I’ve always liked the trav­el sec­tor. My favorite books when I was a lit­tle kid were “Trea­sure Island”, “Robin­son Cru­soe” and “Gulliver’s Trav­els”.  All of these books made me want to trav­el and have adven­tures abroad. Yet, sad­ly, almost none of the con­tent trav­el brands are cre­at­ing share this inspi­ra­tional facet – and I’m sure many con­sumers feel the same way. This is a direct con­se­quence of the peren­ni­al mis­use of the first step for every SEO strat­e­gy: key­word research.

There is huge poten­tial to win trav­el­ers with amaz­ing con­tent. But because the trav­el indus­try is incred­i­bly com­pet­i­tive, we’ve tend­ed to cre­ate key­word-rich “robot­ic” types of con­tent rather than con­tent users will find excit­ing – or at least infor­ma­tive.

Why wouldn’t we do this? Opti­miz­ing con­tent for Google, rather than peo­ple, has always worked. Until now.

Keyword Research Is Evolving

Ever since there was a need to opti­mize our pages for search engines we all have advo­cat­ed that “con­tent is king” in one way or anoth­er. We sur­ren­dered our­selves to the pow­er of the key­words we were opti­miz­ing our pages for, some­times so much so that it sound­ed like our con­tent was writ­ten by the robot from “Lost in Space”.

We opti­mized our pages for Google and it worked. We used key­words Google itself pro­vid­ed to us through many dif­fer­ent tools (e.g., Key­word Plan­ner, Ana­lyt­ics, Trends, Web­mas­ter Tools) to cre­ate con­tent that essen­tial­ly told Google, “Hey, our con­tent is exact­ly what your users are look­ing for.”

We thought that’s what Google want­ed. But by doing this, we com­plete­ly ignored what real peo­ple want­ed. Users weren’t hap­py, and Google took notice.

For the past few years Google has tried to put its users first, through a series of algo­rith­mic and tech­no­log­i­cal updates, and by remov­ing key­word data from Google Ana­lyt­ics.

Goodbye Keywords, Hello People

One of the final blows to our old style key­word research was Google’s Hum­ming­bird update in 2013. Google now looks at the user intent when per­form­ing a search rather than the seman­tic mean­ing of the words used in the search.

This means that when the user types “Hotels in Lon­don” Google ana­lyzes sev­er­al fac­tors to deter­mine whether the user is look­ing to book a hotel, a list of all the hotels in Lon­don, or even what type of hotel they are look­ing for in Lon­don. Search results may dif­fer from one user to anoth­er as long as their per­ceived search intent is dif­fer­ent.

In 2014 Google took the unimag­in­able step of reduc­ing the organ­ic vis­i­bil­i­ty of some of the biggest sites includ­ing some in the trav­el indus­try. These sites all had one thing in com­mon: thin con­tent.

The mes­sage to brands and busi­ness­es was clear. You have to cre­ate con­tent for peo­ple, not for key­words.

And brands got the mes­sage. No site is infal­li­ble. You have to take Google’s rules seri­ous­ly.

Google is push­ing us to actu­al­ly lis­ten to our users/visitors to under­stand what they are real­ly look­ing for.

What Is Inspiring Travel Content?

You can find plen­ty of exam­ples of unin­spir­ing trav­el con­tent. For instance, almost every major trav­el brand uses the fol­low­ing tech­nique, illus­trat­ed by Sky­scan­ner, to pop­u­late the web with thou­sands of pages of unin­spired con­tent.

So, what is inspir­ing con­tent? It answers a ques­tion, cre­ates an emo­tion­al response, or trig­gers an action from the per­son con­sum­ing it.

One great exam­ple is Samsung’s cam­paign for the Gear VR, a cool, futur­is­tic device that seemed to have all the chances of end­ing up in the Google Glass cor­ner. I failed to see the prac­ti­cal use of Samsung’s Gear VR, but a few days ago this cam­paign caught my atten­tion.

Imme­di­ate­ly I was inspired to think of the thou­sand pos­si­ble uses for it (hint: it would go per­fect­ly well with the project I’m going to men­tion next).

One of my ulti­mate attempts to cre­ate inspir­ing con­tent while work­ing for Expe­dia was the Expe­dia Pio­neer Project, where we select­ed peo­ple to trav­el around their own coun­try for a year. They had to cre­ate arti­cles, take pho­tos, and make video con­tent at each des­ti­na­tion they vis­it­ed.

Their itin­er­aries were defined pri­mar­i­ly by a key­word research, which defined which des­ti­na­tions were pri­or­i­ties.

This inspir­ing con­tent has worked real­ly well for Expe­dia and has been extreme­ly well received. There’s noth­ing more inspir­ing in trav­el than see­ing some­one expe­ri­enc­ing what you would like to expe­ri­ence.

Take, for exam­ple, Albacete. This des­ti­na­tion in Spain has a rep­u­ta­tion of being some­what bor­ing. Look at the fol­low­ing video cre­at­ed by Raul, one of the two Pio­neers for Spain:

After watch­ing the video, Albacete seems like a des­ti­na­tion worth vis­it­ing. In fact, after pub­lish­ing this video both the offi­cial tourism orga­ni­za­tion of Albacete and a local music group asked Raul to col­lab­o­rate with them in their video con­tent.

What Is Proper Keyword Research Now?

Key­word research starts with you lis­ten­ing to what the users are actu­al­ly look­ing for. Not any user, but the users who might con­sume your prod­ucts or the infor­ma­tion that you pro­vide on your site.

Peo­ple are no longer cryp­tic when search­ing in Google. They use com­pli­cat­ed sen­tences that may not amount to a big search vol­ume but, when added up, they become the actu­al qual­i­ty traf­fic you’re look­ing for.

If we go back to the pre­vi­ous exam­ple, Sam­sung answers one impor­tant ques­tion (what’s the use of the Sam­sung Gear VR?) with inspir­ing con­tent that trig­gers an emo­tion. But how do we find out about those ques­tions?

Social media is one way of doing key­word research. Up until now we have either mis­used or dis­re­gard­ed social media’s part in our SEO strat­e­gy.

Social media is gen­er­al­ly used either as a cus­tomer ser­vice out­let or as a way to spread author­i­ty about a sub­ject. But social media is the most direct way to find out what your users expect from you by sim­ply ask­ing them direct­ly. Be active, not just reac­tive, in social media.

Keyword Research Tools

There is still some use for the usu­al tools such as Google Key­word Plan­ner, but only as the start­ing point of a much more sophis­ti­cat­ed process.

Once you have a tar­get list, find out what kind of con­tent your tar­get users are real­ly look­ing for, which brings us to the rela­tion­ship between social media and SEO:

• Social media is the new Key­word Plan­ner: Trav­el con­tent is heav­i­ly shared on social media. Mon­i­tor the hash­tags of your top tar­get­ed key­words, both in Twit­ter and Google+, to get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of your users’ intent. Build the con­tent they are actu­al­ly look­ing for and again lis­ten to what they have to say about it.

• Google pre­dic­tive search and relat­ed search­es: Google pro­vides this infor­ma­tion to pro­vide users with a more pleas­ant and effec­tive search expe­ri­ence.

The Content Beyond Words

The results of this research might give you infor­ma­tion beyond the sub­ject of the con­tent but also pro­vide the type of con­tent your users are look­ing for, whether this is text, video, or images. Let the research tell you what they need.

As a con­se­quence of this new approach to your research, you will have to involve who­ev­er builds your con­tent more than before. Help them under­stand what your users need rather than pro­vid­ing them with just a bunch of key­words to play with.

Always remem­ber: poten­tial trav­el­ers are look­ing to be inspired and expect a cer­tain type of expe­ri­ence. Whether it’s for leisure, busi­ness, or anoth­er type of trav­el, you need to under­stand what your poten­tial cus­tomers are look­ing for and pro­vide con­tent that will inspire them.

Per­haps we all should bet­ter go back to read­ing those old inspir­ing books and learn from them. Cre­at­ing inspir­ing con­tent can no longer be done by using the same old key­word research tech­niques of days gone by.

Are you try­ing to inspire your con­sumers with con­tent?