Seen. Everywhere.

Link building for travel brands, relevance before volume

A travel brand does not need a thousand links. It needs the handful that confirm a real, well regarded business operates where it says it does, from travel and destination sources that a search engine already trusts on the subject, plus the listings that corroborate you in a country with no postcodes.

Clutch reviews Clutch reviews Google reviews Google reviews Trustpilot reviews Trustpilot reviews

Get Your Free Travel Link Building Audit

See what your brand is linked from today, how much of it is bulk directory noise and where the relevant authority your competitors hold is actually coming from. Send us a few details and our team will put together a free, no obligation audit.

    Award-winning, independently judged See all our awards
    European Search Awards UK Digital Excellence Awards UK Paid Media Awards European Agency Awards UK Agency Awards UK Digital Excellence Awards UK Search Awards European Search Awards UK Digital Excellence Awards European Agency Awards UK Digital Excellence Awards European Agency Awards European Search Awards UK Digital Excellence Awards UK Paid Media Awards European Agency Awards UK Agency Awards UK Digital Excellence Awards UK Search Awards European Search Awards UK Digital Excellence Awards European Agency Awards UK Digital Excellence Awards European Agency Awards
    Why a specialist

    Travel link building is not generalist link building

    Authority for a travel brand is a different shape to authority for a retailer. It is heavily topical and heavily corroborative: the destination guides and round-ups a traveller actually reads, the travel media in the markets your visitors come from, the industry and association pages that confirm you are a real operator, and the listings and profiles that repeat the same name and location in a country with no postcode system. Relevance does most of the work, which is why a small number of genuinely travel related links moves a brand further than a pile of unrelated ones. It is one of the disciplines on our link building offer, run for the brands in our travel work.

    There is a sector specific trap. Travel is saturated with paid placement offers, sponsored round-ups and directory packages sold by the hundred, all of which leave a footprint a search engine can read and none of which survive a manual review. The authority that lasts in this category is earned, and a good deal of it has to be earned in another country, because that is where the audience and the relevant publishers are.

    2008In regulated search since
    175+Industry awards
    97%Client retention
    28 moAverage client tenure
    Adm insights
    How the work runs

    Audit, correct, then earn

    First an audit, because a travel link profile is usually part bulk directory noise, part historic paid placement and part genuinely useful, and knowing which is which changes everything that follows. Then the corroborative layer, which is the listings, the booking platform profiles and the industry pages that repeat your name and location consistently, since in a country with no postcodes that consistency is doing real work. Only then outreach, aimed at the destination guides and travel media that already rank for the planning searches you want, in the markets your travellers actually come from.

    What we will not do is buy placements, take a sponsored round-up or accept a directory package by the hundred, because all three work briefly and then cost more than they earned. Talk to our team about what your link profile currently looks like.

    Adm insights
    Questions

    Travel link building, answered

    What is link building for a travel brand?

    The work of earning relevant, authoritative links to an operator, hotel, agency or attraction, mostly from travel media and destination guides, alongside the listings and profiles that corroborate where you actually are.

    For an inbound business a good deal of it has to be earned abroad, because that is where the relevant publishers and the travellers both are.

    Why does the country of the link matter?

    Because travel authority is geographic as well as topical, so a destination guide read widely in a market your visitors come from carries weight that an unrelated high authority site in another category simply does not.

    It is also where the referral traffic is. A link that sends real travellers is worth more than one that only moves a metric.

    Do you buy links or take sponsored placements?

    No, and travel is the category where we are asked most often, because the sector is saturated with sponsored round-up offers and paid placement packages that leave a footprint a search engine can read.

    Every link is earned on editorial merit and would stand up to a manual review. The ones that would not are the ones that cost you later.

    Are travel directories worth anything?

    Almost never in bulk, and it is the most common thing we ask travel brands to stop paying for, because hundreds of unrelated listings add no authority and frequently introduce the inconsistent details that undermine local visibility.

    A small number of accurate, genuinely used profiles is worth more than a large number of anything. Quality here is not a slogan.

    How do listings help if they are not really links?

    They corroborate, which matters more in this country than in most, because there are no postcodes and the systems differ, with Dubai and several northern emirates using Makani while Abu Dhabi uses Onwani.

    Consistent details across those profiles support local visibility and give an assistant something to verify. Inconsistent ones quietly undo both.

    How is this different from digital PR?

    Digital PR earns coverage and links through stories that a travel desk wants to publish, while link building is the broader discipline of growing authority, including the corroborative listings that will never be newsworthy.

    They overlap and we run both, often together. See Digital PR for Travel.

    How long does it take?

    The corrective part is quick, because removing inconsistencies and fixing listings is a fix rather than a campaign, while earned authority behaves like the rest of SEO and accumulates across seasons rather than weeks.

    It pairs directly with our SEO for Travel work, which is where the benefit actually shows up.

    Get started

    Talk to a travel link building specialist

    Tell us what you sell, which markets your travellers come from and what you have been linked from so far. We will come back with what is helping, what is noise and what the first ninety days would cover. Our Dubai office is at Meydan Grandstand in Nad Al Sheba, on +971 4 251 8056.