If so, you likely need a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy in place, something that’s essential for your tour and safari business in today’s digital era

For the safari and tour industry, consider that 97% of people searched the internet for tours and safari in 2021 and 2022. That means tour operators must have a robust online presence, including visibility on search engine results pages.

You need to tweak your safari and tour website and overall marketing strategy to dominate the search engine rankings.

That includes conducting keyword research, improving your site’s loading speed, building backlinks, and regularly releasing quality content for your target audience.

Tour and Safari SEO is also unique from traditional SEO in more than a few ways, including its reliance on your targeting countries. there’s a lot you need to know to get your safari and tour business ranking in the top spots on Google.

That can be a lot to take in, especially if you’re a newbie to SEO strategies in general.

After a short read, you’ll know how to create a winning tour and safari SEO strategy from scratch, so don’t wait to get started.

What Makes Tour and safari business SEO Different?

Most industries’ SEO processes are practically identical, which is why most general SEO techniques and guides work.

Yet, specific industries require some unique approaches, such as safari, tour, and camp.

Why does SEO matter for Safari and Tour?

As stated before, more and more customers are using internet searches to find the best tour and safari websites for adding adventure in their traveling journey.

Beyond that, safari and tour websites are the most popular marketing channel for new travelers, with 90.7% of consumers using them. Blog content came in at a close second, with 89.2% of travelers using articles.

Both your website and blog content are vital components of safari and tour SEO, so if you neglect them, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of your audience.

Also, SEO is a gift that keeps on giving.

While it takes an average of 6 – 12 months to start seeing a consistent ROI, once you’ve got everything set up and optimized, you can take your foot off the gas while still enjoying a steady flow of traffic, leads, and sales.

How Search Engines Rank Content in 2023 (Ranking Factors)

Now that you know SEO efforts are well worth your time, you need to learn more about how Google and other search engines crawl, index, and rank website content.In particular, Google has over 200 ranking factors that it uses when crawling and indexing web pages.

That means simply placing a few keywords into your content and calling it a day won’t cut it. Instead, a winning SEO strategy aims to optimize every aspect of your online presence (not just your website, as off-page SEO is also a thing – like your social media presence) to rank as high as possible.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the most crucial SEO ranking factors.

 High-quality content

First and foremost, producing high-quality content that educates and solves common user problems is arguably the most important ranking factor.

For safari and tour, this means creating content that’s relevant to audiences who are looking for a safari and tour.

Let’s say that you sell Safari and tours in coastal Africa. Some examples of helpful content topic ideas for your audience would be:

1. How much does a trip to Africa cost
2. The best Season to visit Africa
3. Masai Mara safari cost
4. Kruger Safari packages from Johannesburg

If you’re regularly producing tour and safari-related content then Google will take notice and rank you higher.

 Mobile-first indexing

What’s that?

It means that Google now indexes mobile sites first over desktop sites.

So if you have a separate mobile site (which was the way most sites handled mobile browsing in the past), it will take precedence over the desktop version.

That means your mobile site is now the most important version of your safari and tour website, which can pose problems for some safari and tours companies still using two separate websites.

Page experience

Another crucial ranking factor is your page experience, which refers to the strength of your user experience and user interface.

There’s a difference between the two, so let’s elaborate.

Your user interface (UI) refers to the navigational layout of your website. In other words, how easy is it to find your product pages, services, and other information? Are all your web pages included in your main navigation bar?

A poor user interface will hurt your SEO, as users won’t hang around if they can’t find what they need.In today’s age, the attention span of the average internet user is very short, so you need to make navigating your site as easy as possible.

On the other hand, user experience (UX) is a bit more subjective. It refers to how customers feel when interacting with your site. If you provide a logical user interface with high-quality content and fast loading speeds, your user experience is likely very positive.

Not only does Google pay attention to your UI and UX when ranking your site, but improving both will have positive effects on your bottom line.

So when formulating your safari and tour SEO strategy, pay attention to your UI and UX. Do your best to ensure that your site has effortless navigation, stand-out CTA buttons, and seamless loading times.

Google prefers HTTPS for security

One of the most crucial ranking factors for Google search is if your website uses HTTPS or not. In 2023, they even started flagging sites as unsafe.

What is HTTPS?

It stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, an extension of HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) – and it allows for secure communication and data sharing between a website and a user’s computer.

Everything gets encrypted during transactions and interactions with HTTPS websites using Transport Layer Security. This prevents anyone from eavesdropping on communications or stealing user data during transactions.

That’s why Google favors HTTPS when it ranks sites, as the company wants to provide searchers with the safest results to prevent cyber-attacks.

80.5% of all websites use SSL/HTTPS, and they account for a majority of the top SERP (Search Engine Results Page) rankings, so it’s definitely worth making the transition if you haven’t already.

The only issue is that it can be very tricky to transition to HTTPS, as it can cause canonical issues with your website.

 Internal linking structure

You’ll want to have a flawless internal linking structure to make things easy on Google’s crawlers.

If all your pages connect to each other in a way that makes sense (i.e., grouping related articles together), it’s easier for Google’s algorithm to find and index all your pages.Not only that, but it also helps users find what they need, and internal links in the right spot can improve your bounce rates and dwell time.

You should also consider your sales funnel when constructing your internal links.

In terms of tours and safari, you want to guide users about the safari and tour destination book. As such, your blogs need to contain calls to action (CTAs) at the end to let users know what they should do next.

 Internal links

Here’s an example of how internal links can lead to better conversion rates:

A web user searches for safari and tour in South Africa or Tanzania in Africa, and they find one of your blogs entitled ‘The Best time to visit Africa.

After reading to the end, they notice a CTA encouraging them to ‘click here to see our condo listings.’ They click through to your tour and safari listings page to find a trip in Africa from your article.

They browse the listings for a while until they come across a tour and safari that catches their eye. Since you’ve provided high-resolution images and descriptions for it, they decide they want to learn more. Luckily, you included another internal link that says, ‘click here to book a consultation with me,‘ and they click on it.

That takes them to your contact form, where they schedule a call to book a safari and tour trip, which eventually leads to a sale.

If you didn’t have all these internal links in strategic, you would have missed out on the sale, as they could have lost interest and looked elsewhere.

Your internal links are the great way to guide readers down your funnel, so don’t forget to use them!

 Authoritative backlinks

Besides internal links, search engines also place a lot of clout on the backlinks a site has – both in number and in quality.

That’s why link-building is a core aspect of SEO, as all the safari and tour companies are dedicated to acquiring backlinks for their websites.

There are many ways to build backlinks, such as:

1. Guest blog posts
2. Replacing broken links online

Outdoing competitor content and poaching their links

Creating an SEO Strategy (Safari and Tours SEO Tips)

Now it’s time to learn how to construct a robust SEO strategy for your Tour and safari company. Since you know which ranking factors Google values the most, you can optimize your content in accordance with them.

Step #1: Start with an SEO audit

The beginning point for any SEO strategy is a thorough audit of your existing website. Your content will likely require a lot of optimization, such as making technical tweaks and adding keywords to your blog articles.

Look out for duplicate content, broken links, and images with missing alt text – as these are all notorious technical issues that affect search engine rankings.

Before moving on to the next step, address and fix all the issues found in your audit. Otherwise, you may end up neglecting a serious issue that will bring your other SEO efforts to a screeching halt.

Once everything is fixed, including transitioning to HTTPS, you can move on to the next steps.

Step #2: Conduct keyword research

You’ll need to find relevant keywords for Safari and tour that your target audience searches for regularly.

Your keywords are the cornerstone of your SEO strategy, as they guide the content that you’ll eventually create.

We have another tool that can help you out here, the keyword research tool. Type in some words related to safari and tour industry (i.e., Kilimanjaro trekking), and the tool will spit out some valid suggestions.

Metrics to pay attention to are search volume and keyword difficulty (KD).

A high search volume means lots of users are searching for the keyword each day, which is what you want.

Conversely, you want the keyword difficulty score to be low. The difficulty represents how much competition there is for the term. If the KD is high, that’s a sign lots of websites are competing to rank for it. That will make it a lot more difficult to rank in one of the top spots, so it’s best to avoid high KD scores.

Step #3: Create outstanding safari and tour content

Content is still king, and it’s one of the most important ranking factors. As such, you’ll need to regularly release content that adds value to your target audience.

To stay organized, create a content release calendar to keep everything on track. To see results, it’s recommended that you blog at least two to four times a week.

In addition, users love video content, especially when it comes to Safari and tour.

For instance, video and virtual tours are extremely popular for the potential customer, as it gives them a chance to preview the trip in more detail than looking at photos.

Conclusion

SEO services are essential for any tour and safari business in today’s digital era for a variety of reasons we’ve already covered.

SEO needs to become a staple of your overall marketing strategy if you want to remain competitive and scale your safari and tour business.

By following this guide, you’ll be able to construct a winning SEO strategy from scratch, so don’t hesitate to bookmark this page as a reference.

Then you need to check out our five-star managed Organic Marketing services at SMP as soon as you can. Our Organic marketing gurus will construct an in-depth strategy for you, and we’re also available for consultations – so don’t wait to book a free strategy session.

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