In the mad rush to get to page one in Google, many travel companies have lost focus on what really matters - engaging with your target market, whether online or offline, and in whatever form possible, should be the main focus.
Following the reported penalisation by Google for being involved in unnatural link building practices, MyBlogGuest, a well-known guest blogging network site used by a number of individuals within the search engine optimisation community as a way of building links, has been ticked off by the search giant.
SEO adoption
Guest blogging on other websites, or having bloggers writing about your brand, used to involve the contribution of a well-researched and respected piece of content, usually written by a thought leader offering valuable insight into their area of expertise.
Unfortunately, this definition diminished as soon as the practice was adopted by the SEO community as an easy way to gain links.
Travel firms seeking out exposure on other blogs should attempt to earn links rather than building them; gaining a link should be a bonus of creating an excellent piece of content and not the sole aim. Of course, this means that any content you’d like to place on someone else’s site should be focused on their audience, rather than simply creating satisfactory content built around links to your own business.
"Google is trying to eliminate quick-win tactics to encourage sites to become more engaging"
Focus on building your brand. Making a guest appearance on other blogs is still a viable tactic as part of an overarching and diversified marketing strategy. Remember, Google isn’t gradually implementing ways to try to stop people from marketing a business or themselves, it just doesn’t want people to promote their site with SEO being the underlying factor.
Overall, it is trying to eliminate quick-win tactics to encourage sites to become more engaging and create content that focuses on informing, educating and entertaining the reader.
Fine tuning
Some pundits are now lamenting the death of the keyword. It is true some visibility has become more blurred - Google recently decided to provide less accurate data to webmasters about which keywords were driving traffic to their websites.
User intent is now the fundamental driver of search, with Google making more changes to how it understands queries with the Hummingbird update.
Therefore it is important to concentrate on gaining insight and focusing on what users want, rather than how to artificially rank for a keyword. This will bring better long-term results and help you connect with the right people.
Overall, Google’s perspective is less about penalising firms and more about fine-tuning its search results, ensuring the best and most natural listings are shown for a user’s query by factoring in a variety of elements, including localisation, personalisation and social metrics.
If you immerse yourself in your industry, you’ll get a feel for who your ideal partners would be. There is a fine line between being a “spammer” and marketers looking at the promotion of products and services. Google allows businesses and individuals to market themselves in a customer-friendly and engaging manner.
Guest blogging should be a practice that helps you be seen as a thought leader in your industry, and potentially reach wider audiences. If you’re doing it solely to boost your SEO or drive traffic, rather than as part of a multi-stranded marketing strategy, you’re doing it wrong.
Five tips to ensure you stay within Google’s guidelines
- Don’t coerce bloggers into saying good things about your company - ask them to share their experience with authenticity and impartiality.
- Don’t engage with bloggers just to gain links. There is no quick win. Shift your focus from links to engaging with their audience and your target market.
- Do take the time to think of a good topic, news hook or angle to engage with sites.
- Do be personable: read the blogs, understand them and their audience, be specific, and customise your approach to show value for both parties.
- Don’t focus on exact anchor text links within content - this is now deemed an “unnatural practice”. Placing keywords into anchor texts is fine where it’s natural and not forced - for example, a product or service round-up where it is referenced.
Jonathan Birch is a senior digital marketing consultant at mediaworks, a creative search agency in Newcastle upon Tyne.
