If you run a travel website, whether it be a cruise company website, a travel agency site, or a recreational travel blog you already know how difficult it is to gain traction in the search engine rankings in this ultra-competitive market. In order to raise your importance in the eyes of search engines like Google you need to have backlinks pointing to your travel website. Building backlinks is one of the most tedious parts of search engine optimization, but it is a necessary evil and absolutely critical to building a successful web-based business in the travel niche. Read on to find out the best ways to build these links to give your site a boost in the SERPs.
Write Great Content – As webmasters try to find the latest and greatest shortcuts to quickly build backlinks one of the most important axioms in the web world often gets forgotten: Content is king. Taking the time to write high quality content (or paying a talented writer to have it written for you) will pay greater dividends than all the other tips you’ll find below combined. Other webmasters will be naturally inclined to link to your high quality content, and an outstanding story, article or opinion piece will bring you a plethora of backlinks from relevant websites with themes similar to your own. Google loves these kinds of links and will quickly recognize your site as an authority on the subject.
Write Guest Posts on Travel Blogs – Relevance is a huge factor in search engine ranking. If you have writing talent (or a ghost writer who does) you can contact webmasters running their own travel websites and offer to write a free article for them in exchange for a link to your website. With the demand for fresh, unique content very high you should have webmasters banging down your door to give you a backlink in exchange for a unique travel article. Make sure you specify the anchor text you want them to use if you are targeting a particular keyword phrase.
Tweet on Twitter and Share on Facebook – By using these two powerful social networking tools you can spread your website like wildfire. Again, providing you’ve got great content, others will retweet and share your link, and you may find backlinks springing up all over the place as other webmasters link to your site. Don’t forget these aren’t the only social networking sites you can take advantage of. Digg, Reddit, Delicious and dozens of others can all bring traffic, and give your content exposure that will attract links.
Comment on Travel Blogs – Again, you are targeting relevant backlinks from similarly themed sites. Be sure to actually read the article and leave a useful comment that shows you are actually engaged with the subject matter of the post. Just writing, “Good post. Thanks!” will get your comment relegated to the spam bin. Again, make sure to use anchor text to properly target your keyword phrase.
These are certainly not the only ways you can build links to your travel website, but they are among the most powerful. Ultimately, if you are in it for the long haul then by following these 4 steps to building backlinks you should enjoy plenty of success.