Why are airline websites not optimized for the keywords "airline ticket deals"?

[Ron Callari]

Why do only OTAs like Farecast.com, Orbitz, CheapTickets appear on the first page of GOOGLE when one searches for "airline ticket deals"?

[Shashank Nigam]

It's ironic that airlines' websites are Not optimized. Since usage statistics speak a different language. It turns out that over 60% of ticket purchases occur through airline websites, just over 25% on travel portals like Orbitz, another 10% through real-world travel agents and the rest 4-5% through corporate travel agents.

Hence, I'd have expected airlines to have optimized the key words! Can anyone speak on their behalf?

[Stephen Horowitz]

Hi Ron and Shashank,

For the most part, "airline ticket deals" is too broad a keyword for most airlines to be interested. Perhaps the large U.S. domestic carriers might benefit, but any regional or international carrier needs to focus on more targeted keywords. Someone searching for "airline ticket deals" may be interested in traveling only to Las Vegas or the Caribbean or Mexico, or perhaps they want to travel to Ireland or England or Moscow. The point is that we -- the airline -- have NO IDEA what travel plans that searcher may or may not have and therefore cannot expend the resources to go after her. Online Travel Agents, such as Expedia, DO want to go after that searcher, because they can cater to her needs, no matter where she wishes to travel. Airlines, though, are much more likely to target keywords that contain relevant destinations, such as "tickets to XXXXX" or "travel to XXXXX". This allows us to focus our resources only on destinations that are relevant to our business.

Stephen Horowitz
Japan Airlines

[Shashank Nigam]

Hi Stephen,

You're bang on target - that airlines need to buy specific keywords like "japan air tickets". I just googled that but still only found AirFrance's ad, along with Tripadvisor, Tokyo.OneTime.com and www.atlas-japantour.com. Nevertheless, I'm sure there are other more effecient platforms leading airlines advertise on for their target communities.

Though, I have to admit that my recent experience tells me that there are better ways to strenghthen the SEO strategies than by buying more Google ad-words. Specifically, I realize that having original content acts as a much greater pull to the site than buying ads. This is for a couple of reasons - since it's not an ad, hence people are more likely to click on it, and also because content adds value to the customers in addition to selling them tickets. I say this because I led the SEO/SEM strategy in my previous company in Boston, where we spent 1000s of $$ to buy keywords, optimize landing pages etc. Traffic certainly rose, but that was over-shadowed by the traffic brought in through search engines on the company-affiliated blog (when we eventually had it!)

How can airlines do it? As I shared with you in me webinar, having a blog, or even a site like Metrotwin by BA helps. The spend may still be the same - eg, $2000 per month to hire an intern/consultant to help with the blog or to buy Google adwords. But I believe the impact will be much longer lasting and translate into greater sales over time. And in these tough times, I think it's important to optimize marketing spend as well.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Shashank Nigam
SimpliFlying.com

[Bill Staples]

Hi, I have consulted for several airlines and travel websites and while I will not be too specific, I can shed some light on why airlines tend not to be optimized for generic terms such as [airline ticket deals].

1. Stephen Horowitz is on the money, much of what I have to add is related to Stephen's POV, which by itself really nailed the answer.
2. Many airlines are split into global (strategic) branding units and regional (tactical) marketing units.
2a. The global brand guys are targeted on enhancing brand awareness and are often tight to brand terms and concepts around their view of their brand, such as luxury/business class. That is not to say they may achieve a lot of traction from non branded concepts, but it’s where their mind is at
2b. The tactical marketers are region and route motivated to the point that achieving a positive ranking in the wrong route direction may still not be great in regard to the revenue they can recognize. A fictional example may be PPC or SEO that ranks their site for "flights from Kansas City to London". If they can only recognize flight segments originating in the UK, this great result may have no use to them, and HQ may not reward them for the positive bookings that their North American colleagues collect from this. So it's a case of..that's cool..I still missed my segments targets.
3. GDS fees may be a cost reduction pain point but certain airlines may have over 3/4 of booking revenues from GDS powered solutions (i.e. NOT their own website). This is changing and some airlines are 90% or more direct bookings, but big boys with global networks and interline heavy are quite dependent on GDS sales.
4. As Stephen says, it's about routes and network. Some airline VPs will love to rank for these less targeted terms, but they want hard booking revenue figures as well, and once they see the promise of a bazillion potential visits = a much smaller number and a high bounce rate, the magic wears off and they lose interest
5. Many OTA's are hard core SEO/PPC players who build their sites with SEO/PPC at the core of their site; less airlines take this approach, They can still be in the mindset of SEO is a nice to have and it's priority is lower than operational issues such as lobbying from passengers and call centre staff about hiccups in the booking process etc etc
6. Some airlines are quite elitist about any overt marketing messages and many airlines find it hard to make a long term commitment to anything conceptually tied to cheap flights.(Page titles on web only airlines is a counter argument)
7. The teams allocated to regions can be truly tiny, with some stations having a handful of staff torn between a million tasks and in the end it's easier to outsource to a less SEO savvy media planning agency rather than run SEO programmes
8. Route targets, the launch of a new route is preceded or followed by a flurry of activity, add a few new routes and the team gets busy quick
9. Comparatively low PAX revenue from online bookings versus offline. Online bookings are generally lower value and leisure focused than offline bookings.
10. Alternatives. SEM needs to bring in segments at less than around 4% cost or it's more profitable and easier to pay agents their commission
11. Email campaigns to well segmented customers can sometimes trump any search campaign (at least in the short term and with factor you are not growing your share of the pie)
12. Ecommerce desk rotations. Staff may only be responsible for their country website for 2 years or less. This short tenure can favour immediate gratification rather than the slow burn to a more sustainable success in SERPs.
13. Nailing first 3 slots for your route pairs can attract way less traffic, but the high booking rate on dominating a dozen or so route type queries can outweigh generics
14. Wish to avoid irrelevant matches that are highly unlikely to result in a qualified customer. This isn’t an OTA issue as much as they service pretty much any flight/route/travel service....and with that..full circle to Stephen.

[Stephen Horowitz]

Hi Bill,

You touched on many important points. Without giving too much away about our business here at JAL, it's pretty much safe to say that 5, 6, 7, 10, and 12 are all challenges that we face here regularly.

The structure of the airline industry itself needs to change.

Without generalizing too much, the truth of the matter is that the airline industry, at least at its legacy-carrier-driven core, is still pretty rooted in 1960s technology. I'm talking specifically about airlines now, and not online agents. When I first joined JAL as a somewhat naive 26 year old, for example,I was absolutely SHOCKED to discover that they still use teletypes.

The newest carriers that sell only or mostly online and that have the luxury of avoiding dealing with the GDS' altogether can truly benefit from SEO, since driving traffic to their website is equal to new customers and new revenue. However, legacy carriers are so tied to the brick and mortar travel agents -- with all of the commissions, sales calls, and hassle that goes with them -- that increasing website traffic and/or sales by 10%, 20%, or even 30% is a laughingly trivial portion of their business.

Add to that the fact that the local sales staff (the ones making all the sales calls to the travel agents) look at website sales as competition -- one more ticket sold online is one less ticket sold at the travel agency. It's easy to say that such an opinion is short-sighted and narrow-minded, but can you really blame the salesman whose livelyhood depends on achieving a sales quota based on travel agency sales?

The structure of the airline industry itself needs to change.

The best example that I know of changing the game is Air Canada. They decided to start selling the cheapest fares only through their website, travel agents be damned. There was a lot of fuss in the beginning, but now over 80% of all Air Canada tickets are sold online through aircanada.com. That's pretty astounding for an airline that's been flying planes since 1937. We should all aspire to be so bold.