Web Content Strategies Gone Wild
Price and SEO distract from marketing travel brand
Web content is a hot topic for the online travel marketing category. Why? Because so few web marketers are actually leveraging its capabilities to strengthen their brands. In the quest for top rankings in search engine results and travel broker sites, many destinations, resorts and attractions have forgotten the basics of branding and fallen prey to two distracting and potentially destructive patterns in web messaging: ‘the deal’ and ‘the lowest common denominator.’
Don’t sell your brand short with excessive discounting
Today, broker sites are dominating travel search. Aggregators such as Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Kayak are among the most visited sites for travel planning. While these sites are very effective at compiling information from wide ranging sources, they tend to focus on price as the distinction between travel options.
Price is a compelling decision factor, but remember that dollar signs are never sexy. Travel broker sites have no capacity to tell brand stories and can never compete with your own site for creating brand allure, drama and romance. Let the travel aggregators fill your vacancies, but make YOUR web site the place that tells your story. After all, a solid brand position can make your destination seem like a value at twice the price.
Don’t try to be everything to everybody
Another content trap that destination marketers fall into is the abuse of search engine optimization practices. Developing content that can fool search engines into high rankings for almost any travel-related search phrase can take your brand to a lowest-common-denominator status. It’s true that a laundry list of phrases on the home page can help your site rank for search phrases such as bed & breakfast, shuffleboard and monster trucks, but what portion of your site visitors would be attracted to such a combination?
Better to use your content to describe what you do best. Emphasize the aspects of your destination that differentiate it from the rest of your category. If you’re going to provide content on diverse offerings, organize it clearly and give it room. Don’t leave out the monster trucks; just keep them in their place (and probably not on the home page).
Use web content wisely and reap the rewards
Don’t let price and search engine tricks distract you from a sound, consistent web content strategy. A reliance on discounts can diminish the perceived value and equity of your brand, so use your markdown pen sparingly. And remember that each page of your site can be a search-term landing page; you’ll actually rank higher for providing deeper content on fewer topics than by name dropping hundreds of search terms with no support.
Maintaining a disciplined approach to your web content will pay off in the long run – creating a valuable site for visitors and a strong travel brand for you.
Related Content: More resources for marketers and web content planners – Wanderlust Report: Developing Effective, Search-Friendly Web Content Wanderlust Report: Building a Destination Website – Part 1 Points of Interest Blog: Your Brand is Not a Google Result
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