Most listeners first discover our tours through a search engine. Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is about getting your tour to the top of their search results. This can seem technical, but you only need a few simple tweaks since we’ve already done the work for you. Every page of voicemap.me has all sorts of metadata under the hood, amplifying whatever effort you make on your own.
SEO has two parts: on-page and off-page optimisations. Google and other search engines look at what’s on a particular page (the title, length, and quality of the content) and rank its relevance for specific search terms. They also look at what is happening off the page, at the number of links to your tour from other websites, along with the authority of those websites. A link from the New York Times, for example, sends a much stronger signal than a link from a regional paper. But you don’t need to get your tour featured in the New York Times for it to have strong off-page links.
Off-page optimisation tends to be more powerful, and we share practical steps below to help with both.
On-page optimisation #
You can’t actually do all that much on-page SEO for your tour. It is an audio tour after all, and the script needs to work for the human ear, not Google’s web-crawling spiderbots. But you can use the fact that every location has its own page, with its own url, to your advantage.
Let’s use our Theatreland Tour with Ian McKellen as an example. You’ll find the cover image along with all the final touches at https://voicemap.me/tour/london/theatreland-tour-with-ian-mckellen. For the tour’s map along with the script for the first location, just add /sites, i.e. https://voicemap.me/tour/london/theatreland-tour-with-ian-mckellen/sites. For the location about the longest running play in history, at St Martins Theatre, add /st-martins-and-the-ivy to /sites, i.e. https://voicemap.me/tour/london/theatreland-tour-with-ian-mckellen/sites/st-martins-and-the-ivy. And so on for every location on the tour.
Each of these urls is its own page and for the right keywords, its on-page optimisation is an automatic byproduct of the way we structure our tours. There are three ways of using this to your advantage:
- Don’t just share the link to your tour’s cover page, with the photo and final touches. If you’re referring to a specific location, share the url for that location instead.
- Use the link to your tour’s featured location to help promote your tour. Listeners can preview the first three locations and your featured location for free, so make sure to choose a featured location that’s an intriguing snapshot of your tour.
- Choose the titles of your locations well, so that they match the script and resemble the sorts of keywords people might use in searches. (Our editors try to help you choose titles that improve your tour’s SEO.)
Off-page optimisation #
Off-page optimisation comes down to one thing, at least for the purposes of this tutorial: links to your tour from other websites. If you have a website of your own, the absolute minimum you can do is add a link from there to your tour. But not all links are equal, and you need to choose the words that point to your tour’s urls carefully.
It’s also a good idea to have the link – or links, pointing to more than one of the tour’s locations – in an article with original writing. Links that appear off to one side don’t work as well. Linking to your tour with an image is even less effective.
But every tour is different and you’re the best judge of what is most popular on your tour – or what your audience might punch into a search engine – and you’re best off combining this insight with our suggestions below.
Practical steps to improve your tour’s search rankings #
1. Create rich content around your links
Google prioritises links that appear within relevant, contextual content. Instead of simply adding a link that says “check out my Central Park tour,” embed links within 2-3 paragraphs of valuable content. Share the story behind why you created the tour, interesting discoveries you made while researching, or seasonal tips for visitors.
Here’s an example of an introductory paragraph from RondaToday.com:
“So, I was asked to create the VoiceMap GPS Audio Guide for Ronda. Listening to me along the way (and also some captivating guitar music from the amazing Paco Seco), you’ll pass breathtaking lookout points including the Mirador de Ronda and the Mirador de Aldehuela.”
And an example from Hello! Tokyo Tours’s blog post:
“Traditionally, people like to take guided tours or explore on their own. These are great options to learn and get immersed into a culture. However, you might not have the patience and time for a guided tour. Or maybe you’re a bit scared to explore on your own. Then why not go for the middle solution and try a self-guided audio tour? We’ve teamed up with our friends from Voicemap and have an immersive audio walking tour where your phone will guide you through the streets of Tokyo! This GPS-triggered audio tour is like a podcast that guides you.”
2. Vary your anchor text naturally
Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink – the words that appear highlighted and underlined on a webpage. Keep your anchor text concise – typically 2-5 words work best. Longer phrases can look spammy to search engines, while single words often lack context.
When you choose the text that points to your tour’s url, it’s worth using the same keywords you expect your audience to use when they’re searching for products like it. Including “self-guided” and the transport type plus the word “tour”, i.e. “self-guided walking tour” or “self-guided driving tour” and “audio guide” also works well, especially for indoor tours or tours of a specific attraction.
But make sure not to use the same linking phrase repeatedly. Mix up how you refer to your tours using phrases that:
- includes the VoiceMap brand, like “VoiceMap audio tour,” “this self-guided tour”, “our/my VoiceMap tour”, or “VoiceMap app”
- describe the experience, like “self-guided walking tour,” “GPS audio adventure”, or “immersive audio experience”
- are specific to your destination, like “Rome audio guide,” “Tokyo walking tour”, and “Paris neighbourhood tour”
Here’s an example from AJ4U.info:
“With the use of the VoiceMap app it happens all (kind of) automatically. Install the app and purchase the code for this city walk in the webshop and follow my instructions as you wander through the old town.”
3. Add educational content and user guidance
Google’s algorithms prioritise pages that thoroughly answer user questions. When someone searches “how to use audio tours” or “GPS walking tour app,” educational content that explains the process signals to Google that your page is a valuable resource. This is where “How to” and FAQ sections come in. Listeners might read about self-guided audio tours for the first time on your website, so make sure to provide step-by-step guidance, address common concerns, and explain how the GPS-triggered audio works.
Here are some great examples of publishers who have included a “how to” section on their websites. Holy Toledo Tours provide steps on how to get started and answer FAQ’s at the bottom of the page, MadeiraXperience focus on the benefits of doing an audio tour, High Proof Productions and Cobble Tales curated their FAQ’s to their specific audience, and That Girl in Victoria provides a step-by-step guide.
4. Share location-specific URLs strategically
Instead of always linking to your tour’s main page, link to specific location URLs when relevant. If you’re writing about the Flatiron Building, link directly to that stop on your tour rather than the general tour page. If you’re writing about the destination where your tour is based, link to the destination page, which you can find by adding the destination name after https://voicemap.me/tour/ for example, https://voicemap.me/tour/paris. If you’re linking to VoiceMap from your About page, link directly to your publisher profile. This creates more targeted, relevant links with higher conversion rates.
Once your tour is published, you can find the links to the locations on your tour in the Distribution tab. Click on “QR Codes” and “Show all tour locations”. You can copy the links directly from the list.
5. Integrate social proof and personal expertise
Build credibility by including authentic customer testimonials and your personal qualifications as a local expert to your site. Your “About” section should establish your credentials and explain why you’re qualified to guide people through your destination.
Here’s an example from Join Us in France:
“Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, tour guide and producer of the Join Us in France Travel Podcast” (This is then followed by direct tour promotion with discount codes).
The most important aspect is to be yourself and include a link to your publisher profile. Many successful VoiceMap publishers like Cobble Tales, Tedd Long, Anne Noble, and Ira from Lost in Bordeaux have built strong personal brands by being authentic about their expertise.
You can use the reviews that listeners leave for your tour on your tour’s description page, under Questions and Reviews. When adding these and other testimonials, follow them up with a call-to action.
“After trying several tour apps, I found VoiceMap to be the most intuitive and engaging.” – Sarah M. Ready to experience it yourself? Start with our most popular Greenwich Village audio tour.
For more advice information on how to link to your tour effectively, including basic technical instructions, take a look at this post on our blog. It also tackles probably the most powerful but hardest aspect of SEO: getting other people to link to your tour, especially large, institutional websites. This article about VoiceMap on CNN is one example. Links like this validate your tour and drive referral traffic, which is more than twice as likely to lead to sales. But they also have the long term effect of pushing you further up Google’s search results than just about any other factor.