Using link building to generate more travel leads

In the process of finding the right marketing strategies that will really get our brand out there, we can often overlook some of the most powerful tools. Knowing how to build links can often fall victim to this due to a sense of complexity around the strategy.

However, it undoubtedly is one of the best ways to get organic traffic moving onto your site, especially for a business like a travel agency! So, we figured we’d reach out and help you get your head around this awesome strategy (within the context of a travel agency) so it can play a key part in your next campaign.

What is link building?

The concept of link building is used in search engine optimization (SEO) to refer to actions designed to increase the quantity and quality of inbound links to a webpage or website with the objective of improving its search engine ranking.

Building links to your website is the process of getting relevant links from other sites to yours. In addition to getting more high-quality links pointing to a website, link building can also increase the chance that the website ranks highly in search engines. Increasing your brand awareness with link building is a no brainer!

How does link building work?

The goal of link building is to get external links back to your site.

There are two parts to the process. Your first step is to make awesome quality content for your website that people want to share and link back to.

Part two involves asking third party sites to share your content via hyperlink on their websites. Basically, part two is asking strangers for a favor. In order to get results, you’ve got to set up your campaigns in such a way that you leverage the reasons people should link back to your website.

Why are link building strategies so important?

A link building strategy is essential to SEO strategies. It’s an important factor in determining your web pages search ranking, meaning which site has top-ranked results. The higher the quality of the links linking back to your site (your link building), the higher you appear in search engine results pages.

Aside from search engines, a quality link building strategies increase referral traffic, which is essentially free. The more enticing and easier you make your web links to share and refer, the more backlinks you’re going to find appearing from other websites and social media.

Link building strategies for your travel agency

Here is a list of key link building strategies to help your travel agency lead generation take off!

1. Get active on social media, not just search engines

There’s a huge host of link building benefits on social media. It’s the perfect place to take advantage of new link building opportunities like building backlinks.

How many links have you shared via social media in your life? You’d probably be surprised if you really think about it. Most of us share multiple links every day.

If you share others’ content, they might share your relevant content on their accounts too. This is one of the most common link building strategies to increase the number of backlinks directing potential customers to your content.

Google alerts are a great way to see where you’re being mentioned and take advantage of each and every opportunity!

2. Earn editorial blog post links

A great way to have more links point your target audience in the direction of your business products and services is to have external sites linking you in their content as hyperlinks. You can achieve this by asking other site owners to link you in their blog posts via anchor text.

Now, it’s important that you choose which blogs you associate with carefully, as you don’t want your brand giving off ‘spam links’ vibes. So, reach out beyond your own site and get in touch with the site owner of relevant and contemporary blogs. No harm in asking (or paying)!

3. Keep track of your web page and blog post backlinks

You can spend a lot of time getting your link building tools all in a line and setting up your link building campaign. Don’t let it all go to waste. You don’t want to put in all that hard work only to find that a month later you’ve got a tonne of broken links out there that mean nothing.

Getting on top of broken link building can be frustrating and so it’s best to nip it in the bud as soon as you can. This requires being able to track each valuable link and their performance.

You can do this using the Check My Links chrome extension. You might find you’re then spending a bit of time on link reclamation, but your search rankings and direct traffic aren’t going to budge if your links are all broken.

It’s also important to track the success of your link building techniques and ensuring that the resource pages your links are being placed on are the most effective. Track all your links (aside from nofollow links)!

4. Replicate your competitor’s best links on search engines

Sometimes your competitors are simply nailing it. It really pays to pay attention to what they’re doing right (and doing wrong). If they’re earning bulk domain authority from high-authority sites, they’re likely on the money.

Try to track down where most of their link placement is occurring and how they attract links with a quality SEO strategy. Also pay attention to any guest blogging they’re engaging in by seeking out any guest post they’ve utilised.

5. Publish link worthy content

Finally, and most importantly, publish link worthy content! Whether it’s on your site or when you’re guest blogging, make sure that if someone comes across your content, they’re going to want to do two things… engage with it, and share it!

That means it needs to include images, engaging text and shareable content like advice or tips. That’s why infographics are one of the best types of link worthy content. They’re short, sweet, engaging and useful. Get creating!

Get in touch today!

When it comes to backlinking, FirstPage has your back. Our experts are the missing link in your successful link building strategy. We’ll show you how to get your brand the best search engine results, find the best sites to link on, and avoid accidentally creating a link scheme. Let us empower you to utilise the world of linking to build you up, not tear you down.