Travel Agency Link Building Case Study

With an estimated 589,000 businesses in the travel agency services industry worldwide, the market is incredibly competitive.

For an independent travel agent to stand out, they must take significant steps to boost their online visibility and attract more customers to their website. One effective strategy is link building. By building high quality backlinks from reputable websites within the travel industry, a travel agent can not only improve their search engine rankings but also enhance their credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of both search engines and potential customers. This approach leads to increased traffic, higher conversions, and ultimately, more bookings and revenue.

Our client operated a small travel agency in Europe, and despite having run some Google Ads and Facebook Ads in the past, they had very little experience with SEO and link building. Their primary challenge was the intense competition within the European travel industry, which is dominated by large local and global tour companies like Exodus Travels and Oriental Land Co.

At Rhino Rank, we specialize in building links in some of the most challenging and competitive industries, so we were excited to take on this challenge.

Our primary focus was on securing high quality links for the client’s site. For this reason, we developed a strategy centered around our Curated Links service, which is the most effective link building method we offer – driving strong link authority and delivering more “link juice” than other types of links.

With a monthly budget of $550, we proposed a simple yet highly effective link building strategy:

We recommended the following:

• Curated Links Package 1 ($550)
  • 4x RD20-100 links
  • 2x RD100-250 links
  • 1x RD2050-500 link
  • 1x RD500+ link

Package 1 is our entry-level backlink package. By opting for this offer, our client was able to maximize their limited budget while also benefiting from a 15% package discount. Additionally, the diverse range of Referring Domains (RD) included in this package allowed them to leverage websites with substantial authority, all while creating an organic and natural backlink profile.

During the client’s introductory call with their Account Manager, the first step we took was to conduct a comprehensive SEO and backlink audit of their site. We assessed key factors such as current traffic levels, backlink sources, anchor text distribution, and more.

The audit revealed that while the site had a high number of exact match anchors, it lacked branded anchors. To enhance the site’s brand authority and prevent search engines from flagging it for potentially harmful link building practices due to forcing on over-optimized anchor text, our top priority was to introduce diversity into our link building campaign.

Leveraging our expertise in the travel industry and our relationships with webmasters and travel publications, we were able to secure a variety of high quality, in-content links. The majority of these links were used to strategically targeted key “money pages” on the client’s site, as we knew they already had a strong conversion rate. This approach led to substantial growth in the site’s link profile and, consequently, a significant improvement in the site’s overall ranking and revenue potential.

Over the past 8 months, the results have been outstanding, with steady month-over-month growth.

For starters, the website’s organic traffic has increased by 660%. This is a direct result of improved SERP rankings, meaning that the site is now outranking some of the larger European travel companies for its target keywords.

But the good news doesn’t stop there! The site’s organic traffic value has soared to $19,000 per month and continues to grow, marking a 855% increase compared to when they first partnered with us.

Given these impressive results, it is no surprise that the client has chosen to continue working with Rhino Rank. They plan to further develop their link building profile and invest additional marketing funds into our Curated Link service, specifically targeting our most authoritative link placements with additional RD500+ and RD1000+ backlinks. We proud to be a part of our client’s ongoing success story.