JustIdea: an SEO results case study based on our work with a travel agency
Introduction to the case study
We've noticed that today, as the travel market keeps growing, effective SEO has become a key part of the marketing strategy for every company operating in this industry. A good example of a worthwhile approach to SEO is the website of a Krakow-based travel agency, which this case study covers.
The aim of this case study is to analyse and assess the SEO work that increased our partner's website visibility, and in turn brought in more potential clients.
The start of our work together and our strategy: where did we begin?
We started working together in June 2022. As with every SEO client, the work began with a detailed SEO audit covering a technical analysis of the site, on-site activities including the content marketing strategy, and an off-site campaign in the form of a link building plan.
The main focus was on the content already on the site. That covered both the detailed descriptions of travel packages and the posts on the company's extensive blog.
Besides the content marketing strategy, our work also covered the following areas:
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Technical optimisation of the site: the audit let us pinpoint technical errors, which we then fixed. We also sped up the site by optimising images and converting them to WEBP, as well as introducing lazy loading and removing unnecessary scripts.
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Meta tag optimisation: titles and meta descriptions are often the first thing a customer sees when they come across a company in the search results. That single moment can decide whether a user clicks through to our page or moves on. Meta titles also give crawlers a lot of important information and have a real impact on rankings.
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Keyword research: a step needed at every stage of SEO work. Well-chosen keywords are what guarantees success in organic search promotion. Keyword research mattered most at the start, when optimising meta tags and on-page content, but we still carry it out regularly today, mainly for the new blog posts that appear on the site.
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UX improvements: SEO isn't just about growing the number of users on a given site, but also about improving their experience while they're on it. To achieve that, we enlarged the images shown alongside travel offers, sped up the site, and eliminated 404 errors that would otherwise have been dead ends for visitors.
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Link building: building a site's authority is one of the most important parts of SEO work. For this travel agency, our work was based on securing high-quality links every month from blogs and websites focused on travel and general lifestyle topics.
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Analytics setup: mentioned last but just as important as everything else that makes up an SEO strategy at JustIdea. A well-configured analytics setup delivers valuable information both to us, as SEO specialists, and to our partners running the travel agency. At JustIdea, we use real-time reports built on Looker Studio:
For this client, we built a Looker Studio report covering all the key organic traffic metrics, including the keywords that generate the most of that traffic. The report also shows the number of conversions on the site.
The results of the SEO strategy
Organic traffic
The chart above comes from Semrush and shows the tool's estimated organic traffic over a two-year period. As you can see, estimated traffic has grown steadily since our work began, though we saw the first sudden jump in visibility after around four months. Sudden jumps like this happen when high-volume keywords change position.
TOP 3 keywords
The chart shows how the number of keywords ranking in positions 1 to 3 changed over time. That number rose sharply in August 2022, around three months after we started working together. It's worth noting that in June, the number of keywords in the TOP 3 was 10, while today that figure stands at 61. That's a sixfold increase.
Keywords in positions 1 to 20
The chart shows how the number of keywords in positions 1 to 20 changed over the months we worked together. Thanks to ongoing optimisation and new content, we saw the number of keywords in this range grow every single month.
Site traffic
In June 2022, we connected the site to Google Analytics, which let us measure real traffic on the site. The first months of our work brought growth, but the first strong gains show up in October. January also stands out: it's the month with the highest organic traffic recorded so far. That's likely because it's when customers most often plan their holiday travel, reflecting the seasonality of this business, which we factor into building and running the SEO strategy.
Looking at the Google Analytics charts, you can clearly see that in July 2022, organic traffic on the site reached 2,078 unique users, while by May 2023, that traffic had grown to 6,676 unique users.
Keywords
The table below shows the keywords that bring the most organic traffic to the site.
| Keyword | Monthly search volume | Google ranking |
|---|---|---|
| "malezja" (Malaysia) | 33.100 | 8 |
| "mauritius ceny" (Mauritius prices) | 590 | 1 |
| "sri lanka ceny" (Sri Lanka prices) | 590 | 1 |
| "tajlandia" (Thailand) | 90.500 | 11 |
| "stolica wietnamu" (capital of Vietnam) | 4.400 | 4 |
| "galapagos" (Galapagos) | 12.100 | 6 |
| "polinezja" (Polynesia) | 4.400 | 8 |
...and many more!
Conversions
Number of enquiry forms submitted through SEO
- February = 2
- March = 16
- April = 21
- May = 30
Number of "Trip plan viewed" events. This conversion fires when a user spends 10 seconds on the page and scrolls at least 60% of it.
- February = 448
- March = 1,777
- April = 1,631
- May = 1,703
Event tracking is a valuable source of information on service-based websites. A well-configured analytics setup lets you measure how effective an SEO campaign is, and even calculate the return from organic results. For this client, for instance, we can see a strong rise in the number of enquiry forms submitted between February and May.
Summary: what results does working with JustIdea on SEO bring?
This case study presents a successful SEO strategy our agency carried out for a travel agency. Today, as the travel market keeps growing fast, effective SEO has become a key part of the marketing strategy in this industry. Our goal was to increase the site's visibility in search results, which translates into attracting more potential customers interested in travel services.
The results of our SEO strategy are plain to see, and that's something we're genuinely pleased about. We saw organic traffic grow after roughly three months of work. The number of keywords ranking in the TOP 3 grew sixfold, which shows a substantial rise in the site's visibility. On top of that, the number of keywords in positions 1 to 20 keeps growing steadily. Site traffic keeps climbing, and January was our best month yet for organic traffic.
We believe our SEO agency has genuinely helped grow this travel agency's visibility, bringing in more potential customers interested in travel services, and that work like content optimisation, technical site improvements, link building and data analysis all contributed to these positive results.
Effective advertising for a travel agency in organic search results matters enormously, because it's exactly what makes it possible to stand out from the competition and reach new audiences.
