Link building is one of the most impactful — and most challenging — components of SEO for travel websites. External links from authoritative, relevant sites signal to Google that your content is trustworthy and worth ranking highly. For tour operators and travel brands competing against OTAs with substantial domain authority, a consistent, strategic approach to link acquisition is one of the most effective ways to close the SEO gap. Here’s what works.
What is link building?
Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. Each external link acts as a vote of confidence in your content — and Google uses the quantity and quality of these votes as a significant ranking signal. A link from a high-authority travel publication carries far more weight than a link from a low-quality directory. For travel brands, the most valuable links typically come from travel media, destination guides, tourism boards, and industry publications that Google considers authoritative in the travel category.
Why would you benefit from building links?
Strong link profiles help travel websites rank for competitive destination and trip-type searches — the queries where OTAs and large aggregators often dominate. A specialist tour operator with genuine expertise and a growing set of quality inbound links can compete meaningfully with much larger sites for the specific destination and trip-type searches they serve. What we’ve found is that link building efforts that focus on genuine relevance — links from travel-specific sites that actually relate to your destinations and trip types — produce much stronger ranking improvements than volume-focused approaches that prioritise quantity over quality.
Our recommended link building strategies:
1. Use Strategic Guest Blogging
Guest blogging — writing content for other travel publications, destination guides, or industry blogs in exchange for a link back to your site — remains one of the most effective link building strategies when done strategically. The key word is strategic: writing for low-quality sites produces little SEO value and can actively harm your profile. Focus on relevant, authoritative travel publications where your expertise in specific destinations or trip types genuinely adds value. A well-placed article on a respected adventure travel publication or a destination-focused travel blog can produce a link that benefits your rankings for years.
How can you find the highest performing blogs?
Use tools like Ahrefs or Moz to assess Domain Authority before approaching a site. Look for travel publications that rank well for destination queries related to your specialist area — a link from a site that’s already ranking for “best Morocco tours” or “escorted tours Italy” is particularly valuable for your own destination pages. Review their existing content to ensure quality and editorial standards align with your brand before investing time in pitching. In our experience, a targeted list of 10–15 high-quality guest posting targets produces better results than a broader outreach effort to lower-quality sites.
2. Create your own Infographics
Well-researched, visually presented data about destinations, travel trends, or trip statistics is highly shareable and naturally earns links from publications who reference your data. For tour operators, infographics about booking trends, popular destinations, or travel statistics — based on your own customer data where possible — give journalists and bloggers something genuinely citable. The investment in a well-designed infographic can produce links from multiple publications over an extended period if the underlying data is interesting and well-presented.
3. Be more active on social media
Social media doesn’t generate direct SEO links, but it amplifies your content’s reach in ways that can lead to natural link acquisition. Content shared widely on social platforms gets seen by journalists, bloggers, and travel writers who may reference or link to it. For travel brands, consistent social presence around the destinations and trip types you specialise in builds the kind of online visibility that makes earned links more likely. We tend to see the highest link rates from content that’s both well-optimised for search and widely distributed through social channels.
5. Use the broken links strategy
How does broken link building work?
Broken link building involves finding links on relevant travel websites that point to pages that no longer exist (404 errors), creating equivalent or better content on your site, and reaching out to the linking site to suggest replacing the broken link with a link to your content. For travel, this works well for destination guides, itinerary content, and resource pages on tourism boards or travel media sites. Tools like Ahrefs and Check My Links (Chrome extension) make identifying broken links on target sites straightforward. Clients often ask us about link building approaches that don’t feel like cold outreach — broken link building is one of the more natural, value-led approaches available because you’re genuinely helping the target site fix a problem while earning a relevant link.