Growing Natural Search Traffic in the Highly Competitive Online Travel Industry
Conductor Links Case Study - Travel Industry
Executive Summary
Prior to working with Conductor, a multi-billion dollar travel site was not having success driving SEO traffic to their site. Their overall site traffic skewed heavily to non-SEO, they were virtually invisible for destination specific keywords, and too great a percentage of their SEO traffic was coming from branded searches. By not being found when travelers researched their travel options, the Travel Company was missing out on literally thousands of bookings per month, which had a direct impact on their bottom line. By partnering with Conductor to build targeted links from geographic and authoritative content partners, the Travel Company:
- Increased SEO traffic from 17% of overall traffic to 47%.
- Increased SEO bookings by approximately 23%.
- Improved rankings of destination specific keywords from an average of Page 4 to Page 1.
- Increased the percentage of SEO traffic coming from non-branded keywords from 26% to 33%.
- Developed a plan to increase visibility for an additional set of keywords that could tap into an additional 32% of travel related search traffic.
“Year over year SEO traffic increased by 47%, SEO bookings by 55%”
Introduction
The way we book travel has undergone a fundamental change in the last decade. In the old paradigm, we would call a travel agent who would search in their computer system that only they had access to and book our travel. Today, travelers have become their own agents, turning to the convenience of the web to research and book travel, often at a real cost savings over traditional channels.
In 2009, an estimated three-quarters of a trillion dollars will be spent globally on online travel. There is a great deal at stake--with 70% of travel reservations now booked online, travel firms must be visible online if they are to earn market share. The competition is fierce, rife with diverse categories of players—with traditional airlines and hotel chains, travel aggregators, online travel agencies and travel search engines all competing for the same traveler dollar. With the travel industry experiencing some of the highest paid keyword cost per clicks (CPC) of any industry at $.61 per keyword, and knowing approximately 80% of clicks occur in the organic space, many firms are turning to SEO to capture their share of the online travel market.
Complicating the SEO challenge, unlike many industries where searches are made in a relatively narrow manner (e.g. “blu-ray player”),
in the travel industry, searches are made both broadly (“cheap flight”) and in a destination specific manner (“Boston vacation”), and firms must optimize for both.100% of targeted destination-specific keywords moved to page one .
Yet managing this process internally can challenge even the most motivated of firms. Firms must develop link partners that can provide content for general search terms as well as those that can provide local content for destination specific terms. Then they must track how well the efforts are producing results while monitoring what the competition is doing in this ever shifting space. A multi-billion dollar travel site came to Conductor for help with their SEO efforts. They were faced with several key challenges:
Challenge # 1 - Poor Broad Keyword Visibility
Poor visibility for broad travel search terms results in small percentage of overall traffic SEO.
In September of 2008, only 17% of the Travel Company’s overall traffic was SEO. With such a large percentage of traffic coming from non-organic sources, they recognized that they were missing out on significant opportunities to drive traffic to their website. Conductor worked with the Travel Company to identify 2000 keywords that possessed significant branding and/or traffic acquisition value that they began to track. Together, these keywords accounted for 95 million Google searches. The challenge was to increase their SEO visitors and ultimately their bookings coming from SEO.
Solution
Conductor analyzed the keywords and identified a subset that would provide the best ROI given their search volume and the content and structure of the Travel Company’s pages. Using their exclusive publishing partner inventory, Conductor developed a custom campaign of external links from highly authoritative and relevant sites to the appropriate Travel Company’s destination pages. In only three months time (September 2008 to December 2008) their overall SEO traffic increased by approximately 14% and the percentage of SEO visitors increased to 47% (see Figure 1). Compared to the previous December, year over year SEO visitors increased by an average of 47% and SEO bookings increased by 55%.
Challenge # 2 - Poor Destination Specific Search Visibility
Minimal to zero visibility for destination-specific search terms
After the successes Conductor helped the Travel Company achieve with broad keywords, they turned next to destination specific searches. The Travel Company recognized that travelers often perform destination specific searches when researching travel plans and they were not sufficiently visible for these kind of searches. Conductor began by helping identify locales that represented a broad sampling of their travel destinations: one large international geographic area, one non- US destination, and eight US destinations. In the beginning of April 2009, none of the ten keywords ranked on the first page of natural search results, averaging page four with a search rank of 34.
Solution
To help the Travel Company increase visibility for destination specific searches, Conductor examined their destination specific landing pages and developed a plan to build links to the pages. By tapping into their broad network of geographically diverse publishing partners, Conductor activated geographically specific links to the individual landing pages. Only one month later, at the beginning of May 2009, the keywords search position for all categories moved up by an average of 71% from page 4 to page 1, (position 34 to 10) (see Figure 2). The large geographic area moved up a staggering 96% from page 10 to page 1, (position 100 to 4); the non-US destination by 30%, from page 3 to page 2 (position 23 to 16) and the US destinations category by an average of 63%, from page 3 to page 1 (position 27 to 10). This represents a remarkable turnaround in only one month’s time— made possible by Conductor’s ability to point geographically relevant content to the Travel Company’s destination specific pages. Based on the success of the destination specific campaign thus far, the Travel Company is planning to expand their destination specific keyword campaign to include thousands of additional destinations.
Non-branded traffic increased from 26% to 33%
Challenge # 3 — Too Great a Dependency on Branded Traffic
Too much of SEO traffic coming from branded vs non-branded search terms
In the beginning of January 2009, three quarters of the Travel Company’s SEO traffic came from branded keywords. Like financial investing, the Travel Company sought to diversify their traffic and even out the spread of traffic coming from branded vs. non-branded keywords. They wanted to be prominently visible not just when travelers search for them by name but also when travelers search for general travel terms.
Solution
To help the Travel Company better balance branded vs. non-branded traffic, during the keyword identification and recommendation process, Conductor identified content articles from their partner publisher community that were tailored to the kind of searches the Travel Company was targeting. Once again, Conductor’s broad set of exclusive partners enabled them to develop a comprehensive selection of content geared to the non-branded searches the Travel Company sought to drive to their site. By the first week of April 2009, as SEO traffic increased, so did the percentage of non-branded traffic, increasing from 26% to 33% while non-branded bookings increased from 9% to 12% (see Figure 3). As they expand their SEO efforts to include additional keywords, their percentage of non-branded keyword traffic is expected to continue to increase.