Become a Travel Agent

Content, Content, Content
By: Tom Ogg

Once or twice each week I get either an e-mail or a telephone call from a travel agent that wants me to review his or her website. They are concerned because they are not getting the kind of traffic that they want and the site is not making money for them. I would be concerned too. I mean, the function of a website is to make money these days. The majority of the time I visit the sites, they all have the same issue, content. Or I should say, lack of content.

Most of the sites are set up as an agency site offering their services, much like a large Yellow Page advertisement. They may have 8 or 10 pages of information about their specialties and contact information for their agency. For the most part, I am not sure why anyone would want to visit the sites. There just isn’t any meat.

One gentleman asked me to evaluate his site as a potential affiliate site and he had focused on an area that I was very familiar with. While he had made some serious mistakes in using red hyperlinks, beige backgrounds, no keyword consistency and other design and layout errors, the thing that struck me was that the area he was focused on had some incredible features and things to do. His site simply spewed platitudes about the destination, as if he were writing for a travel magazine. I was honest with the gentleman and I am not sure that he liked it. So, I thought I would share how to get your website working for you.

Website visitors arriving at your site doing a keyword search are looking for one thing and one thing only. Content. They don’t care if your site is cool or not, they don’t care if it offers shopping opportunities, they don’t care about your personal history, they just want content relative to the keywords that they used to search in the first place. What kind of content? Current, thorough, relevant and complete facts are what they are seeking. If your site is about renting condos in Punta Mita, Mexico, visitors will want to know all about the condos, as well as the area’s restaurants, activities, sights, day trips, special niches and much more. The more thorough the content is, the more likely it is that your guest will stay and treat the site with priority. Simply having a site that offers to make reservations with no specific information will likely fail to pass the visitor’s minimum expectations while searching for information. So where can you obtain quality content for your website?

Write it Yourself: This requires little explanation. However, this is your opportunity to show the reader just how knowledgeable that you are in your specific niche. Communicate as many details and suggestions on aspects of what you are sharing as you can. Just don’t offer basic facts, but imagine that you have never been to where you are sharing about. If you are talking about taking a day bus trip to Puerto Vallarta, explain exactly where to catch the bus, what it will cost, where to get off the bus and how long it will take. This is the specific kind of “how to” information people seek. Not only will they appreciate the inside knowledge, they will hold your expertise in high esteem.

If you intend to build your web presence based on your own written material you must realize that it will become a project of months and years. This is the largest mistake that I see home-based agents make. They start out with a bang and end up with a whimper. You must continually add content to your site long before it gets traction. If you continue to research, process and present quality content, your site will eventually gain popularity with the search engines and acceptance by your visitors. There is no easy way for this to happen.

Use Article Writing Tools: There are several tools available that will create articles based on keywords that you provide. As an example, if you wanted to write an article on Peacock Bass fishing in Lake Gatun, Panama, you would simply enter those keywords into the tool and it would then research the entire Internet and present you with a complete article ready to be edited. You simply edit the article; add an opening and closing sentence to make it yours and you have just created some credible content. These tools allow one to write dozens or articles each and every day. For a complete list of article writing tools visit www.HBTANetwork.com.

Hire People to Write Articles: There are a good number of travel specific websites that allow one to bid out articles to be written. Sites like MediaKitty.com connect travel writers with folks wanting articles written. Craigslist.org has an area for folks to solicit writing jobs for hire. One of the best sources for inexpensive (but excellent) articles is to use one of the international freelance sites. Sites like GetaCoder.com, GetaFreelancer.com and eLance.com allow you to bid out writing jobs worldwide and work with writers around the world whose economic reality may be quite different than yours. Remember that when you outsource the task of writing articles for your website that you should make sure that the words “For Hire” are used when you pay for them. This will preclude the author from selling them to someone else.

Use Other People’s Content: This is an excellent source for tons of content immediately. Many people write articles about travel and allow folks to use them as long as his or her signature file is published with the articles. There are several sites that warehouse these articles and they are free for you to use on your website. Sites such as eZineArticles.com, TravelArticleLibrary.com and TravelArticlesExpress.com all allow you to use their content for free. In addition, numerous sites (like PLRTravelArticles.com and iTravelSyndicate.com) offer travel articles for a small fee.

For more information regarding these sites and many more, visit www.HBTANetwork.com.