SEO For Travel Websites [1242% Increase In 7 Months]
Website type: Content website
Niche: Travel and Music Festivals
Service: Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation
quick fire statistics.
the website.
On The Beating Travel is a content website focused on music festivals, nightlife and travel. The content focuses on event travel, namely travel relating to the destinations in which music festivals take place. The website is an informational resource for anyone looking to attend a music festival overseas.
the objective.
To get traffic back to the website after the COVID19 pandemic all but obliterated the events and travel industry. The travel writing space is ultra-competitive, so we needed to be hyper-specific in which destinations to write content for. The primary aim of the campaign was to reach 50,000 monthly unique sessions to be eligible for Mediavine.
the strategy.
As I mentioned above, the strategy involved narrowing down to specific travel destinations and then building out content in the three areas the website covers, namely nightclubs, travel, and festivals. Then use internal linking to show Google that the articles were not separate but rather highly related to one another.
For example, when writing about travel to Berlin, we focused heavily on the most famous nightclub and linked the topics. The same went for writing about Ibiza as a travel destination. Instead of writing generally, we identified a target reader and created content that someone looking to party on holiday would want to read before going.
The most important aspect was to create topical authority on the areas of festivals and clubbing and then pass that authority onto the travel content, which is how the website makes the majority of its advertising revenue.
The image below is an excellent example of just how powerful topical authority is. For example, the search term Berghain had a keyword difficulty shown below:
Ahrefs suggests you need links from roughly 103 websites to rank in the top 10 for this term. Here is what we achieved.
And here it is, sitting in position #6 for that same term. That’s with a domain DR of 8. A picture says 1000 words. It’s a shining example of the power of covering a topic in depth.
59 articles published
In truth, the content strategy was started in December 2021 when we published the first article for this campaign. And since then, there have been 59 articles added to the website.
These formed the ‘wheel spokes’ stemming out from pillar pages. Each destination has a page that sits directly below the homepage. These pillar pages then link down to all the supporting informational articles. These articles are all interlinked with each other and then back up to the pillar page.
This tells Google 2 things. First that these articles are all related to the pillar page. And second that the website is an authority on the pillar topic.
In addition to the 59 informational posts published, festival listings and pillar pages were added.
the growth.
Now that we are coming to the end of the summer season, it’s safe to assume that the peak has likely been reached this year. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the website is in decline. Instead, it’s natural for travel websites to rise in July and August because that is the peak holiday season.
It’s a good indicator of how much traffic there is for the type of reader we chose to focus on. If we hadn’t narrowed down and written for a specific demographic, the traffic would probably have been significantly lower at the peak. The figures are below:
The 7 months starting from February have seen incredible traffic growth. The website’s traffic is up 1242% overall. Below is the data from Google Search Console. Notice the summertime peak highlighted by the levelling out of search impressions.
final thoughts.
The single most significant takeaway from this case study has been to see just how powerful topical authority is. Start by focusing on who you want to read your content and then build around that. This is going to be even more critical following the Google Helpful Content Update.
The growth of 1242% has seen us almost achieve the extremely lofty target of reaching 50,000 monthly visitors.
And lastly, I don’t think the website owner is upset with a 2570% increase in the advertising earnings for the 7 months either.
If you’re a travel business or website, and you are looking to expand your reach, please get in touch, and we can arrange a call to discuss how you can also achieve growth like this from a tailored search engine marketing campaign.
