Teena's Tips for Travel Websites

My name's Teena - here are my tips for travel websites, from knowledge gained from practicing them daily over the past 5 years or so, which might help you.

I was recently included in a disussion on a travel forum, and I did a quick SEO (search engine optimisation) overview of a fellow travel site owner's website; I've removed his domain name (for privacy), but wanted to share this information as I think it can help all website owners, whether you have a travel website or a cake decorating or dog site.

Hi there Don,

Just had a look at your site - delightful, clean and fresh - well done!

I would like to offer some tips and suggestions but I don't want it to come across the wrong way, offend anyone or get anyone off-side.

My tips are based on my success with my own (and client) travel websites, and I do this in the spirit of sharing as part payment for all the wonderful advice I've received on this list and learned from others on the internet.

This isn't meant as a criticism of your site - absolutely not - please don't take it that way - I would just like to help you and any others on this list who might not have found any easy-to-understand steps on the use of when, where and how to use keywords on their sites yet.

I've been creating travel websites the past 3-4 years (and other business websites for over 10 years), so have a fair knowledge of how to get listed in the search results (using SEO, tweaks and tips, and some good ol' common sense) and how to give a website a fighting chance amongst all the noise :-)

I'm happy to share my years of traffic & SEO expertise info with you (which I teach my own website Clients) - because I think others may be able to benefit from it. If you would like to try any of this on a website, feel free - let me know if you notice any improvements, and I'd love to hear if I've been able to help anyone in some small way.

NOTE:

Before making any changes to any website, it's an excellent idea to list the pages and make note of the Page Rank for each page. This can be done by using Google and the SEO Quake toolbar in Firefox, among other techniques. By doing so you'll be able to compare results after 4-6 weeks and notice improvements - if any (fingers' crossed!).

TIP 1 - PLACEMENT

If you're trying to improve your adsense revenue on this particular site, there are several things to try, the first of which is to move your ads to the left column, at the top, and in the case of your site you could swap the link menu to the right of the screen.

If you make this change, give yourself a good month to test and see if clickthrough improves. Please note - click through rates will improve if more relevant keywords are used throughout the page (and other page elements), so more relevant ads will be served.

Of course it all depends on who's running an ad campaign at any given moment and how much publishers like us will be paid on each ad; this of course varies from day to day. If the ad block is moved, be prepared to give it 4-6 weeks so you can really tell how it's doing.

TIP 2 - USING KEYWORDS IN ALL THE GOOD JUICY PLACES

If you don't mind, I'll use one of your pages as an example for the following tips.

PAGE: - central-france.htm

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MAIN KEYWORDS:

Central France? or Cruising Central France? I think it's "Central France"
do main keywords appear in menu? yes
do main keywordsappear in first H1 heading? no
seems to be a style rather than the very important H1 tag (I would change this to H1 heading)
do main keywordsappears elsewhere in text? once, in paragraph 4
recommendations? yes - see below

-----------------------------------

META TITLE TAG:

yes - Cruising Central France

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META DESCRIPTION:

yes - Cruising Central France, Canal, la Loire

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META KEYWORDS

(many folks say these are no longer important, but if you know what they are, I say add them, it can't hurt :-) "Central France,Loire,Canal la Loire,river,barge,cruise,Auxerre, Yonne,Canal du Nivernais, Burgundy, Cher, Nivernais"

Main keywords used first in Meta Keywords? Yes - excellent!

-----------------------------------

Menu Link:

Central France

PAGE: loire0.htm << needs to be changed

Recommendation: The URL of every page could/should be named to match the 'main keyword phrase' for that one page; in this case the URL could be: - central-france.htm (instead of "loire0.htm")

TIP 3 - IMAGES

Main Image URL: CF-Chambord1.jpg

Image ALT tag: none - Image

Image Description tag: none

to gain added benefit for a website, start using both the ALT and Description tags for every image uploaded, even those in slideshows
use the main 'keyword phrase' -- 'Central France' - at the beginning of the ALT tag and Description (prime location) for EACH image related to this one page.

Recommendation:

images could/should be named for each page they appear on, in this case, image could be renamed : from CF-Chambord1.jpg to central-france-chambord1.jpg
if there are more images on the page, use central-france-01.jpg or central-france-02.jpg as needed and use included additional descriptive words AFTER the keyword phrase which should start the name of the jpg, for example Central-France-Briare1.jpg
in CF-Briare1.jpg name, if the CF stands for 'central france', it would be a good idea to use those two words when naming the jpg for this page/slideshow, as follows: Central-France-Briare1.jpg
by using the 'keyword phrase' in this way, you give much more importance to your page in the eyes of the search engines, and they really 'get' what this page is all about.

TIP 4 - HYPERLINKING

Are pages hyperlinked between each other in the page content (within the Body of the page), using the keyword phrase for the page being linked to? Sometimes (I only checked a couple of pages so there may be a lot more than I spotted in just a few seconds)
Recommendation: on the pages which have no content hyperlinking, try to add another sentence with relevant 'keyword phrase' to link to another internal page.
Tom Brosnahan is the King of Hyperlinking
I learnt this from him many moons ago :-)
the search engines LOVE INTERCONNECTED HYPERLINKED PAGES on a website - it gives the robots something to travel along and chew, and find out all your juicy content, this makes it so easy for those little robots and they say WHEE with GLEE when they find these links :-)

TIP 5 - & THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE -- VALUABLE CONTENT

Are the pages filled with value-packed content?
If yes, that's great. If not, consider adding a few more sentences and weave in some interesting connection with something on another page on the website - then hyperlink them :-)
another suggestion is to add a paragraph or links under the content which lead the reader to more 'related' pages
If someone lands on a page, is there enough info to ANSWER A QUESTION?
Try to think of content on your site as a page for each question you can answer, write some pages based on questions, and more people will find you in the search engines.

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Don, this is just a small percentage of what we can do for our websites, and I hope you don't mind I've used one of your pages for my examples. Kindest regards, best of luck with your websites, and have a fabulous weekend!

Cheers,
Teena - 27 November 2010
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If you have any questions about learning how to use SEO effectively for your website, please let me know and we can work out a program together to get you on the right track.

Cheers

Teena!