Ski Retailers: 10 Tips to Start Your Winter SEO Campaign

The launch of ski season at the end of summer, hitting its height in November to January, takes extensive planning and work to ensure you reach the top of the rankings. Whether you’re using an SEO service or working in house, effective results will be seen by kick starting a 2016 campaign at the beginning of July.

Here’s our top ten tips to get your ski holiday SEO campaign going:

Seasonal Trendsetting

Travel moves in cycles and each year a fashionable destination or destinations will become apparent. Exhibitions and product launches will give an insight to this, as will your general industry knowledge. Use this to your advantage and ensure key destinations are at the core of your travel SEO considerations.

Review the website and key destination pages to ensure all information is up to date and is ready to be the foundation of the new SEO campaign for the 2016 ski season.

Analyse last year's sales

Next up, analyse key destinations in terms of sales to discover ‘underrated’ destinations which could drive traffic and conversions.

Different types of internet sales should also be considered – how many add-ons are being sold and is there a particular trend in different destinations driving different types of add-ons, or a shift in sales trends at key points within the year. All of this will allow to forward plan landing pages and site structure with all types of buyers in mind.

Consider behaviour flow

How users move around your website is as important as how they reach your website.

Take historic data from the last 12 months to discover trends of where and why drop offs are happening, which pages users visit for research and what the average journey is for a sale. Optimise for both types of users to capture researchers and buyers.

Use a review system

Review systems such as Feefo and TrustPilot searchers and users to get an instant positive impression of your business. If you do not currently have a review system it is recommended you get one.

Migrate key pages

Websites will change over a 12 month period as trends progress and brands adapt product offering. As websites become more dynamic and users consume as much information as they can quickly, the importance of migrating pages where they remain visible is essential.

For example, a key 2015 page can be updated and migrated to a 2016 section, allowing for the website to keep its equity within search engines whilst keeping data for users up to date.

Get your database ready

Whether the website users and outside database or a purpose built one, auditing and amending any bugs is important and ensures the right information is sent to search engines for ranking.

Understand bulk SEO at a Resort and Chalet Level

Having a strong database leads to a need to efficient management. Using tags to manage pages at a country, resort and chalet level allows for unification across the website.

It also makes bulk changes much easier and less time consuming – resulting in being able to focus time elsewhere. Our blog on managing mass products in the travel industry has further information on this.

Diversify product offering to stand out in the crowd

Selling identical products to competitors creates a market where diversifying the way products are structured can make a huge difference on the end result.

Original content and unique add-ons can help a website stand out. Part of this work comes from mixing business development with SEO in mind – essentially, the more unique products on offer the better the website.

Beyond this, user generated content based on the resort or country in question also allows for a more diverse page, as does unique content created by a skiing travel provider – such as maps, reviews or videos of the resorts.

Start a blog

Blogs are ten a penny – particularly in the travel industry – but there’s a need to keep users engaged on site and a blog is a great way to do this. Blogging allows you to offer unique insights, company updates and useful travel information all in one place.

The real difference can be made by using guest bloggers within resorts or within the skiing industry.

Don’t neglect offsite

Put together a structured content campaign and think about the messages you want to portray, be ‘disruptive’ within the industry and publish material which may not be published by norm.

Offsite work should be used to capture the imagination of mass target audiences.

Polaris provide travel SEO services around the world and have a proven track record in getting results for independent and large scale travel clients.