Travel SEO Strategist Job/Role Description - Housing Forecasts & Stock Market Forecast

Travel SEO/Content Strategist Role

Role: Responsible for developing and executing effective SEO strategies and content plans to increase traffic, brand awareness, lead quality, engagement, and revenue.

Travel company managers know SEO strategy and content development are critically important to marketing performance. Basic SEO isn’t competitive. Reaching consumers online is the best, cost-effective driver of leads and repeat business.

Leisure and business travelers spend a great deal of time online and rely on online tools, tips, software, services, consulting and booking management to prepare for and manage their travel experiences. Being visible, helpful and trusted on Google search captures visibility and presents the content pieces and value propositions travelers want.

Creating Visibility at the Right Time

In today’s SaaS-powered travel market, the reach and persistent exposure that professional-level search engine optimization delivers allows companies to be continuously available and significant to customers. No matter what the customer’s buying stage or touchpoints in their journey, SEO enables fast connectivity to keep consumers away from competitors.

Strong search engine visibility also helps to support paid media exposure and continuously build the brand.

And a talented versatile SEO/Content Strategist can add value in many ways beyond raw inbound traffic, lead generation, engagement and sales support. Providing attention-grabbing, impactful, and immersive content to travelers or B2B travel company clients where they’re searching from, at key touchpoints, gives sales teams closer access to B2B and B2C travel consumers. Then they can offer precision incentives to power up the final selling proposition — to close a sale.

SEO is a skill of presentation that can power up all other marketing and lead channels.

The SEO professional/consultant liaises with content creators, and sales and support teams to gather intelligence and produce content that hits customer pain points and helps build ongoing personal relationships with prospects. The SEO pro helps to find new industry partners for additional business benefits.

Growing Credible, Authoritative Authors

Content Authors are important to both Google Search and to audiences who look for authenticity, experience, expertise, spirit and trustworthiness. Building these attributes via SEO and being engaging via comment sections and social media adds immensely to customer’s experience, intent and joy in using the company’s software or services.

Regardless of who authors the content, SEO must support the E.E.A.T. of those authors to ensure Google’s quality guidelines are met.

Importance of Google EEAT Ratings of Authors. Image: Search Engine Journal

Besides sophisticated content for demanding travel consumers, the strategist designs a content scheme that is evergreen and supports a lasting foundation of strength, significance, and author reputation, while helping to support travel management software companies and tour management companies.

Strategy, Techniques and Tactics

Overall, some macro SEO priorities far outweigh micro SEO tasks and they’re often understated in SEO job descriptions. Professional, advanced SEO isn’t a commodity or list of tasks, but rather a result of a sophisticated strategy.

Before you even consider a list of SEO tasks, it’s important to understand the priorities and objectives. SEOs selling their best skills vs a filling-a-task are positioning themselves as mediocre and unremarkable, which is hardly the ideal positioning to command a top salary/fee.

SEO Strategy is essential to capture search marketshare from eager competitors. Being competitive and geared to win is important, as returns diminish quickly away from the number one ranking spots. With strategy, all assets and skills are focused on gaining rankings as well as creating value for travelers at the right time and place.

SEO and Content strategy not only fill the top of your lead funnel, they also build and maintain brand visibility and customer loyalty. Competitors are only a click away from contaminating or obscuring your brand message and taking your customers.

Omnipresence on tens of thousands of relevant travel keyword phrases creates massive traffic, and rankings on key competitive phrases bring highly relevant customers. Having both is important to success.

Strategy is What Defines Success (plus a budget)

Professional-level SEO requires sophisticated strategy, strong promotional skills and budget management skills.

The SEO/Content strategist needs to position text and visual content to capture the audience’s travel intent and persist with them through personalized ongoing promotion in ads, email or newsletters. SEO creates an initial visit, but also brings that visitor back again.

The role of great travel marketing content is to create a customer, and travelers are always searching in their quest for the best travel experience. Many young consumers in particular are brand agnostic, which simply means brands must win them back every day.

The SEO strategist researches and designs content that resonates with broad or specific keyword phrases, topics and themes to generate clickthroughs and maintain significance to Google’s ranking algorithm. The content is designed to be approachable, easy to consume, informative and helpful, as well as trustworthy and authoritative to Google.

This professional is not only aware of powerful ranking algorithm components, but also aware of how to build content that is sharable and quotable for bloggers, influencers, and travel industry people. The key to success is techniques to encourage others to link to the content, since backlinks remain the number one part of the ranking algorithm.

The SEO/Content Strategist may work with the paid media specialist or marketing manager, or they may be expected to manage most of the marketing work by themselves. The work and expectations depends on staffing and budget.

Responsibilities of the SEO Manager Role

This description focuses on key deliverables that will bring the best marketing results in reach, impact, engagement and lead generation.

SEO Strategy Development

learn the market demand, customer profile and the client’s brand positioning from the marketing manager and take their guidance on targeting the right audience
understand the company’s value proposition and build an organic lead funnel with the marketing manager
conduct thorough SEO audits and competitor analysis using Moz, ahrefs, Majestic or other tools
establish KPIs, best lead generating keyword phrases and content pieces via analytics
create lead magnets, customer incentives and other promotions that overcome prospect inertia
analyze web traffic, industry travel reports, and digital sales funnel and customer touchpoints to ensure appropriate content is created to engage and convert
develop and implement SEO strategies/techniques to improve organic search rankings, website traffic, and user engagement and backlinks.
optimize website content, landing pages, and user experience for search engines and for users.

On-Page Optimization

using topics, themes and keywords in content and links to inform Googlebot on what the site is about
distribute ranking power within the site to maximize rankings on important keyword phrases
positioning keywords expertly within text content to enhance context for Googlebot

Campaign Management

using various marketing tools to publish content, run promotions, newsletters, and other messaging

Content Development:

develop creative, customized high-quality, SEO-friendly content for blogs, articles, white papers, case studies, and social media that resonates with target audiences in the travel market and presents the company’s brand accurately.
provide content topics and focus for writers and collaborate on topics, writing style, impact and engagement
work with videographer on short-form video content
liaise with sales and marketing personnel to learn sales priorities and goals, challenges, and opportunities, and discuss key benefits to promote
collaborate with design and development teams to create multimedia content.

Promotion:

research industry portals for off-site publications and sponsorships for content placement and ads
contact industry influencers and connect with relevant people and companies on social media and engage with them
publish content on social media and boost the best posts to increase leads
work with PPC advertising person to create relevant target content and target the best lead-generating keyword phrases

Analytics and Reporting:

use sophisticated sales analytics tools, determine what is working and what is not
monitor and analyze SEO and content performance using tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, or Ahrefs
find and solve technical issues using Search Console, Pagespeed insights, GTmetrix, Screaming Frog or other spidering tools
provide regular reports on SEO metrics, content engagement, and ROI.
provide management with guidance and how to improve content performance and Google rankings

Market Research:

stay updated with industry trends, customer needs, and new SEO/content marketing practices.
engage with industry people and travelers via various social media accounts
spend time reading and engaging with people in the travel industry to learn from them
actively travel to stay upbeat, vibrant and involved in the travel industry

Collaboration and Leadership:

work closely with marketing, sales, and product teams to help inform them, be informed by them, and collaborate on content generation to ensure a powerful and cohesive brand message.
support content creators, product developers, sales and customer service staff to promote their visibility, feelings of relevance and worth, contribution value, and customer experiences to build greater engagement in their work.

Resilience, Confidence and Optimism

SEO is intensely competitive today and the SEO pro will be challenged to continuously find ways to innovate, promote, engage, and generate leads and revenue.

If you’ve been puttering with Generative AI, consider that Google/Bing/Facebook/Linkedin/Amazon are all eager to eliminate. They’re overrun with Generative AI spam, and seeking original, authentic, helpful and trustworthy content creators. Generative AI isn’t really trustworthy since humans rarely vett its truthfulness and accuracy.

Investigate travel marketing further with a focus on travel management software and travel tour operator businesses.

Need a seasoned, innovative and energetic SEO Pro to augment your marketing team? Call Gord at 416 998 2646.