A tour operator can search their own tour name and watch an OTA take the click, and the commission, before their own site even loads.
Matt Davison, founder of Travel Tractions, breaks down why OTAs consistently outrank operator websites and what closes that gap. OTAs win because they answer faster: price, duration, reviews, and FAQs on one fast-loading, mobile-built screen, backed by scale and authority most operator sites cannot match. Matt walks through the audit that shows an operator exactly where their site loses to OTAs today, then the fixes across page structure, schema, content, site speed, link building, and Google Business Profile that close it.
Resources:
- Travel Tractions YouTube channel — new SEO and GEO videos twice a week, including a live site audit the day after this session
Key Takeaways
- Start every SEO review in an incognito browser, searching what a customer would actually type. 03:41 Operators who check their own rankings while logged in routinely see their own site at the top when it isn’t really there. Searching “best [tour type] in [city]” incognito shows what OTAs, competitors, and Google Maps actually surface, and that gap is the starting point for the whole audit.
- Multiple pages competing for the same keyword split their own authority instead of ranking. 14:08 A blog post, a category page, and a tour page all targeting the same search term cannibalize each other. Google Search Console’s Queries report, sorted by pages, shows exactly which keywords have this problem so they can be consolidated into one page per search.
- Check headings with a free tool before touching anything else on a page. 16:19 A page needs exactly one H1 containing the tour name and city, with H2s and H3s that stay on topic. Multiple H1s, a newsletter signup tagged as an H1, or headings that wander off-subject confuse how Google and AI crawl and prioritize the page.
- FAQ content should stay on the page and wrapped in schema even though Google discontinued the FAQ rich result. 18:17 The schema no longer produces the visual FAQ snippet in search results, but AI systems still read and cite that structured information. Most operator sites also carry generic “organization” schema when they should use tourist trip or product schema instead.
- A slow-loading page gets crawled less, not just clicked less. 21:40 “Pogo sticking,” where a visitor bounces back to search results after a slow load, tells Google to rank a site lower. Aim for interaction-to-first-paint under 200 milliseconds and minimal layout shift; visitors tolerate roughly 2.5 seconds before dropping off.
- Google Business Profile has become one of the highest-ROI places to spend time, partly because AI tools now pull answers from it directly instead of crawling the website. 27:00 Set the listing to a real building, not a “point of interest”: one operator lost their listing location for using the wrong category. Add every relevant secondary category Google suggests, and post to the profile weekly.
- Review volume matters more than review response. 28:14 The biggest lever most operators are missing is simply the percentage of guests who leave a review; below roughly 25% post-experience signals a broken feedback loop worth fixing before anything else. Replying to every review is encouraged but not what moves rankings.
- Sites linking their own booking button to an OTA listing are paying commission on business they already earned. 28:56 Matt’s point: if the operator already has the customer on their own site, routing the booking click to an OTA hands over 20 to 30 percent for nothing.
- A regular cadence of small signals to Google matters more than one big optimization push. 35:28 Matt’s framing: treat Google like a baby that needs regular feeding, not a project that gets finished. A recurring calendar task for Google-related updates, whether that’s a Business Profile post or a review reply, is what keeps rankings from drifting down.
- Local link building is a moat OTAs structurally cannot copy. 38:00 An OTA cannot walk into a neighboring tour business, hotel, or restaurant and ask for a mention. Cold email rarely gets a response; phone works better, and showing up in person works best. The ask, after building the relationship, is a mention or link on the partner’s own digital channels.
- Paying $100 to a travel blogger to update a dead OTA affiliate link is often more effective than chasing a major publication. 41:21 Bloggers have lost 75 to 90% of their own traffic and income, making them receptive to small paid placements. Large outlets charge advertorial rates of $500 to $1,500 with uncertain ROI; smaller, relevant travel publications move the needle just as much at a fraction of the cost.
- AI-driven traffic converts roughly three times better than traditional search traffic, even though total traffic has dropped for nearly every operator site this year. 42:26 Every operator Travel Tractions has audited this year lost traffic, in some cases over 40%, largely because AI answers now satisfy searches without a click-through. The traffic that does convert through AI channels converts faster and at a higher rate because those searchers arrive with more specific intent.
- GA4 can answer specific operational questions directly when asked, not just show dashboards. 30:34 Using GA4’s AI interface to ask “what tour dropped off,” “what city drove the most bookings,” or “what pages are 404ing” surfaces problems that build up silently as websites get redesigned and pages get moved or deleted.
- Video functions as a conversion tool, not just a marketing one. 49:36 Answering an inquiry with a video tailored to that specific customer type, rather than a generic one, is credited with moving one operator’s inquiry-to-booking conversion to a consistent 70 to 80%. Unpolished, phone-shot video now performs as well as or better than produced video, since audiences read overly polished footage as an ad.