Targeting cities or country for a travel site

[marvin]

I have a question for those who run content based travel sites.

Do you find it is better to target cities or countries in your SEO strategies / link building efforts?

I have a site which covers just one country. According to Wordtracker, the expected number of searches for "Country" is about double the expected number of searches for each of the cities combined. The number of competing sites for "Country" is also about double the number of competing sites for each of the cities combined.

In this situation would it be better for me to try to gear my link building campaign towards ranking higher for "Country" or each of the cities individually?

[Brett_Tabke]

Remember that people refine their searches as part of the buy cycle. They will search for United States vactions spots - then hawaii, then maui, and finally hotels and resturants in maui. I think that has to figure significantly into your targeting.

[marvin]

Thanks Brett

Are you saying that one way to interpret these figures is as follows:-

1) Lots of people search for information about my country - Country X
2) About half of this traffic does not pursue their search any further.
3) The remaining half select a city they are most interested in and continue their research.

This would lead me to believe that those who are searching for City A, City B, City C.......etc are more likely to book something through my site or click on an ad than the (much greater) number of people searching for Country X. (ie, what cities loose in quantity of traffic they gain in quality of traffic).

If so, to what extent should this influence a linking strategy. For example, is it best to:
1) try to get most of your links pointing to city pages with the city name in the anchor text (and accept the fact that you're loosing a lot of traffic searching for Country x).
2) try to get most of your links pointing to the homepage with country related anchor text and send the "link juice" to city pages using internal linking (to build a strong presence for Country X and a secondary presence for City A, City B, City C......etc).
3) Go deeeeeep. Try to get links pointing to specific pages about "4 star hotels in City A", "villas by the sea in City B" etc and not worry too much about having a low presence for County X, City A, City B, etc.

Thanks in advance

Marvin

[bilalseo]

I think you have to first decide what cities you need to target and then plan how to lead your marketing campaign. Nowadays SEO is not an issue, but SEM is getting most common tool in search industry. I think better SEM plan will have you at right place and do not need to think alot, but try for best.

Thanks,

Bilal

[idolw]

we go for everything. that helps us avoid getting bored.