Keyword research in the travel niche

Market research — choosing your travel niche

Besides getting the right keywords, it is very important to choose a profitable niche which is a popular and profitable thing to earn through travel affiliate programs. It is better to choose a niche that is popular with independent travelers, as more hotels, tickets and other services are booked online.

Travel niches are fickle and choosing the right one for the destination can be crucial. With the current world situation, the travel market is facing many changes; While some destinations are becoming more popular than ever, the most popular destinations are having a hard time. Think about where you want to travel; Read major travel sites to get a general idea.

Let’s look at an example

Let’s say I’m looking for a summer destination to target. Using common sense, we know that places like Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey, as well as other Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries received far fewer tourists in 2016, so let’s consider the alternatives. There are plenty of destinations to target in the summer. For this year, I would prefer European countries where you can travel with less expense: Spain, Greece, Croatia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Italy.

I’ll take Greece as an example. It must be a very good place to target: beautiful beaches, all-inclusive resorts, suites for family vacations, islands and a long history. Greece has always been a popular travel destination but I’m sure it will rock this year.

Important

Before you get excited about finding a goldmine, always double check as you could be wrong. Today, all tools to do this are provided free of charge.

Check key terms with Google trends

First we can try Greece Holidays, Greece Holiday.

Let’s take a look at some popular travel destinations in Greece

Check the number of flights and hotels booked

You can visit google flights to choose the departure city. It depends on which audience you are targeting (language, countries). If your blog is in English, you’ll want to check out the biggest cities in the UK and US. We’re targeting Greece, so let’s pick a random date in May, June and July with departure city London, UK and arrival city Rhodes, Greece. I can see that during the summer (season) there are many more flights than, for example, in April or at the end of October.

Hotel Reservation sites

Visit popular hotel booking sites and check recently booked hotels in selected destinations. Check if there are many hotels booked in the last 24 hours. If you’re seeing a lot of bookings, you’re probably on the right track.

Common sense keywords — brainstorming keywords

Let’s say you find a niche you want to target. For the first part of keyword research, you need three very simple tools: a pen, your brain, and a whitelist. Step away from your computer, grab some coffee, and list all the terms you think people might search for to find your targeted niche.

Let’s take Greece as our target. Meanwhile, a travel blog doesn’t necessarily have to be about a particular destination; It could be about a travel route, extreme sports, travel advice, traveling on a budget or planning a trip.

As I mentioned above, I took Greece as an example. I want to target only people who are planning their vacations to get better conversions from travel affiliate programs. When you choose a niche, remember that you need to know a little about it, have plenty of time to do in-depth research, or have a large amount of money to hire professionals. I mean you shouldn’t focus on very specific sites unless that’s your area of ​​knowledge. Otherwise, you may find it difficult to write an article.

Travel niche competition research — keyword research in the travel niche

Once you have a list of common sense terms, you can enter them into Google Keyword Planner and get search volume and new keyword ideas. Google will tell you “Avg. “Monthly searches” refers to the number of searches a particular keyword receives per month. Next up in terms of metrics is “competition”. This is the number of advertisers shown on each keyword. Typically, difficulty is graded on a low, medium, and high scale. Note that this isn’t search engine competition, it’s Google Ads metrics. You have to follow the steps below to get search competition, but if many advertisers are targeting keywords, it normally means that it converts pretty well.

First of all, I would say that you will need a lot of time to do competitive research manually for a large keyword list. Once you understand metrics and how SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) work, you’re better off using some software. I use SEMRush and Keysearch for keyword research.

Here are the key criteria to consider when conducting keyword research manually or using automated software.

Title, URL, meta description (meta isn’t that important nowadays)

If the query is present in all three search engine result items, my early conclusion is that this website will be harder to rank. However, if the query does not exist in one of these items (especially in the title), I encourage myself and will try.

In the travel niche, it is normal to see authority sites in the top 10; It’s hard to compete against them, but you can target long-tail keywords. Also, keep in mind that when someone searches for information, they will most likely skip these sites.

Check backlink profile, domain authority, page authority, trust flow, MOZrank, top 5 links and number of links

Check the top competitors for backlink profiles, especially the top five to 10 links. You can check Domain Authority (DA) metrics using AHREFS and MOZ.

If the first five backlinks are of low quality and the DA is below 25, I know I can skip this website before showing everything I have. But there is one exception to this – when hidden PBN links point to a site.

Check Competitor Keywords

This means you can quickly discover who all your competitors are and what keywords they are using to advertise. This will quickly provide you with a list of highly profitable keywords that have proven to result in sales and the full ad copy that customers respond to!

There are other useful online tools that I use like this one. keyword density tool checker. I often check the keyword density of the top 10 sites on Google to find the perfect one for my article.

Get more keywords

Normally I use Google terms that I wrote down on a piece of paper in the first step to find more keywords. I read articles and take notes. If we talk about Greece, there are a few travel destinations worth targeting. Use the previous steps to do keyword research for each Greek travel destination individually and you will end up with a large number of keywords; The same thing happens if you make favorite places to visit. If we were talking about Greece, I would do keyword research for Rhodes, Crete, Corfu, Thessaloniki, Halkidiki, Peloponnese, Delphi, Meteora, Crete and Athens.

For example, I did keyword research for mainland and found some good keywords to target.

TOP 10 Competitions for Keyword: Holidays to Greece

Apply Keywords

Finding good keywords is a crucial skill, but you want visitors not only to find you, but also to click on your links and stay on your site longer.

• Always get top-quality and interesting-to-read articles, as they keep a visitor on your site longer, build trust, and increase conversion rates.
• Use catchy titles and meta descriptions; both tags can be seen when a user finds your site via Google search. Currently, meta doesn’t play a big role in ranking, but it should encourage visitors to click on your links.
• Use long-tail keywords; They are easier to rank and provide you with additional traffic.
• Always study your main competitors; Search for the keywords they use and find the missing information to add to your site.
• Always optimize in situ. Internal and external linking will increase the time visitors spend on your site and help search engines read your blog.