Having an online presence is mandatory in the travel industry, but according to Toni Stork of the German digital consultant group Ommax, your website is only doing you well if people are able to see it.

When it comes to traveling, even the most reluctant Internet users, such as the Germans, go online.  According to Ommax statistics only 9 percent of grocery purchases are researched online in Germany, but 84 percent of plane ticket purchases and 78 percent of hotel purchases are done online.

“You have to be high up on the search results,” Stork told audiences at Berlin’s ITB Convention. “Especially if you know that 60 percent of people only research one or two brands when planning a trip.”

One of the main things you can do to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) is to have original content.

“Sites like FTI Touristik invest a lot in unique content and it pays off in SEO,” Stork said. “For every destination they have general content, culinary content and activity content.”

But even with original content on the page, Stork says it is important to link to relevant websites on your page to boost your results.

User-generated content is also going to help your page come up more often and higher up.

There are low-maintenance options such as a reviewing system, and other, high-maintenance options, like creating and maintaining a blogger community.

When it comes to paid search results, more is more.

“It is best to have a wide variety of paid search terms and a unique add featuring the text from each different search term,” Stork said. “It works even better if you have a unique landing page for each of the search terms.”

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