Title aside, for now, let’s talk Tennis, in order to become the best tennis player in the world you need to have speed, performance, quality technique and much more. Rankings may be considered on how good a player is on the court and their form at the time. Why do these players compete? It is believed that people who are motivated by competition are motivated for at least three reasons, the competition allows them to satisfy the need to win, the competition provides the opportunity or reason for improving their performance, and competition motivates them to put forth a greater effort that can result in higher levels of performance.

People who are familiar with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) would know that the physical tennis competitions and the digital war of SEO rankings are much alike, to achieve the title of number one on the ranks they both require excellent speed, performance and quality from the player.

It is quite obvious why you would want to be on top of the ranks, not only does it build a name for your company, it also drives traffic to your website and increases business authenticity.

So, how do you become the Novak Djokovic of the SEO world? Below are some pointers to help you get started:

A lot of travellers use social media to plan and book their trips, we can use these social platforms to reach these travellers and get bookings.

Be as mobile-friendly as possible

According to a study by pegs.com, it has been revealed that 36% of Online Booking Agencies total bookings are generated from mobile phone users. Therefore, people are much more likely to book experiences from your site through their mobile device and it is even more likely for their device to accompany them in their travels than for their laptop. Your website should look good and be easy to use on any device.

Another important thing to keep in mind is the amount of time it takes for your pages to load. Users, as great as they are for our businesses, are quite impatient. They don’t want to wait, and the longer they have to wait for your page to load the higher the chances become of them losing their patience and leaving. In order to increase the load time of your pages you can publish your website in AMP format, AMP format is in simple terms a stripped-down form of HTML, or the diet HTML if you will. Perfect for a staring tennis player. Lastly, we need to avoid excessive pop-ups, small texts and small touch features. It’s rather tedious having to enlarge the screen every time we would like to read something isn’t it?

Set the scene of your site with Keywords

Keywords are the sustenance of any Travel SEO strategy. As soon as a user decides they would like to take a trip to Vegas, their trip already begins, and it is our task to try and predict how that traveller will try to accomplish their goal. They will most likely turn to the internet for help, and they’ll probably use your services, but there is a certain bridge between these two events that will determine whether or not this person becomes your customer.

This bridge is called Keywords. By using keywords that are appropriate for your line of work, you need to be as specific as you can about what you offer your clients. If you can offer your clients a trip to the Kruger National Park’, then that is the keyword you should be using. If you can take them ‘snorkelling in the Maldives’ there’s another. You can also use long-tail keywords to offer more specificity and show your users you have exactly what they need.

Construct links from authoritative sources related to travel

Earning those greatly desired backlinks is a vital part of SEO in any industry, but it is especially important in the travel sector. When a customer decides to take a trip, they will give preference to the source they can trust most. They will listen to friends and acquaintances that have used services like these before and if they don’t have any friends with this knowledge they will turn to online sources. It’s important to try and get your company mentioned in those sources in order to ensure the customer will be yours.

There are many popular travel websites where you can earn a valuable link to your website, such as TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet and The Telegraph Travel to name a few. You can also reach out to travel bloggers and offer them an outbound link from your side in exchange for the backlink you’re looking to gain, it is a two-way street after all.

Have you ever heard the great saying “good things take time”? Well just as it takes years of practice and discipline to become a great tennis player, it also takes years to build yourself up on the google ranks. It is easy to find out when a domain was registered. For example, the Netcraft tool shows you when the domain was first identified by the Google crawler. Settled domains that have been delivering quality for a long time are ranked higher because they are seen as trustworthy. But this doesn’t mean that the newbie domains inevitably lose in the battle for a good position in the rankings. The older the domain the higher the rankings are not entirely true in this context – the amount of time that the site has had a good quality level plays a role that can affect the ranking in both positive and negative ways.

There is no end to the possibilities of SEO, and these are just a few tips that can serve as stepping stones to where you want to go. Be patient, pages rank higher over time. You often book months in advance before planning a big trip, but it always pays off in the end.

References:

• How to Improve Your Google Rankings Fast: 9 Steps to Rank Higher Using Analytics
• How to Rank Higher On Google
• How Important Is a Top Listing In Google? (And Why?)
• 10 Crucial SEO Ranking Factors You Need to Know
• Search Engine Ranking Factors
• 3 top SEO tips to optimize your travel website
• Important Mobile Booking Stats for Hotels
• How Does Website Security Affect Your SEO?
• 7 Ways to Earn Travel Backlinks That Fit Your Niche and Boost Your Reach
• The Telegraph - Travel Guide
• What's that site running?

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