Backlinks — links from other websites pointing to yours — remain one of the most significant ranking signals in Google’s algorithm. For tour operators competing against OTAs for organic visibility on competitive destination and trip-type searches, a strong backlink profile is one of the most meaningful advantages you can build. Here’s what backlinks are, why they matter, and the most effective strategies for acquiring them.
How to gain more backlinks
The most durable backlinks come from creating content that other sites genuinely want to reference, and from building relationships with relevant publishers. Tactics that prioritised volume over quality — directory submissions, link exchanges, low-quality guest posts — have been progressively devalued by Google’s algorithm. What we’ve found is that travel brands who invest in genuinely high-quality, citable content — detailed destination guides, original research, unique travel data — earn links at a steady rate without needing to chase them, while those relying on volume-based tactics see diminishing returns.
1. Create or improve your blog forum
Your blog is your primary link-earning asset. Destination guides, trip planning resources, and expert advice pieces — when genuinely comprehensive and well-written — attract links from travel publications, tourism boards, and other bloggers who reference them as useful resources. For specialist tour operators, the depth of destination knowledge you can bring to a blog post is something OTAs and aggregators genuinely cannot match. In our experience, detailed, specialist blog content earns links at a much higher rate than thin or generic travel content on the same topics. Invest in making your best content significantly better rather than producing more content at lower quality.
2. Use guest posting
Writing for relevant travel publications — destination-focused blogs, travel media sites, adventure travel publications — earns quality links while building brand awareness with new audiences. The key is relevance: a guest post on a well-regarded adventure travel blog earns a link that’s genuinely valuable for your domain authority on adventure-related queries. A guest post on a low-quality general site earns little. Clients often ask us how to find the right guest posting targets, and our approach is simple: identify the travel publications that rank for the destination and trip-type searches you’re targeting, then assess whether their audience and editorial standards make them a worthwhile partnership.
3. Broken link-building
Broken link building involves finding links on relevant travel sites that point to pages that no longer exist, creating better content on those topics, and suggesting the replacement. It works well in travel because destination and operator content changes frequently — old tour operator sites shut down, destination guides get removed, tourism board pages restructure. Tools like Ahrefs and Check My Links make identifying broken links on target sites straightforward. The outreach is natural and value-led: you’re helping the linking site fix a real problem while earning a relevant backlink for your site.
Our top tips
Focus quality over quantity — a single link from a respected travel publication is worth more than 20 links from low-authority directories. Prioritise links from sites that are topically relevant to your destinations and trip types — link relevance matters as well as domain authority. Build links gradually and consistently over time — a sudden spike in link acquisition looks unnatural. And track your link profile using Ahrefs or SEMrush to monitor new links, identify toxic links worth disavowing, and understand which content is attracting the most natural links so you can produce more of it.
What next?
If you’d like to discuss a link building strategy for your travel website, get in touch with the Summon team. We work exclusively with tour operators, ferry companies, airlines and activity providers, and we’d be happy to discuss how we approach link building for travel brands.