According to ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents), in 2018, 81% of holiday bookings were made online. This essentially means two things for online travel businesses: a wealth of opportunity, and serious competition. 

Link building is vital for travel websites as it helps their site to be visible in today’s crowded online travel landscape. The use of carefully selected link building techniques will allow you to acquire links from reputable, trusted, travel sources. These carefully selected links will help search engines build trust in your website, which will improve your rankings in search engine results pages, making prospective travellers more likely to find you. 

The online travel industry is a highly competitive one. For that reason, some online travel companies think that link building for travel websites is a waste of time, because it is not possible to compete. However, link building for travel and tourism websites can be incredibly effective in improving your site’s visibility and credibility, which in turn will drive traffic. This is because, although search engines use a range of ever-changing algorithms and factors when ranking sites, high-quality backlinks and hard links remain central to achieving online visibility. 

Our link building services can help you to boost your website’s authority and drive traffic. At Bravr, we tailor our approach for each client based on their current and aspirational performance, as well as industry norms and what their key competitors are doing. 

An effective link building strategy will deploy a range of travel-specific activities, which may include:

Guest post and blogger outreach is one of the most common link building activities. It involves reaching out to relevant, trusted travel organisations such as a travel bloggers, travel websites, travel-related websites, and online magazines, and offering to provide them with unique, high-quality guest posts. This guest post will contain one or more links – one of which will lead back to your own website.

Creating quality links within the travel niche may sound simple, but it is more complicated, time-consuming, and expensive than it sounds. Payment is usually expected for content placement and in order to reap results, the content has to be good quality. It is, therefore, best left to the professionals who rely on tried and tested techniques and their reputation within the industry to obtain good value agreements. 

A great way to attract traffic and improve visibility is to ensure that your website is listed in relevant resource pages, directories and approved supplier lists, and travel blogs such as "top five travel websites".

As with guest posting opportunities, networking and industry know-how allow link builders to secure a presence on high authority sites; a tailored approach is applied to create a list of target sites, directories and resources, before reaching out to website owners and negotiating the terms under which a site can be added to their list. 

While it pays to think big when creating links, it is equally valuable to build links a little closer to home. By considering specific destinations or niche organisations that are particularly relevant to an organisation, it is possible to curate a strong partnership with other institutions and organisations, for example, local businesses, tourism boards, or experience providers.

These mutually beneficial arrangements will see you offering each other backlinks while supporting industry colleagues. The same can be applied to local events: festivals, fairs, business events, theatres or competitions all offer you an opportunity to build authoritative links relatively easily. You don't have to focus exclusively on travel websites and travel blogs either; for example, you could partner with a local dog show and create content that leverages relevant keywords around dog friendly accommodation.

Don’t underestimate the power of the media – especially on a slow news day. It can be beneficial to issue press releases to travel-related media outlets about anything remotely newsworthy; if the timing is right, the story may get picked up and result in valuable backlinks.  It is possible to leverage competitions or user experiences and stories, turning them into a story that could tick human interest boxes while being shareable to, and by, your own audience. 

Love them or hate them, podcasts are becoming increasingly popular. Offering valuable information from trusted resources, podcasts allow the busy person to disseminate information that interests them while they are on the go. On the way to work, on a run, while doing housework, podcasts allow us to multitask efficiently. Appearing in a podcast is, therefore, an easy way to reach new customers and gain valuable backlinks. A skilled link building specialist will always be on the lookout for travel-related podcast or interview opportunities, which can provide backlinks and shout outs.

You don’t just want to build links on other sites to boost search engine ranking; you want your target audience to see your link, click on it, and engage with the content that you are providing.
An experienced link builder can participate in travel forums and relevant online communities and discussions; as a valued part of these communities, relevant links and resources will be welcomed and trusted.

By tailoring content to a specific group of people, it is possible to demonstrate expertise in the area and engage people who are looking for – and willing to pay for – something specific. From adults only holidays to family retreats, pet friendly accommodation to accessible action holidays, where there is a niche requirement, there is an opportunity, and forums and community groups are a great way to access them. 

Most people love the escapism of a travel blog, which is why a travel blogger has the potential to reach large audiences. By nurturing relationships with handpicked site owners and influencers, it is possible to be featured in a travel blog as well as on Facebook groups and social media platforms and sites, leading to excellent exposure and high value link placement. 

The link building process is about relationships. The key to successful link building for travel is to focus on providing value and creating genuine associations; featuring on one quality travel site or travel blogger will yield better results than several poorly placed internal links or nofollow links. While spammy tactics may yield quick wins, they won’t be beneficial in the long term. A skilled travel SEO specialist will aim for quality over quantity when it comes to link acquisition. They will focus on creating valuable content via reputable sources such as respected travel blogs and other relevant websites.

Link building for travel is not as easy as building links with relevant travel websites and authoritative sites; it requires knowledge, skill and subtlety. One way to benchmark the success of your current SEO strategy, as well as to identify what you can achieve is to measure the performance of your travel website against that of your competitors. Bravr's SEO team will look at data on a range of elements including organic traffic, organic backlinks and potential ROI on paid links for other websites within the travel niche.

At Bravr, we have worked with a host of organisations and recognise that everyone is unique; there is no one-size-fits-all approach to link building. Many of our clients come to us after investing in a lower cost solution that they thought was great value, only to realise that they were paying for activities that they either didn’t want or didn’t need.  While all link building strategies will be different, most are built upon a similar framework, which includes:

Determining your link-building objectives is the first step to strategy creation; once you know what you want to achieve, and what “good” looks like for you,  you can work out how to get there.