Footprint Travel Guides SEO

Footprint Travel Guides

Summary

We were approached by Footprint Travel Guides to take on their search marketing, raising their online profile and establishing them as a primary online information resource for travellers.

Background

Footprint Travel Guides published the first edition of their South American Handbook in 1924 and are well respected for their excellent, well researched content. Their website is well populated with extensive travel information and advice but was in need of optimisation to ensure that search engines were able to find and index all this content.

We started the project with an in-depth search engine optimisation audit to allow us to draw up a detailed list of recommended action points to address while also looking at linking strategies for the brand.

Results

Performing an audit provided us with the best way to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of the site. Our audit offers an analysis over 30 different aspects that influence search engine ranking and user behaviour. The audit ranks and scores how the site is performing on each element, and we were able to identify several points that needed attention.

For example, the site used to use the domain footprintbooks.com where the majority of incoming links were still being directed. However, the type of redirection being used was not passing on any domain authority or link juice from the old site, and some links on referring sites were not being redirected so an immediate task was to change the redirects negating the diluting effect of having authority spread over multiple domains.

Another area we worked closely with the team on was the on-page optimisation. While the site offered excellent content it lacked formatting and keyword usage in important elements such as the page titles. We developed a strategy template for pages, working within the existing design, to address these missing on-page elements ready for the Footprint team to implement.

Moving forward we have been developing a linking strategy which includes offering companies listed in the travel guides a “Featured in Footprint Travel Guides” badge to display on their site and free guidebooks to review and give away for travel bloggers. Content is key to a successful campaign and we are now working with Footprint Travel Guides on creating some free travel guide PDFs to act as a link bait tool for the SEO campaign while offering visitors a high quality and informative download.

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