Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness
Have you wondered how a small travel company could ever compete with the big travel portals and brand names online?
It is a challenge for sure, but still doable. I’ve been competing against Goliath companies for 26 years now and even today, there’s a chance to win. Google’s ranking algorithm provides opportunities to rank well and build a great deal of traffic if your content exhibits the right quality signals.
Millions of travel bloggers, influencers and travel agencies publish content that might have the style, tone, wording and narrative that makes fun reading. Yet, that content doesn’t project the quality signals and relevance to search users actual search intent. In a sense, it’s speaking directly to Google’s algorithm and search bot.
Are You Providing All of the Quality Signals?
4 of those quality signals Google wants to see in your content are Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
EEAT in SEO stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is a set of criteria used by Google to assess the quality of web content and influence search rankings. The extra ‘E’ was added in 2022 to emphasize the importance of user experience and to combat the rising issue of fraud, exaggeration, hype, misrepresentation, and Generative AI content.
By boosting your Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, Google can show your page to more searchers on more keyword searches. So volume increases dramatically. It’s like a rising tide lifting all ships, but also it relates to specific topics (e.g., best tours of Italy, or best family adventures in Colorado).
EEAT then has to be shown for each topic too. You might be starting to see how complicated this can get. Fortunately, you can hire a travel SEO strategist who understands advanced travel SEO strategy and what EEAT requires. And I really believe in SEO.
Is Your Travel Content Not Working?
This is the usual situation for most travel websites so you shouldn’t feel awkward. It takes a commitment to create content that actually works.
More of the traffic has moved to the big travel sites who have more time, money and skilled content creators. And they have more money for promotion and to establish E.E.A.T. Active promotion is very important to help your content reach audiences and get attention.
Aside from that, your content may not be cleverly constructed within a high level ranking strategy, thus none of your content will be supported well enough to rank on Google, which you might now is competitive. A page by itself will not do well today. Your content is a team.
There might be a lot of reasons why your content isn’t producing including:
- off topic and not hitting searcher’s real interests and needs
- not showing caring and empathy for your audience
- not informative or helpful
- too nichy and not relevant to the entire search audience
- too dull, unengaging, fun and non-impactful
- not showing real life experience, credibility, knowledge, insight
Of course, it requires strong comprehension and copywriting skills to weave all of this into your copy while still making it read like a true, fun, engaging description of travel.
A clever search engine optimizer can weave this together to emit Google’s ranking signals. And we can do it in a way that makes them feel and appreciate the author’s expertise and trusted opinion. If you have a read of my advanced SEO tactics, you’ll recognize the complexity of optimizing content, but also that complexity creates opportunities for you.
Maximizing Via Many Techniques and Tactics
In the end, the more opportunities to establish your author’s Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, the much better your content will perform. And I’m referring to both rankings and your ability to persuade readers and viewers.
If you’re serious about accessing the biggest sources of travel consumers online, then we should talk about your new content strategy.
A Great New Content Strategy Will:
- grow your authority and trusted voice to your traveler audiences
- engage visitors more deeply and increase the relevance of your content to them
- increase exposure to more keyword searches
- develop content that will perform better on social media
- increase exposure to your loyal customers to keep them away from competitors
- increase your lead conversion rate
- create backlinks from established authoritative websites in the travel niche
So there’s immense value in optimizing your content. You’re giving travelers more of what they actually want. That can’t be a bad thing! See more on the travel management software options, along with travel marketing software you might be using in 2025.
Contact Gord at 416 998 6246 when you’re ready to grow your leads and business.