If you want to know more about what people are searching for, try the new Google Trends Lab.
I found some very interesting results when I compared the trends for the following terms;
Group 1
-
fly in fishing
fishing trip
Group 2
-
ontario fishing
canada fishing
The LOCATION of the searchers for Group 1 and Group 2 are very different. Group 1 was dominated by searches from people living in the US, while Group 2 was almost entirely Canadian in origin.
If most of your tourism business has traditionally been from the United States, it is vital to target the correct search phrases in your marketing efforts. If the sales message on your page is written for an American customer, but the keywords are used more often by Canadians, you won’t get the enquiries you could be getting.
If you are a manager or owner of a company that has a website, it’s important that you spend some time with the Google Trends Tool.
If you find a keyword phrase with promise, (i.e. lots of searches originating from the area you sell to) create a special landing page on your website focused on that phrase – and add a smattering of links to that page from within the site. Be certain that the exact phrase is used as the anchor text for those links. You can also add some clout to your new landing page by linking to it from blogs or discussion forums.
I continue to be a strong advocate of Wordtracker as the best keyword research tool around. But now I can take my list of keyword phrases with an Effectiveness Index of 400 or greater, run a Google Trend Analysis and gain valuable insight into regional biases in similar search phrases – helping me further refine the keywords I target AND the language I use on my sales page.
