Become a Home Based Travel Agent

Content, Content, Content
By Tom Ogg

Almost every day for this past month I have been contacted by agents whose websites are no longer performing the way that they did even months ago.  I get questions like “should I redesign my site on a Wordpress platform”, “why doesn’t my site show up in a Google search? and “why aren’t I getting any leads from my site?

I usually do one thing immediately just to see what the site’s content is like. I will pick an interior page, usually about an itinerary or description of a property, ship or other travel product and run the URL through www.Copyscape.com. Nine times out of ten, the content is usually copied from somewhere and shows up on numerous travel related sites on the Internet. There is only one rule to remember when considering content for your website.

“Search engines hate duplicate content. Search engines love original and unique content.”

In fact, if your site had enough duplicate content on it, it is quite likely that search engines will no longer crawl it and you will no longer appear in any search results. Search engines don’t like duplicate content because they only want to serve content once in their search results. To make matters worse, if someone copies your content onto a successful site, your site may be targeted by the search engines as being duplicate content. Unfair, I know, but this is the reality of competing on the Internet today.

Here are the areas that travel agents make mistakes by using duplicate content.

Don’t Copy Supplier’s Content: This is the number one infraction agents engage in. Do not copy itineraries, destination, room or ship descriptions, or any other information from a supplier’s website even if they say it is OK for you to do so. If the content appears on many other travel agent sites, search engines will ignore that page and maybe your site. If you are going to use supplier’s content be sure to rewrite it to make it unique.

Don’t Copy Other Website’s Content: Wouldn’t it be great to feature some reviews for each property featured on your website? Don’t do it! Major review sites have earned the trust of search engines and if you display duplicate reviews from sites like TripAdvisor, CruiseCritic or others, you can bet that you will be penalized for having copied content on your site.

Don’t Use Syndicated Articles: Sure grabbing 500 syndicated articles to build instant content on your site sounds intriguing, but using syndicated travel articles is a sure way to guarantee search engines will ignore your site.

Use www.Copyscape.com: Technology being what it is there is an excellent way to make sure that your article isn’t duplicate content. Copyscape will allow you to enter text or a URL into its search box and then it will search the Internet to see if the content resides on any other website. It is free to use and will guarantee you that you are going to publish unique information on your website. If you house a good amount of copyrighted and unique content then explore using CapySentry (a service of Copyscape) to constantly monitor the Internet for online plagiarism. This service will email you the instant anyone copies your content and publishes it on the Internet.

Should I Use Article Spinners? Article spinners can turn copied content into seemingly unique content with the click of a button. If you want to use duplicate content on your site, the least you should do is spin it into unique content before you publish it. To find “Article Spinning” software just Google the words into Google and you will find numerous programs and services. However, be warned that many article spinners use a simple thesaurus to replace words throughout the article and it is quite likely that search engines may have already countered spinners by including a thesaurus in their algorithms.

Your safest bet is to manually spin the content yourself. Here is how:

Change the Title: Make sure that the title of the article is unique and be sure to change the title in the META tags, as well as using it on the page link.

Change the First Paragraph: Reinforce the title’s keywords in the first paragraph of the article and completely rewrite it.

Reformat the Following Paragraphs: Take some time to rewrite the following paragraphs changing many of the words and overall structure. Add unique sentences where appropriate and eliminate sentences that are not vital to the article’s message.

Eliminate or Change Outbound Links: Unless a link in the item is mandatory to the article’s message, consider eliminating it entirely, or replacing the link with a link to other, but similar content.

Completely Rewrite the Closing Paragraph: Make the article yours by completely rewriting the final paragraph and provide the user your own unique conclusion to the content.

Run the Article Through Copyscape.com: Once you have completely spun your article, be sure to run it through Copyscape to make sure it is unique before you publish it. Once your website consists of unique and engaging content, watch the search engine crawl all over you.