seo for air travel providers who is taking off and who is...

SEO for air travel providers - Who is taking off and who is stuck on the ground 1

Whitepaper

SEO for air travel providersWho is taking off and who is stuckon the ground


About the studyDo you know what your competitors are doing on Google? We do!

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The studyWho is taking off and who is stuck on the ground

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Customer commentsDiscover how our customers take off with Searchmetrics

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Our customers in the travel brancheThese companies trust Searchmetrics

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Our productsYour engines to succeed

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Table of contents


Do you know what your competitors are doing on Google? We do!

We all know that marketing has changed. Online marketing has changed. Those who still conside-red the term ‘SEO’ to be a car license plate a few years ago now know the keywords with which they would like to rank on Google and with which they wouldn’t.

And yet: Search engine optimization is a highly complex topic where numerous variables need to be taken into account and where small adjustments often times make crucial differences. No one knows this better than those involved in the air travel sector, in which millions of users are directly turned into passengers. The approach adopted by potential passengers is simple and understanda-ble: Search for a flight, click on one of the first three results, and soon the flight for their next busi-ness trip or vacation has been booked. Those who rank poorly in the search results will be bitterly disappointed, because they are not important in the eyes of their target group.

To which group do you belong? Are you in a good position in comparison to your competitors? Or do you have some catching up to do when it comes to Google and others? This white paper on the air travel industry gives you the answer. We tell you which providers have the highest visibility on Google and how many keywords they use for optimization. But that’s by no means the whole story: You will find out from us which providers use which link strategy and how they are accepted on social networks. Still not enough? No pro-blem! We will also offer you this for four markets: Germany, the USA, the United Kingdom and France.

Here’s the approach behind our investigation: We initially created a broad keyword set with the 1,439 most popular search terms relating to flights (this included keywords such as flying, book flight, airport, flight from A, flight to B, flight from A to B, etc.). Our second step was to analyze which providers in the industry rank in the top 15 on Google (SEO and SEA) and how they are positioned in terms of social media. We have used these results to draw conclusions for you that should help you optimize your own presence on Google and on the most important social media platforms.

If you just spend fifteen minutes of your time reading this paper, you will also gain a valuable insight into the SEO and social activities of your competitors ‒ knowledge that can be worth its weight in gold if you incorporate the knowledge correctly. Searchmetrics is happy to help you do this!

About the study


SEO visibility ‒ who is taking off and who is stuck on the ground

Which providers on the market have high visibility when it comes to organic search results in Goog-le, i.e. those not funded by advertising. How do travel comparison services compare with traditional airlines and their booking sites? Do portals that are solely online based really have an advantage over airlines that are committed to their brand and their functional website? We will answer these questions for you in this chapter as well as provide you with insight we found after conducting an analysis in four different national markets.

To provide an informative picture of the situation here, we determine what is known as Project SEO Visibility. This shows how visible a website is in the organic Google search results based on a certain number of keywords. To determine this visibility, Searchmetrics searches for millions of keywords in the Google index. The number of these search terms is then correlated with the number of searches for the defined keywords and the positioning for each search term.

American airlines significantly more visible than European ones

When looking at the American market, it is noticeable that traditional airlines are represented re-latively strongly there. Delta.com, Southwest.com, American Airlines, United.com, Usairways.com and Alaskaair.com occupy virtually the whole of the middle section in our ranking analysis on Goog-le.com. Therefore, there seems to be a completely different strategy here than amongst the Euro-pean airlines, which are increasingly handing over the market to travel comparison sites.

Incidentally, this is also evident when looking at France, where Airfrance.com takes fourth place and is ahead of many major travel portals.

The study


The German market: Travel portals are significantly ahead of airlines

The absolute top dog in Germany on Google is Swoodoo.com. The portal is far ahead of all of the others and thus offers a good guideline value to estimate Project SEO Visibility. After all, with a value of 40,694, the flight portal has reached a level that puts it well ahead of all others. Second place is held by Flug.idealo.de with a Project SEO Visibility of 20,892. This is closely followed by Fluege.de (20,712) and Opodo.de (18,345) in the next two positions.

Compared with the online travel portals, certain airlines, which are ranked in the middle of the pack, have some work to do. Somewhat poor visibility values on Google.de lead to one conclusion: Search engine optimization is not considered as high of a priority as a strategic marketing objecti-ve among airlines as it is among travel portals, whose business concept is based purely on online business. Tuifly.com achieves a comparatively high visibility value of 8,552, while Airberlin.com and Lufthansa.com, for instance, rank further behind. The possible cause of this: The airlines outsource their online business to travel portals specializing in online business.

In fairness, it should also be said that online travel agencies such as Opodo.de and price comparison sites like Swoodoo.de offer a broader range of flights than an individual airline does. As a result, these rank with more keywords, which have a positive effect on Project SEO Visibility.


The United Kingdom: Travel portals used as a distribution arm for airlines

Like Germany, the online travel portals in the United Kingdom also do their SEO homework better than the others. With a Project SEO Visibility value of 73,801, Skyscanner.net is ahead of the pack and thus dominates visibility on Google.co.uk. Clearly, the subject of SEO has once again been put high on the agenda over the last twelve months, since visibility has doubled over this period. Che-apflights.co.uk (66,736) is a relatively close behind, followed by Travelsupermarket.com (35,292) in third place.

Similar to in Germany, airlines have clearly outsourced their online strategy to bookings on travel portals. They invest little themselves in their own prominence in the Google search results. Only three airlines appear in the analysis of the Project SEO Visibility ranking on Google.co.uk: Easyjet.com (19,964), Ryanair.com (19,705) and, some distance behind, BritishAirways.com (8,854).


SEA – At the Google Adwords ticket counter

SEO primarily means optimizing your own site. It can sometimes be a strenuous process, but it can have an enormous influence on an online company’s sales figures. Anyone who combines this optimization with a consistent budget for Google Adwords has a sustainable advatange over their competitiors.

In order to clearly show you the results of our analy-sis, we determine what is called Project Paid Visibility on Google ‒ this shows the visibility of an entered

internet address in the advertisements area on Google compared with an applied keyword set. The search volumes and advertisement positions are compared and, depending on the position, weigh-ted with a corresponding coefficient.

When looking at Project Paid Visibility, one thing stands out right away: In all of the national mar-kets that were investigated, the top SEO players also held strong positions in the SEA field. The background: Those who have noted the significance of organic searches will also be aware of the benefits of Google advertisements and will therefore put all their energy into SEO and SEA in order to ensure that their company is optimally positioned.

The American market: Airlines taking the offensive

The American market works a bit differently than the European market. What initially stands out about the American market is that some traditional airline companies there are increasingly inves-ting in Google advertisements and have thus identified this strategy as an opportunity to boost sales. Five airline websites can be found in the top 15. Nevertheless, Project Paid Visibility is domi-nated by travel portals. The leaders are Cheapoair.com with a value of 15,169 and Orbitz.com with 13,073.

Also worth noting: Some websites that achieve very good placements in the organic search results and exhibit a high level of visibility do not have an SEA budget at all. Such websites include major providers like Seatguru.com and Flightaware.com for example.


The British market: SEO yes, SEA not really

Interestingly enough, the top dog in SEO, Skyscanner.net, has not chosen to match its leading po-sition in the organic rankings with a strong SEA presence. As a result, the portal only achieves a value of 479 in Project Paid Visibility, which corresponds to a twentieth of the SEA market leader Travelzoo.com and only takes it to eighth place overall. In contrast, Britishairways.com is increasin-gly turning to Google advertisements and reaches a respectable third in the top 15 with a Project Paid Visibility of 4,643.

The German market: Fluege.de dominates

The results relating to Google advertisements are similar to those for Project SEO Visibility: Airlines are leaving the top spots to travel portals and are clearly allocating their budget to other areas instead. The German market for Project Paid Visibility in the ‘air travel sector’ is thus dominated by Fluege.de, which is clearly allocating a significant budget in a very clever way here. With an index value of 14,741, the comparison site is way ahead of Opodo.de (3,997) and Swoodoo.com (2,630). The aforementioned provider is a good example of a portal that takes the top positions both in the organic search results (1st place) and in the paid ones (3rd place), and thus draws a significant advantage from its comprehensive search engine strategy.


The French market: Travel portals dominate

French travel portals are clearly dominating the Google ads. Apart from Airfrance.com, which has a Project Paid Visibility of 208, the top 15 providers exclusively consist of traditional travel portals that invest in Google advertising. Led by Govoyages.com with an index value of 4,458, we find that France has a ranking where airlines are positioned right at the bottom. There are only five providers that use of SEA measures to any serious degree, while all of the others follow quite a way behind.


Which keywords fly best?

Search engine marketing is not all down to how you use your budget. It depends on using the right selection of keywords, and positioning yourself competitively. We wanted to understand this better, so we defined a large pool of important search terms for our four national target markets and analyzed which providers are best represented. The top 10 places in the Google ranking were of primary importance for us here ‒ these were put into a percentage-based re-lationship to the placements overall.

Brits and Americans are the top optimizers

We analyzed a keyword portfolio of 453 terms in the British market. When looking at the results, it became clear that British providers are very good at optimizing their search terms. The first four portals alone all reach a percentage rate of more than 80% with regard to the top 10 placements on Google - by far a stronger result than amongst German providers, for example.

The American providers, like their British counterparts, are also good at optimization. Frontrunner Expedia.com appears among the first ten search results in Google for 256 of 292 search terms ‒ ta-king a share of 88%. The two following companies, Cheapflights.com (79%) and Farecompare.com (77%), are also reaching high values.


AirBerlin is the best airline in Germany

In Germany (361 investigated keywords), Swoodoo.com and Opodo.de are at the top of the ran-king keywords. Within the top ten, 79 percent of the important keywords for swodoo.com and 78 percent for opodo.de are ranked. The top 3 positions are completed with flug.idealo.de, which achieves a share of 63%. The best airline is Airberlin, which also clearly does a good job of optimi-zing its Google presence and takes fifth place in our table with 58%. It is also worth noting the good positioning of Lufthansa, which follows closely behind in the next position and is thus also placed better than the other airlines.

Finally, French providers are also showing that they understand how to continuously optimize their keywords. The frontrunner there (Liligo.fr) also achieves a high percentage share of the relevant search terms in the top 10 results of 89%, followed by Opodo.fr with 75% and Skyscanner.fr with 71%.


In the link-building cockpit ‒ The right flight path through the Internet

A key success factor for good SEO placements is a company’s online link strategy. Websites that are recommended by as many subject-relevant pages as possible with the aid of links prove to Google that they are respectable pages. These link offer added value for Internet users. The result: Google ‘rewards’ them with higher placements in the organic search results. There is no difference in the air travel business in comparison with other sectors. We have taken a look at the industry and can tell you who uses which links and where.

The German market: Link building is of varying significance

Idealo.de is one of the most recommended sites on the Internet. With a chart-topping 6.2 million links, the price comparison portal is far ahead of all the other providers. More interesting, is the analysis of its top-ranking sub-domain flug.idelao.de, which specializes in air travel. With 1,966,847 links, this sub-domain gets an above-average number of referrals. Fluege.de is in second place with a relatively low 461,513 links, while Lufthansa.com is in third place with 328,722 links.

Links in Germany versus international links

The geographical distribution of the links per provider is notable. Flug.idealo.de relies almost exclu-sively on backlinks from German Internet pages, which makes the large number of links even more remarkable. Ninety-two percent of the Idealo links placed are found on German websites. Fluege.de also recruits most of its links from Germany; almost 99% of backlinks come from German pages and just one percent from international sites. Lufthansa.com is clearly internationally established as the largest German airline and international player in the travel industry. Less than one-third of the back links thus have their origin in German pages, while 18% are from pages in Ireland and just 13% from the United States. The remaining nearly 39% of back links are internationally recruited.

In addition to the geographic orientation, the content strategy of the top three providers is notable: while Flug.idealo.de almost always sends the user to its home page, Fluege.de and Lufthansa.com send users to so-called deep links, i.e. links to specific content on sub-pages. At Fluege.de, 61% of the links lead to such sites, while at Lufthansa.com the figure is a full 86%.


The UK market: TripAdvisor flies away from the competition

TripAdvisor.co.uk, Opodo.co.uk and Travelzoo.com are the three top portals in the British aviation industry when it comes to creating backlinks. All three providers have clearly recognized the impor-tance of good Google rankings, but pursue completely different link strategies.

Tripadvisor.co.uk opts for a more muscular approach. In the last six months, the number of harmful links has been reduced, while disproportionately many more backlinks have been built. However, Opodo.co.uk and Travelzoo.com rely on a slightly restrained link strategy. Isolated spikes suggest that since February measures have been taken to reduce harmful links and to build backlinks that strengthen the site.

The French market: Link building as a whole is less important

Building links is significantly lower in France than in other markets. Kelkoo.fr, with nearly 2.7 million links, is a clear leader in France and has the most links in comparison with analysed domains from Germany, the UK and America. Twelve of the domains analyzed in France have fewer than 100,000 backlinks. Compared to the other countries, link building in France apparently plays a subordinate role in search engine optimization. Among airlines, Airfrance.fr, with just under 65,000 links placed, reveals just how much potential exists.

The American market: Expedia.com leads by a nose

Expedia.com dominates all the other providers in the SEO Visibility project in America. In links, Ex-pedia.com also has the edge. Although with more than 1.5 million links, Expedia.com, has the abso-lutely largest number of backlinks. The runner-up site, Cheapoair.com is a close competitor with its 1,240,686 backlinks. The American airline Southwest.com, has 484,633 links placed, runs a distant third.


To whom social fans and followers are flying

We have known for some time that social networks are important platforms in which services and products are shared, commented on and liked. Recommendation marketing is increasingly beco-ming a major topic for online portals ‒ no matter what services are on offer. We have therefore taken a closer look and determined how well a domain is catching on within social networks. This is not only related to topic-relevant keywords but on the data itself. Keyword relevance tends to play a less important role in the social field even though it is the brand and content that take priority on a thematic level. We have also analyzed the social visibility of a website ‒ taking into account both

the ratings and the sharing of a URL. Search-metrics has thus weighted the links according to their individual influence on visibility in Google. The result: The higher the determined index value is the greater the popularity of the page and the higher its reach is. Key networks in our analysis are Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

The benefit of our analysis is obvious! - It happens far too often that the measurement of sites on social networks is purely based on the number of their followers and fans: Social media is primarily about interaction, which is generally initiated by the user himself. Social visibility takes into account all mentions of the company - regardless of whether or not the recommending user now follows the respective company page or not. Although many fans and followers can help with social visibi-lity, it is not the only assessment factor.

USA: Outstanding social visibility for kayak.com

In the USA, kayak.com is definitely the top dog in terms of visibility on social networks. With a high score of more than a billion, it dominates the social networks. Followed afterwards by the first air-line delta.com. Expedia.com, Orbitz.com, Travelocity.com follow some distance behind, as well as American Airlines, the second best airline.


Tripadvisor and Lufthansa moving in lonely circles

In the German market, Tripadvisor.de holds the leading position with a very high social visibility score of 5,162,355. This is closely followed by Lufthansa.com, a URL that benefits from its strong brand as one of the most well-known airlines. In terms of their visibility and social networks, both leading pages are in a league of their own when it comes to their visibility on social networks. Expe-dia.de, Opodo.de and Fluege.de fall quite a long distance behind in the next positions.

Airlines in France barely visible

In the United Kingdom and France, travel portals dominate social visibility. Thomascook.com, Ka-yak.co.uk and Tripadvisor.co.uk are the top 3 URLs in the British market.

Lastminute.com, Liligo.fr and Ebookers.fr can be seen as the key providers in France. While Luft-hansa still has good social visibility as an airline in fifth place in the United Kingdom, it is noticeable in France, for instance, that Airfrance.com has an outstandingly low visibility (index value: 149) on social networks.


Which networks are interesting for the industry?

Different networks may be interesting to different industries. To determine which platforms are im-portant for the air travel industry, we have developed what is called the Social Spread. We use this to determine which domain has been shared or commented on particularly often on which net-works. This then gives us an overall picture that weights the individual networks for each industry.

Facebook dominates, Google+ becoming more important

As a result, we can see that Facebook is primarily interesting to the air travel sector in Germany, followed by Twitter and increasingly Google+. LinkedIn and Pinterest do not play a major role in this country.

Although Google+ is already taking on a bigger role than Twitter, a similar situation can be found in France and the United Kingdom, where Facebook is also the most significant. . However, here, too, Pinterest and LinkedIn are little-used networks among the target group.In the USA, the situation looks somewhat different: Content tends to be shared more across all net-works. Google+ shares the top spot here with Facebook.

Content-related focus: Sales promotions and presentation of travel destinations

In terms of content, most users concentrate their recommendations or interactions on social net-works to sales-promoting content from providers. New offers, unusual promotions or other parti-cularly attractive flights are posted with corresponding links. In addition, information on especially attractive travel destinations or information on arrivals and departures is particularly popular.

An interesting local difference can be seen by comparing Germany with the USA: In Germany, very strong sales promotions, articles about certain destinations and enquiries about arrival/departure information are the focus of user interest. In the USA, topics such as career and customer service are liked, shared or commented on.


Pinterest and LinkedIn hardly used

In Germany and France, Pinterest and LinkedIn are virtually not used at all. Even if their use is some-what greater in the USA and United Kingdom, the frequently predicted trend towards these two networks in the air travel industry has not yet happened. This is particularly interesting because images of travel destinations are especially well-suited to image networks like Pinterest and are also play an increasingly large role in search engines as a result of the frequent use of image searches in Google. Cheapflights.com in the US and Skyscanner.net in the UK can be cited as positive examples.

In a similar manner these conduct within business networks like LinkedIn, where countless poten-tial passengers for business trips can be found, although these passengers are clearly not being addressed in a sufficiently targeted way by travel portals. In short: Those who are starting to engage themselves in these networks can gain a small competitive advantage as they more or less hold a monopoly position.

What does this mean for you?

You just saw how important it is to gather your own position in the market and how rewarding it can be to keep an eye on your competition. If you want to know more about your own market and position don’t hesitate to contact us.

[email protected]


Customer comments

Searchmetrics Suite™ has proven itself to be the perfect platform for the extremely large amount of data and analyses that we often need at very short notice. Besides the impor-tant overview of the SEO success of any given domain, we also very often resort to the SEO Visibility project. This allows us to also monitor customers’ large keyword sets simply, quickly and reliably. And since we are able to individually adapt and structure these sets, our work is much more precise, meaning that we can also provide much more specific advice – and we always have an eye on our direct competition. We can spot the smallest changes immediately and can adapt our SEO activities dynamically and control them accordingly. Could we work without the Suite? Not any more! Daniela Czerwionke (Account Director)BlueSummit Media GmbH

,,We have been using the Searchmetrics Suite intensively for many years for our customer swoodoo.com. Once per week, we have the Google positions for some 10,000 keyword phrases, subdivided into clusters that are monitored by Searchmetrics. On the basis of this data, we systematically carry out detailed ranking pattern analyses with the help of internally-developed tools. The analyses results then lead to specific, continuous on-page optimization measures that have repeatedly provided a valuable contribution to the gradual improvement of visibility. We maintain a long-term, close cooperation with Searchmetrics and are glad to have a reliable partner by our side in the face of even more complex challenges. Jochen Hauser (Managing Director)Exito GmbH & Co. KG

We are very proud to have so many satisfied customers. This is what they have to say:

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Vacation is the best time of year for most people. And more and more peoples now do their travel research online and also book their short-and long-haul travel tickets and ac-comodation via the web. At KAYAK and swoodoo we provide information from hundreds of travel sites. And being well positioned in search means more traffic and potentially more sales for us. If your brand’s web site is not listed among the top 10 results for the relevant terms (!) in your sector, you have probably lost out in the search channel. We monitor and analyze our search performance using the Searchmetrics Suite™. It helps us improve our visibility in search for our various brands in various countries. Dominik Schwarz (Director SEO Europe)KAYAK Europe GmbH

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Our customers in the travel branche

Searchmetrics customers are in good company.These are just a few of the international organizations already using our search and social analytics software:


Searchmetrics SuiteTM is a premium search and social analytics solution.

Benefits:ü The most extensive international and local coverage in the world, with 124 countries and 155 local rankings

ü ROI analysis: discover untapped potential by displaying keywords with corresponding search volumes and CPCs

ü International competitor analysis for common keywords and identification of competitor keywords

ü Meaningful SEO rankings & social media data

ü Fast and transparent project management and custom dashboards

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seo for air travel providers who is taking off and who is...

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