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Natural search – a massive opportunity for the industry
Natural search engine optimisation is a ‘massive’ opportunity for the travel industry according to a search engine marketing specialist
Blogs, videos, metasearch sites and social networking sites should form part of every companies online marketing strategy so that they can be more easily picked up by Google and other search engines.
Speaking at the Travolution Conference at WTM Neutralize business development manager Martin Dinham said search marketing was becoming a saturated market and that most users prefer to turn to organic search listings.
Dinham said: “If you’re not on the left hand side of Google you are going to be missing out on an awful lot of traffic it can bring you. The majority of traffic on your website should be coming from natural search.”
He revealed figures showing that paid for search accounts for 90% of the market spend, some £1.26 billion, compared with natural search at only £147 million.
Dinham also advised Travolution delegates to measure how traffic was coming to their websites.
“A third of US travellers go online to research but don’t actually book online. If your phone rings you need to know the call came from your pay-per-click campaign?” he said.
Hitwise figures show 40% of all visitors to travel and tourism websites come from search engines and that figure is increasing. In addition, tour operators and travel agencies are seeing a 14% increase in traffic to their sites that have originated from search engines.
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