean beaches vs. northern landscapes). In terms of logistics, combining a multi-POP CDN (Fastly, Cloudflare) with a geo-DNS means that the right language can be served to the right people. <200 ms de TTFB, limitant le « clignotement de langue souvent observé avec le lazy-loading en JavaScript.

Acquiring links and partnerships in the tourism ecosystem

Tourism link-builders have a natural breeding ground: tourist offices, nomadic bloggers, lifestyle magazines, universities (geography studies), NGOs (sustainable tourism) and sporting events. The GetYourGuide platform won a DA 90 backlink by sponsoring the Berlin Marathon, then publishing data on the economic impact of sports tourism. Digital PR campaigns, such as "The world map of amateur astronomy spots" launched by Skyscanner, generate press coverage + backlinks + brand awareness. Cross-partnerships (hotel + airline + travel insurance) enable contextual link exchanges that remain within the editorial line. However, avoid footprints (PBN blog network) and favour link earning via exclusive content or free tools (carbon footprint calculator, itinerary planner). Finally, monitoring your link profile on a monthly basis (Majestic, Linkody) will enable you to react to the negative SEO that is still common between OTA competitors.

Analysis of results and KPIs specific to the sector: lead, ADR, TO, etc.

Unlike traditional e-commerce, SEO performance in tourism is measured as much in leads (quotes, calls) as in direct sales. Hotels look at ADR (Average Daily Rate) and occupancy rate; tour operators look at margin per pax. A Looker Studio dashboard linking Search Console, GA4 and PMS (Property Management System) illuminates the path between impression, click, session, reservation and net income after commission. When Club Med implemented server-side tracking to link the organic source to the physical agency booking, they discovered that 28 % of offline sales came from an SEO first click. Cohorts, combined with long conversion windows (over 30 days for a safari), require a king-of-the-hill rather than a last-click attribution model. Finally, monitoring Core Web Vitals by booking path (homepage, results, checkout) prevents ranking drops linked to a theme update or the addition of a marketing tag that is too heavy.

Case study: the organic rise of Booking.com

Booking.com has a catalogue of over 28 million units but, in 2010, their traffic was still massively dependent on AdWords. To reduce the cost of acquisition, the Amsterdam SEO team launched a 'Content at Scale' project. Each hotel was given its own URL, optimised by a template including: name + location + type of accommodation. The descriptions were enriched with UGC (User Generated Content): reviews, Q&A, traveller tags. The draft review was rendered in AJAX on the browser side, preventing Google from seeing it; dynamic rendering on the server side solved the problem. At the same time, an internal network of contextual "More hotels in [City]" footers boosted the semantic silo. Between 2011 and 2014, organic impressions increased 6-fold. The team then adopted AMP and then a PWA, and in 2020, the introduction of "Clean & Safe" as a health attribute (COVID-19) made it possible to occupy the ground on anxiety-provoking queries ("hotel with Covid Lisbon protocol"). The key: a content/tech/link mix that's frighteningly consistent.

Case study: the SEO strategy of the Croatian tourist office

Croatia exploded as a post-Game of Thrones destination thanks to Dubrovnik, but the official "croatia.hr" site was almost invisible outside brand. In 2018, a redesign introduced a headless CMS and a focus on lesser-known micro-destinations (Kornati Islands, Slavonia). Each region has been given a multilingual content hub (8 languages) where recipes, traditions and local events are recounted by the locals, reinforcing E-E-A-T. A partnership with National Geographic provided 120 highly authoritative backlinks. On a technical level, an automatic hreflang strategy coupled with traffic measurement by market has enabled the budget to be allocated to Italian rather than German translation for certain pages (the opposite of the classic variety), increasing organic sessions from Italy by 40 % in one year. Finally, the promotion of "slow travel" experiences outperformed on Google Discover, a sign that "sustainable tourism" is no longer just a trend, but a highly intentional search query.

Future trends: generative AI, voice search and sustainable tourism

The arrival of SGE (Search Generative Experience) is revolutionising the way Google displays answers: multi-source summaries with prompt follow-up reduce the visibility of blue links. Travel companies need to prepare highly quotable, structured and reliable content for AI to reference as sources. Rich FAQs and quantified extracts (average price, temperature, duration) already seem to be favoured in EMS tests. At the same time, 30 % of US users have planned at least one journey using a voice assistant (Comscore, 2023). The "Hey Google, find me a ..." queries require short sentences and speakable responses. The of schema.org, although still experimental, can give us a head start. Finally, sustainable tourism is making its way into the SERPs: Google Flights now displays CO₂ emissions by route. Operators who integrate this data and create "how-to neutralize your footprint" content will capture a growing audience, particularly European travellers subject to the carbon tax.

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