Search Engine Marketing for Canadian Travel Websites

Today’s economic conditions are tough for the travel industry, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

In June 2009, the Ministry of Tourism released the Ontario Tourism Outlook, detailing declines in tourism in 2008 and 2009 but also forecasting a recovery in 2010. They expect that inbound travel spending (travel to Ontario) will grow at average 5% per year between 2010 and 2013, while outbound travel spending (travel from Ontario) will grow on average by 6% annually over the same forecast period.

Are you prepared for growth in 2010?

In a recent press release, Hitwise identifies Travel websites as being particularly reliant on search engines for visits. In June 2009, search engines were responsible for 48% of upstream visits to Travel websites and 53% of visits to the Travel subcategory, Destinations and Accommodations.

Canadian Travel websites have an opportunity for 2010 to increase their footprint in both organic and paid search results:

• Reach the entire audience by using both SEO and PPC
• Facilitate deep crawling and indexing of long tail content
• Increase relevancy to gain better rankings and higher quality scores

For travel organizations, relevance varies by region. If you are servicing travel to United States, use geo-targeted keywords in both your copy and your PPC advertising to qualify that traffic. Ensure you have a good understanding of where your traffic is coming from, what countries, what provinces and even from what cities. If the traffic to your website is originating from geographical locations you are not doing business in, you are simply attracting the wrong crowd.

Start planning today on how to better leverage the search channel for your travel business and jump ahead the competition in 2010.