Tour Companies SEO: The Complete Guide

10 SEO Tips For Tour Companies 

Let’s look at 10 SEO tips you can make on your tour company website. The following are tasks you can mostly do on your own without outsourcing the SEO work. 

1. Optimise Your Google My Business Profile 

First impressions are important. Potential customers will likely see your tour company Google My Business Profile before visiting the business website. 

Follow the steps below to keep your GMB maintained for the best SEO practices.

1. Add Primary Service Category – The main category is super important. Make sure to choose the correct service your company provides. Boat tour agency, tour operator, sightseeing tour, etc. 

2. Add Photos & Videos – Keeping your GMB updated with high-quality photos and videos from tours is great in the eyes of Google. Regular content will boost your GMB’s trustworthiness and relevance. Customers will be much more likely to book your services over a competitor who hasn’t posted in months. 

3. Accurate Info – Opening hours, phone number, etc. should all be kept up-to date and accurate. Customers reaching out to the wrong contact details or unable to contact you within your stated working hours will create a bad user experience. 

4. Respond to Reviews – Comment on any reviews – good or bad. Some bad reviews may seem ridiculous, but stay calm and respond in a professional and friendly manner. Remember other potential customers will be reading your reviews. Also, thank customers who have taken the time to leave a review.

5. Add Content –  Taking the time to add deals, upcoming events, new blog posts, etc. to keep your GMB fresh.

Tip: Never buy or add fake reviews to your Google My Business from SEO tour companies. You risk getting your Google My Business account removed. 

2. Create a Page For Each Tour 

A common thing our team at Top Class Digital sees when working on tour companies’ SEO is having all the services only on the homepage. Do you offer more than one type of tour? Creating a landing page for each tour allows you to rank for each service potentially. You can add more keywords, go into more detail about the tour, etc. 

If you offer tours of the West Coast of Scotland, for example. The site could have a page for an Isle of Skye tour, a Loch Ness Monster tour, a whisky tour, etc. 

Each tour page should look something like:

• Tour overview
• What’s included
• Duration
• Pricing
• Pickup locations
• FAQs
• Customer reviews
• Gallery
• Booking button

With the FAQs, you can target longtail keywords – ‘How much does an Isle of Skye tour cost?’, for example. 

Customers also want to read about the tour before booking. Only one paragraph and a photo of your homepage won’t really cut it. Creating a detailed page with transparent info will be optimal in the eyes of the customer and Google. 

3. Target Search Intent For Tour Customers

Online searches can be broken down into 3 types of search intent – informational, commercial, and transactional. Recognising and targeting the query types that drive bookings can set your business apart from competitors. 

Informational 

• Best things to do in London
• Things to do in Inverness
• How many days do I need in Cardiff

Commercial 

• Best dolphin sightseeing tours Scotland
• Top-rated tours Edinburgh
• Harry Potter Tour Scotland 

Transactional 

• Book Oban boat tour
• Book day trip Glasgow
• Whisky tour tickets Scotland

Ranking for transactional search queries is, of course, the best and the most difficult. Informational queries are generally easier to rank for, and you can broaden keywords. People looking for general information can be converted into customers. 

Informational search queries can include ‘is the Aberdeen dolphin tour worth it?’, ‘how expensive are day trips from Edinburgh’, etc.

4. Optimise For International Visitors 

Tour business websites should be optimised for different languages and English variations. If you are based in the UK, you can target American customers by using keywords that include ‘vacation’.

British people tend to use the word holiday rather than vacation, and your website may just mention ‘Scotland holiday tours,’ but competitors might be using American English keywords. 

Adding different language variations to your site is an important aspect of tour agency SEO.

Auto-translate and Google Translate can sometimes be slightly off, so it’s worth using a Plugin on your website or, if you have the budget, hiring a copywriter of the language to proofread the content.

You can find copywriters/ proofreaders on sites like Upwork. 

Important – use different pages for the translated content. German, Italian, Chinese, etc. should have a unique URL. Search engines can then serve the language to the correct geographic location. 

Creating different language pages can be a bit complicated. If you don’t know how to set these up, feel free to drop us a message.

5. Create Travel Content Guides

Creating travel guides for the area you operate is a great tool for building trust with the customer, getting backlinks to your site, and lead generation for potential bookings. Think of guides like ‘10 Best Places to Visit in Inverness’, etc. 

Write in first person and provide insight, local tips, etc. Not generic travel advice that can be found by the customer on Google or ChatGPT.

Real experiences and local knowledge are much preferred by the reader and search engines. Again, this builds trust with the reader and potentially turns them into a paying customer.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to be Mark Twain! Just write about the experience and share your knowledge.

You can also write blog posts like this as a guest post for other relevant sites and ask if you can include a backlink to your website. Great for your tour company’s SEO!

6. Ask Customers to Leave a Detailed Review

A 5-star review on Google for your travel company is great, but you want to have a detailed review with the name of the guide, location, and activity.

Reviews can act as keywords, so ‘white water rafting in Aberfeldy with Tim and the team was an unbelievable experience…’, for example.

DO NOT buy fake reviews or ask your family and friends to leave loads of fake reviews; you will risk losing your GMB account. If you have just launched your tour company, it can be tempting to get reviews this way, but it’s definitely not worth the risk.

Most of our tour clients get emails from so-called SEO agencies offering fake reviews – avoid at all costs. Directly to the spam folder; do not pass Go.

7. Add Photos and Videos 

Regular photos and videos of your tours are super important for travel SEO. Customers want to see what the tour is like rather than read paragraphs about how great it is.

Visually show the tour with others enjoying themselves, fun things that happen on the tour, beautiful scenery, animals, etc. 

Whatever aspect of your tour stands out, showcase it on your site and post it on your Google My Business account.

Do not use stock images or random images you find online. With the quality of smartphone cameras nowadays, you can easily take some great pics and videos of your tours.

Not to mention, Google will frown on using images that aren’t yours.

Extra Tip: Include descriptive file names for the activity with keywords for your videos and images.’whale_watching_aberdeen’, etc.

8. Tracking Results For Your Travel Business SEO

Keeping track of the traffic, conversion rates, keyword performance, number of bookings from organic search, etc. will let you know what is and what’s not working. 

Google Search Console, Google Analytics 4, etc. are all free tools that let you track the performance of your website. If you are unsure how it all works, YouTube is packed with tutorials. 

Are competitors ranking above you? What keywords are they ranking for? How active is their GMB profile?

Monitoring your competition will allow you to create better content and hopefully rank above them for your targeted keywords.

You can also monitor what backlinks your competitor is getting through different software. 

Each month you should do the above and then create a plan of action to see what you can do in the coming weeks to improve. Everything from writing new blog posts, improving user experience, and more to fully optimise your travel site’s SEO.

9. Optimise Tour Site for AI 

Travel companies should be optimising for AI. ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. can create detailed itineraries for holidaymakers in one sentence.

‘Give me a four-day Scottish Highlands itinerary’, ‘what’s the best way to see the Northern Lights in Scotland’, or ‘create a list of must-visit areas along the NC500’.

The best chance to get your business seen on AI tools is to provide detailed, useful content. 

Does your travel/ tour site do the following?

Answer the questions 

Going back to the point of making content for your site and targeting keywords. Creating informational content, adding FAQs, or writing a blog piece around the question can help you get referenced on AI. This goes for any businesses, including plastic surgeons, plumbers, accountants, roofing companies, etc.

The key is to build quality, insightful content that’s not just written around keywords.

Structure Content and Write Clear Headings

Structure the content on your site with headings and subheadings. Readers, Google, and AI can scan the site and determine what it’s about. Pages with proper H1, H2, H3, H4, and a separate FAQs section will have a better chance of being shown on LLMs.

Create Detailed Itineraries For Tours

Detailed itineraries are important and can provide detailed AI overviews for potential customers. For example:

9 am – Pick up from Hotel: Your guide will pick you up from your hotel, and we will do a meet and greet with the team. Remember to bring rain jackets and comfortable shoes. Water and snacks will be provided on the bus.

10:30 am – Wallace Monument: We will spend 1 hour at the Wallace Monument where you can take pictures, buy something from the gift shop, and use the toilets.

and so on.

Create Comparisons

A great way to get seen on AI tools is to write tour/ things to do comparison pages. ‘Do I need 3 or 4 days in Isle of Skye?’ – build a page around this type of content and create a detailed page on what can be done within each time frame, the highlights to see, time to spend each place, etc.

People love to use AI to break down questions like this. It’s unlikely your competitors will have many pages similar, so you will have a good chance of getting referred by AI.

Other examples include ‘public transport or renting a car for an Oban tour’, etc.

Sidenote: We are using many Scottish references because that’s where we come from, but of course you can apply the tactics we’ve outlined to any area.

Keep Tour Operator Details Accurate & Up-To Date

Opening hours, contact details, social media links, tour dates, etc. should all be kept up-to date on all platforms, your website, and the Google My Business profile for your company.

Changing tour dates or anything at all? Spend some time updating the details everywhere. AI may reference incorrect or outdated information to the reader, and this could have a negative effect on your business.

10. Build Authority With Backlinks

Backlinks from relevant and trustworthy websites can do wonders for your tour agency’s SEO. Links from sites like hotels, travel blogs, local government sites, etc. are a signal to Google that your website is legit, and you can build authority – helping you rank in the search engines.

Building relationships with other businesses in your area is a good way to receive a backlink. As we outlined above, you can create guest posts for other sites and ask them to include the content on their site with a backlink to your business.

Other common backlinks for tour operators include local event sites, restaurants, tourism organisations, etc