More organic traffic, fewer wasted resources: TourCompass’s path to top rankings in the travel industry
In the travel industry, the battle for customers doesn’t start at checkout. It starts with the very first search. TourCompass has secured a strong position precisely where travelers begin their search. The result is significant growth in organic visibility for the destinations that matter most to the business, without a corresponding increase in the budget.
3%
70%
Visibility on Thailand keywords
Top 10
On all Thailand keywords
36%
75%
Visibility on Costa Rica keywords
The project
SEO
Industry sector
The travel industry
“When, like me, I'm on my own to handle the SEO task in a company, it's worth its weight in gold to have a professional sparring partner where I can get answers to questions big and small and someone to discuss specific issues with. On the one hand, I have daily contact with our regular specialist, and in addition, we have had specific tasks where we have made use of the more technical skills that InboundCPH also possesses.“
Trine Boesen
SEO & Content Specialist, TourCompass
From 3% to 70% for business-critical keywords. Not luck. A plan.
The obvious keywords are already taken. If you master the research phase, you’ll win the customer.
Inspirational content builds awareness and trust long before the customer is ready to make a purchase.
How the collaboration grew strong
01 Situation: Need for a structured approach in a competitive market
TourCompass is an online travel agency specializing in experiential travel packages - also known as ‘soft adventure’ - to overseas destinations such as Thailand, Costa Rica and a wide range of other destinations worldwide. They offer the best of both worlds: the security of a travel agency combined with the freedom of traveling on your own with selected experiences in small groups. Their primary target audience is travelers aged 40+ who dream of seeing the world but want to leave the planning to experienced specialists.
The travel industry is extremely competitive, and for TourCompass’ one-man SEO department, there was a growing need for an external partner for sparring and input. The specific challenge was to create a more structured and targeted SEO effort across destinations. There was a lack of a clear process for identifying, prioritizing and selecting which destinations to focus on based on potential, performance and business relevance.
The goal was clear: to boost organic visibility and achieve better rankings on business-critical keywords to capture potential customers earlier in their research phase.
02 Process: Strategic sprints and customer journey mapping
To solve the challenge, InboundCPH and TourCompass created a structured SEO strategy based on destination-level sprints. The effort was systematically built around in-depth keyword analysis, customer journey mapping and concrete content plans - followed by systematic follow-up, reporting and ongoing adjustments to constantly adapt to performance and new opportunities.
“I've learned that a more focused and structured approach to SEO can make a clear difference - especially working in sprints, which has quickly given a boost in visibility,” says Trine from TourCompass.
By linking the content work more closely to the entire customer journey, we ensured that the content not only drew traffic, but also provided inspiration, created confidence in TourCompass as a travel agency and helped the user in the decision-making process. At the same time, some of the heavy lifting was lifted from TourCompass to InboundCPH, freeing up important internal resources. Combined with a targeted link building effort across markets, the close dialogue and ongoing optimization has been central to creating progress and results.
It is precisely this combination of independent execution and open professional dialog that has made the collaboration productive. Trine executes analyses and content plans independently, but actively contributes with her own input and perspectives - and this means that InboundCPH can function as both collaborator and sparring partner rather than just supplier.
03 Result: Significant increase in visibility in critical destinations
The structured sprint approach has created tangible and documentable results. In business-critical destinations, TourCompass has gone from very limited visibility to strong top rankings. For travel to Thailand, visibility on the selected keywords has increased from 3% to 70%, and TourCompass is now in the top 10 on all related Thailand keywords. The same trend can be seen for Costa Rica, where visibility has increased from 36% to 75%.
“There are areas where it's unlikely that we'll be number 1 on the primary sales keywords, but on the other hand, we can be at the top on related topics in the research phase. In practice, we become more visible to potential customers earlier in the research phase.” Trine explains.
The collaboration has shown that strategic SEO efforts can create significant results, even in a market dominated by large competitors. Going forward, the ambition is to remain curious about new trends - especially AI-SEO - and assess how best to put them into practice to maintain and expand the strong digital position.
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