How to Find Keywords for Travel and Tourism Websites

Are you wondering how to find the best keywords for travel and tourism to sky-rocket your rankings and get more travellers reading your travel guides?

When I say travel keyword research, I don’t just mean pulling random words or phrases. I’m talking about finding keywords that you can use today, and bring in more traffic from Google.

In this post I’m going to share everything you need to; find keywords for your website, how to use them and best of all – how to bring in more traffic! Fair enough?

Let’s get started.

Google-keyword-planner-search

What is keyword research?

What on earth is keyword research? I know, it sounds a little scientific (it’s not) – this is the most important part to finding your keywords for travel and tourism. For any search engine optimiser (SEO) expert, this is one of the most important parts of any campaign.

But where do you start?

Don’t worry. Let’s break it down – firstly looking at the basics. Over 2.3 billion searches are conducted every minute on Google; which is why you have to enrich your content with relevant keywords. This is achieved by looking for any words or phrases that are relevant to your content.

It’s like aiming in the dark – without keyword research. You could write an amazing article, but if the search engines don’t see it has relevant – well, you won’t be getting any traffic!

So, we understand how it helps – what next?

The main goal of keyword research is to find out what your target market is searching for and create the content around them searches. But there’s more, this is where it gets interesting! There are lots of places to conduct keyword research, for example;

  • Keyword tools (I’m going to share some of the best ones with you)
  • Search engine results pages (SERPs)
  • Forums
  • Competitors

Which keywords to target?

Choosing keywords is not easy – but good news! I’m going to share how to pick the right keywords for travel and tourism.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give is to target long-tail keywords. What are those you may be thinking? They’re keywords that are easier to rank your website higher in Google.

Let’s look at a simple example: Say you wanted to create a travel guide on “Bali”. You know by now that this is a difficult keyword to target. As a result, you’d create a long-tail keyword such as “Bali travel tips for summer”. Then, you have a lot more chance of getting for that keyword.

Think about it: lonely planet or TripAdvisor will probably be competing for the keyword “Bali” – so why battle it out? Think about it – you have a much easier chance to rank for long-tail keywords. Let the big boys battle it out – and you sneak in to take all them long-tail keywords from under their nose.

In my experience: you should target long-tail keywords and start bringing in traffic. Then, once you have some authority, you can start targeting the short-tail keywords.

There are 1000 keywords for travel and tourism – you just need to find the best ones to target. The key ingredient is to find long-tail keywords with a high search volume.

Wait, there’s another part to this – keyword intent.

Keyword intent

Keyword intent is important – and one of the ingredients often missed. Also, this needs to be researched when doing paid search.

So what does keyword intent mean you probably wondering? To put it simply; it’s the intention the user has with the search they’re querying. Let’s look at the different types of intents;

  • Informational – searches performed for an answer to a question or to learn something
  • Navigational – searches performed to locate a specific website
  • Transactional – searches performed to buy something such as new trainers

You must understand these intents, then you know how to best optimise your content. And we don’t stop there – let’s look at some of the intents which mean a searcher is ready to buy;

  • Buy
  • Free shipping
  • Deal
  • Coupon
  • Free shipping

When a searcher uses these keywords, they’re ready to buy a product. As a result, if you want to sell a product, target these keywords.

How to check the authority of a competitor’s website?

This part is useful so stick with me! We’re now looking at the domain authority (DA) of a website, with the free Moz DA tool.

So what is DA?

It’s a metric created by MOZ. This metric is used to predict a website’s chance of ranking for a certain keyword. That’s not all! The DA ranges from 0-100. This means; the better the authority, the more chance it has of ranking. Also, a higher DA helps pages within your website rank higher – your homepage is generally the strongest page within your website.

Fun fact – Lonely Planet’s DA is 92 – you can see why this website ranks so easily for the most commonly searched travel keyword.

What is a good DA?

There’s no simple answer to this question – but I will give you the best answer possible!

You target DA will depend on the niche you’re targeting. If you’re writing travel guides on easy keywords (not many websites are targeting), then a DA of 15-30 might be acceptable. On the other hand, if you’re targeting more difficult keywords, then you need a higher DA.

Let’s look at an example using the MOZ DA checker tool.

If we search “things to do in Ubud”, we can see the following results;

google-search-results

There are three different DA scores for the top results;

  • 93
  • 50
  • 29

You see, this is a difficult keyword to rank for. Think about it, Google trusts these high DA scores. Therefore, if they produce quality content, then they will more than likely rank high.

Now I’m not saying you should discard targeting keywords that may seem difficult – I’m trying to help you rank your site, and get more traffic. Do your keyword research and look at the SERPs to see which websites are targeting that keyword.

Okay, so we understand what DA is, but how do you improve it? This is a whole new article itself. However, we will go through the fundamentals of getting websites linking to yours;

  • You need to create amazing content that provides good information for your target market, Other bloggers and websites will always link to useful articles. Bonus tip – Use statistics and infographics in your posts. These are bulletproof ways to get new links.
  • Plugin is competitors URL into Ubersuggest and discover where they’re getting their links from. Then, send a friendly email to the website that’s pointing to theirs, mentioning your new post and would they be interested in providing a link to your article.

So, there’s how to improve your DA – so you can rank for travel keywords easier. But there’s one more thing, your website’s age. The older the website, the more trust it will get (if actively improved). A new website will usually struggle to get traffic from Google for the first 3-6 month (market dependant).

Targeting LSI keywords

There term Latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords are words or phrases that share relevance with the target keyword.

Let’s look at an example to make it easier to understand.

If “things to do in New York” was your keyword, then possible LSI keywords would be;

  • Activities in New York
  • Things to see in New York
  • Places to see in New York
  • Things to do at night in New York

You get the point.

The purpose of LSI keywords is to add more relevance to a post and help Google understand your content.

How to find LSI keywords?

The trick here is to not just focus on synonyms of your target keyword. I like to go in-depth on related phrases and surrounding topics. One trick I like to use is Google related searches. This gives you a list of useful LSI keywords – and if Google’s telling them they’re relayed – Give Google what they want. As a result, using LSI travel keywords will give your content a massive boost in the eyes of Google.

I bet you’re excited to get stuck into these keywords – and I have a great LSI tool for you in this next section.

Google-suggested-searches

Tools for Keywords for Travel and Tourism Websites

This is crazy: there are free tools for you to find keywords for travel and tourism. Yes, that’s right! There are free SEO tools that will show you what keywords to target – and which to avoid.

There are paid SEO tools, however, why pay when you can use them for free?

Are you ready to see some of the best free tools to find your travel keywords? Let’s take a look.

LSI graph

We have looked at LSI keywords, so now it’s time to find them – enter the free LSI graph. You just simply plugin a keyword, then this SEO tool will provide you with a list of related keywords and phrases.

What then?

Now you need to take the best keywords that you can fit into your content without it looking spammy. You need to see if you can create headers out of these phrases – or will they naturally just fit into the flow of your content.

As you start plugging them into your content, you will soon realise how valuable the LSI keywords are.

Google Keyword Planner

This is one of the best tools when searching for the most commonly searched travel words. And, it’s the most accurate for Google searches. I know you will love this tool once you start to use it – no doubt about that!

The keywords provided here comes directly from Google themselves. But wait there’s more, Google keyword planner tells you;

  • Average monthly searches
  • Competition
  • Suggested bid (if you’re using paid search

Boom! Plenty of juicy information.

To use this SEO keyword planner; you just need to sign up to an account with Google. Then, you’re free to start using the tool. You simply just plug in a keyword, and you will be given all the information available by Google.

Google-keyword-planner-results

Ubersuggest

So far, we now understand how to find keywords – that’s going to bring you plenty of traffic. Now, it’s time to discover what your competitors are doing best – and steal their keywords. SEO is the only time when stealing is right. And fun. Enter Ubersuggest; one of the best free SEO tools – and one every marketer loves!

Ubersuggest work by taking a web address (which you provide), then tells you a lot of useful information such as;

  • A competitor’s backlinks (other websites pointing to there website)
  • Their domain authority
  • Keywords they rank for
  • How much traffic a website receives
  • Keyword ideas

And plenty more!

This is the best free SEO tool to see what travel keywords your competitors are ranking for. Then, you can use all this information to create better content.

It’s crazy how much info you’re given for free!

ubersuggest-results

Implementing your Keywords

Let’s get to work with your new travel keywords. We need to craft content around that attracts Google, and keeps the reader engaged with your content.

Making engaging content is where a lot of SEO consultants fail. You can’t just stuff your page with keywords and expect the job done. You need your content to be conversational – just like it feels you and I are having a conversation – fair enough?

Okay, let’s look at a strategy for your new keywords;

  • As mentioned, you need to create high-quality and interesting-to-read blog posts. These will keep a reader on your site longer, build trust and increase rankings.
  • Strategically use the long-tail keywords we spoke about. These will bring in visitors desperate to see your travel articles.
  • Do proper onsite optimisation. Don’t worry this part sounds fancy but it’s easy. You need to link to other pages on your website that’s relevant. This will keep visitors on your site for longer, and also help Google read your pages. Want to know the best part? Doing this simple tactic will help with your rankings.
  • Click-through rate (CTR) is an important ranking factor. Therefore, use catchy titles and meta descriptions; both of these are clickbait on the Google page. You want to draw the eyes of a searcher, and entice them to click your awesome travel guide. These tags are not big ranking factors – but the CTR is.

Summary

By now you can the importance of keyword research – and how it benefits your website. Cleverly utilising Keywords for Travel and Tourism Websites is a sure way to bring in more traffic.

I’m glad you now have the information and tools to get started with your travel keyword research.

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David Kovacs

David Kovacs

Hello I am David, the guy behind Travel SEO. I help growing travel businesses profit from online marketing with #1 page rankings. If you want to know more about me, check out the about page.

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8 thoughts on “How to Find Keywords for Travel and Tourism Websites”

  1. Ram Hari Koirala

    Dear David, your info is so useful, authentic and generous. Thank you a lot for the info and for the insight.

  2. I really enjoyed reading your article. You wrote in an impossibly beautiful manner. I felt like I wasn’t reading the text, rather you were talking to me.

    It’s been a year since I created a travel website and is fighting for rankings. I wish I could get some more direction from you.

    Sincere thanks.

  3. Hello David, I am in the process of creating my travel blog. Since I am quite digitally challenged your article really was very informative breaking it down to the basics. Thank you.

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