It is important to have a compelling website having the capacity to hold the attention of the visitor. What goes into the designing of such a website? What is the need to have a strong website? We will cover these aspects in this article.

Let us look at the second part of the question first. Statistics say that around 65 to 70% of the traveling public refers to the internet for chalking out their plans. The number is bound to increase with more and more people becoming comfortable with using the internet. Hence, it is imperative for travel agencies to rule the local SEO. Securing a high rank on the search engine pages is inevitable today. This is the principal factor behind the need to have a strong presence on the SERPs.

As far as the first part of the question is concerned, you need to have a variety of factors working for you. Let us look at them in brief.

What is the first thing your customer does when he searches for a travel agency website? He types out his search keywords in the search bar of the local SERPs such as Google, Bing, etc. Your customer is based in Chicago IL. Hence, it is natural for him to search for a travel agency website in his neighborhood. You do not expect him to base his search in New York.

This is nothing but the title and Meta description tags. It gives him an insight into what he is looking for. Therefore, there is a need for making this aspect of your activity a compelling one. This is what drives your customer into visiting your website. Intelligent use of the primary and secondary keywords is necessary. Your primary keyword should be your category whereas the secondary keywords pertain to the various services you offer.

There are not many words for you to play with here. Google has stipulated your Meta Descriptions not to exceed 160 to 200 characters in length. You should be able to entice your customers into visiting your website within this word count. The most important aspect of the title and description tags is your key phrase. That determines your ranking on the SERP. Use tools like Keyword Planner etc to arrive at the right kind of keyword phrase to use.

Your Homepage or the landing page as they call it in the SEO industry should give your customer everything he needs. This includes a brief insight into the details of the Company, your contact addresses, the various services you provide, vital information such as procuring visas, information about hotels, and sightseeing highlights.  An effective FAQ page is also important as people have doubts. You can have an assortment of the clarifications your customers seek and would like to know.

The most important aspect of you website is the design. It should be compelling enough for your customer to look at the services you offer. The speed of loading of the web pages becomes important. Naturally, a fast-loading website looks attractive. The customer gets what he wants in the shortest possible time. Your objective is to ensure that your customers get a compelling user experience. A great looking homepage goes a long way in ensuring this.

You have the customer knocking on your homepage. It is now vital to provide him with detailed information of the services you provide. The best way to do so is to have quality content on the website. You should be able to impress your customer and arouse an eager want in him to browse your website further.

This needs an excellent keyword research strategy. You have a lot of tools on the internet to help you out. Remember, your keyword should be popular as well as unique in order to succeed.

It is important for you to describe your services in the simplest manner. Effective communication is the key. Have a separate web page for each service you provide. This helps you a lot because many search engines rank your individual pages as well on the website. Hence, avoid mixing up keywords that can confuse the search engine bots as well as your customers.

It is also important to provide information about some of the services you do not provide like that of procuring visas for travel. Of course, you can facilitate the procurement, but never guarantee it. You can include vital information that is of use to the customer for procuring his travel visas.  

The next aspect of your strategy should be your linking strategy. It is a great idea to have internal as well as external links in your website content. Internal links help the customer to navigate from one page to the other easily. Customers can have various doubts when they search for information on the internet. Use your internal links judiciously in your FAQ pages to link to your various services pages. Make it an enjoyable and informative experience for your customer.

At the same time, external links matter as well. Normally, the customer would like to verify your information. You can provide him with external links to the source of your information. This helps in building up the trust factor. You can have direct external links to the official website pages of the visa issuing authorities and websites offering accommodation and travel information.

Ensure that your links open on different windows as this makes it easy for your customers to navigate back to the main page. Small things matter a lot while designing a website.

The days of going around the world on 80 days are gone. You can now have around the world trip and enjoy the beauty of every part of the world within 80 days. This entails the travel agencies to have a strong SEO campaign. This is the essence of local SEO for travel agencies.