Attraction pages will be one of the largest traffic sources to the site, especially for new visitors.
Types
There are two main types that we’re targeting in search. Identify which one you’re writing content for as it will affect how it’s written.
- Single places: For example, 'Blackpool Pleasure Beach'. There’s only one Blackpool Pleasure Beach and it’s at a specific location. If the customer wants Blackpool Pleasure Beach, they need to go here.
- Multiple places: For example, 'Cardiff cinemas'. There are cinemas in different locations. The customer will most likely head for the one that’s easiest to get to.
Target Keywords
Search engines have done a lot of work tying their map and business lookup products to local search. For the vast majority of places in any town, we’ll be fighting the search engine’s own content.
Targeting the attractions by name is not going to help us. Take a look at these two Google searches. They’re dominated by the Google My Business panel and paid Google Adwords links:
Paid adverts are always at the top, and official websites are the only ones with a chance of getting above the Google My Business panel. Let’s have a look at two more searches:
Both of these are reasonably high-traffic searches, but Google deems them not to be searching for the business directly, so leaves out the My Business panel. The only difference is the terms “shows” and “visiting”, and these are the keywords we should be targeting and working into our content.
Keyword research on a per attraction basis is the only way to discover what’s going to work and what’s going to help in getting our content ranking highly, but that’s not to say we can’t have some common starting points:
- Background Information: we’ve seen this above with “shows” for Blackpool Zoo, but we can use try others such as “events”, “exhibitions”, “facts”, “history”
- Journey Related: for Blackpool Pleasure Beach, adding “visiting” worked for us. Terms surround “getting to” a place, such as “directions”, “postcode” and “parking”. For some of these terms, it’s an opportunity to convince them away from a car journey.
- Tickets: “tickets”, “prices”, “offers” are along these lines. Some top-line attractions will be dominated by discount code providers, but there is still room here on others. Your website should already have a ranking bonus for the term “tickets” as it’s common to bus travel.
- Opening Times: often a Google My Business listing will be poorly managed and not have the opening times there. Try optimizing content for “opening times” and, for certain attractions, try “start of the season” or “term time”.
- Specific Features: If it’s a zoo, mention “animals”. For the Pleasure Beach, mention “rides”. If there’s a collection of anything as the attractions main selling point, then optimize around that. But make sure to always back it up with a bulleted list inside the content.
Neighbourhoods
Since late 2014, search engines have been going more and more “local” with geographic searches. A website about travel in your area is already highly-ranked for the town/city name, so there’s no need to mention it for individual attractions.
Instead, go specific and work the suburbs into each page. Continuing with the Blackpool theme, “North Shore”, “South Shore”, “Queenstown”, “Hawes Side”, etc. Google knows these places are part of Blackpool so will still count them as part of generic searches, but will also reward pages that feature these more specific areas.
This is especially important for things like cinemas and shopping centres, where the customer has a choice of which one they want to go to.
Event content in mobile apps
This content can also be made available to your mobile apps too.
Including a location
Where possible you should ensure a location is included for the attraction. This will help users to navigate from the attraction listing by tapping the 'Get me here' option. We want people to use buses to get to these locations, so directing people to Journey planning is the easiest method for that.