Overview

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be summarised as all the efforts taken by a website owner to have their content: 

• found by search engines
• ranked high in the search results display 

SEO happens in the front end of publicly available websites. TripBuilder offers some features to support website owners in their efforts.

SEO Pyramid

To get higher website rankings, MOZ created compelling pyramid graphics that depict the various steps in SEO to improve the ranking:

(Source: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo)

It's important to understand that SEO isn't an exact science. Furthermore, every search engine has its own variations in its algorithms to produce its best results. Moreover, the algorithms may change over time and, with it, the site rankings. Therefore, SEO has to be viewed as a dynamic process that constantly changes due to search engines' current algorithms.

Several items support the visibility of your website:

• Sitemap.xml: a file that provides crawlers with a table of contents of a website. More information: https://moz.com/blog/xml-sitemaps-guidelines-on-their-use
• Robots.txt: a small text file giving search engines basic instructions on how to crawl a website's content. More information: https://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt
• Title tags: elements that are clickable on search engine result pages.
• Meta Description: a webpage summary shown as a preview in search engine results pages.

A landing page generally describes the page the search engine links to in their results pages.

SEO for Images

The image file name is an often overlooked but important factor in optimising your content for SEO. Web crawlers depend on text-based information associated with an image, including the image file name, to understand and index the image content accurately.

Naming your image file descriptively, directly related to the image content, helps improve your SEO. For instance, an image file named golden-gate-bridge-sunset.jpg is far more informative and SEO-friendly than a generic or system-generated name like IMG1234.jpg. This descriptive naming practice allows search engine algorithms to better understand the image's subject matter and how it contributes to the overall context of your page.

Consequently, aptly named images can enhance your webpage's visibility in image searches and boost your overall SEO effectiveness.

SEO with iFrame Integration

The simplest and easiest way to integrate your TripBuilder IBE into your website is via an iFrame integration. Nevertheless, crawlers don't consider the iFrame content part of the main page.

To make the content created within TripBuilder available for search engines to crawl, there are three different features you can enable/disable as part of your IBE setup.

They work by creating separate landing pages for their own created content within TripBuilder. For accessing these configs:

1. Click on Settings.
2. Click on the intended Distribution Channel under TripBuilder Distribution Channels.
3. Click on the Domains, IBE tab.
4. Scroll down until reaching the SEO section.

Allow Crawlers to Index

If enabled, robots.txt is generated so crawlers can index the landing pages.
The created robots.txt looks like the following (sample):

User-agent: *

Allow: /sitemap.xml
Allow: /en/travel/places/ (-> landing pages for custom created areas)
Allow: /en/travel/activities-and-tours/  (-> landing pages for inventory activities)
Allow: /en/travel/routes/ (-> landing pages for templates)
Allow: /en/travel/accommodations/hotels/ (-> landing pages for inventory accommodation)
Allow: /assets/
Allow: /pictures/
Allow: /api1/
Allow: /api2/
Allow: /integration/v1/galapagospro/
Disallow: /

Sitemap: https://ibe.whitelabellerswebsite.com/sitemap.xml

Generate sitemap.xml

If enabled, sitemap.xml of the CMS-embed domain generates a sitemap containing all publicly available landing pages. A sample entry from the generated sitemap XML (for templates) looks like the following:

<url>
<loc>https://ibe.whitelabellerswebsite.com/en/travel/routes/diving-in-the-red-sea</loc>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>

Show Subdomain Notifications on Landing Pages

If enabled, the embed subdomains of the distribution channel show a static notification on the very top, saying that the subdomain isn't the actual domain and offering a link to open the same page within the CMS.

SEO with Discovery API

For optimal SEO results, you'll need to create your landing pages within your front end (outside the iFrame). To generate those landing pages, you can access your created content within TripBuilder through our Discovery API.

Time for Results

SEO has proven not to yield overnight results. Like planting the seeds of an apple tree, the seedling doesn’t bear any fruit yet. It takes careful work to keep all SEO efforts at an optimal level to harvest its fruits over time. Therefore patience is needed when rankings don’t immediately improve once SEO measures have taken place. Just follow your defined strategy, and over time the results will improve.