How Can Inghams Drive SEO Growth in 2024? [Untapped Potential Issue #1]

This deep dive is part of our Untapped Potential newsletter, where we reveal the SEO tactics we’d deploy to unleash the untapped potential of a different brand every week. Sign up to get more content just like this straight into your inbox every Wednesday.

Inghams is one of the UK’s leading providers of ski, walking and Lapland holidays, and the brand is already seeing some amazing success from its SEO activity.

Each month, the site enjoys almost 150,000 organic sessions, with just over 100,000 of these coming from non-branded queries.

And whilst there have been a few ups and downs in overall organic visibility over the last few years, it’s safe to say that organic is a solid traffic (and bookings) acquisition channel.

But there’s more that Inghams could be doing. A lot more, in fact.

And I’ve spent time diving deep into the site’s current performance to uncover the SEO opportunities that are being missed. These are the things that, if I was responsible for the site’s SEO strategy, I’d be looking to focus efforts on.

Keep reading to learn about these opportunities and how I’d leverage them to take organic performance to an all-time high in 2024.

Don’t know who Inghams are? Here’s a quick background to give you the context you need to know about the brand.

• Founded in 1934, and boasts an impressive 90-year history.
• The brand’s founder, Walter Ingham, took British people on their first skiing trip abroad.
• Providers of ski, walking and Lapland holidays.

First things first, let’s take a quick look at how Inghams performs on the SERPs across the site’s three holiday offerings: ski holidays, walking holidays and Lapland holidays.

Here are some of the top traffic-driving rankings that Ingham’s holds right now for its ski holidays offering.

Keyword	Monthly Search Volume	Ranking Position
Ski Holidays	22,200	3
Skiing Holidays	12,100	4
Ski Resorts	9,900	3
Cheap Ski Holidays	3,600	6
Italian Ski Resorts	2,400	8
Ski Holidays Austria	2,400	1
Snowboarding Holidays	1,600	3
Andorra Ski Holidays	1,300	2
Best Novice Ski Resorts	1,000	3
French Ski Holidays	590	2

And we can see that the site’s ski holidays section ranks for almost 40,000 different keywords, with 1200 of these in top 3 positions and a further 3800 in positions 4 to 10.

Here are some of the top traffic-driving rankings that Ingham’s holds right now for its walking holidays offering.

Keyword	Monthly Search Volume	Ranking Position
Italian Lakes Holidays	2,900	9
Train Holidays Europe	1,900	10
Lakes and Mountains Holidays	1,600	3
Walking Holidays Europe	1,300	7
Walking Holiday	880	7
Lake Holidays	390	2
Solo Walking Holidays	390	6
Walking Holidays in Austria	320	1
Walking Holidays in Switzerland	320	2
Lake Holidays Europe	260	3

And we can see that the site’s walking holidays section ranks for more than 11,000 different keywords, with 250 of these in top 3 positions and a further 700 in positions 4 to 10.

Here are some of the top traffic-driving rankings that Inghams holds right now for its Lapland holidays offering.

Keyword	Monthly Search Volume	Ranking Position
Lapland Holidays	27,100	4
Northern Lights Holidays	6,600	12
Lapland Trips	1,300	3
Lapland Christmas Holidays	720	4
Lapland Ski Holidays	480	2
Yllas Log Cabins	320	1
Santa Trips to Lapland	320	5
Levi Log Cabins	210	1
Levi Ski Holidays	170	4
Yllas Ski Holidays	70	3

And we can see that the site’s walking holidays section ranks for more than 6,200 different keywords, with almost 300 of these in top 3 positions and a further 800 in positions 4 to 10.

I’ve spent time diving deep into Inghams’ current SEO performance, their industry and the opportunities that exist to be able to present a roundup of 10 tactics that the brand should be leveraging to drive further growth in 2024.

Grab a coffee, sit back and learn the tactics we’d deploy to take the SEO success of Inghams to the next level…

E-E-A-T is a big deal, and whilst it’s absolutely not a ranking factor, there is information to suggest that Google is using Quality Rater feedback to train ranking systems (we can assume one of these is the Helpful Content System).

One of the most important factors in demonstrating E-E-A-T is showing that content has been authored by people with experience and/or expertise.

And this means that the days of authorless content (meaning informational content, of course) are over.

When we take a look at Inghams ‘Insider Guides’ content, here’s what we see:

No sign of an author anywhere.

And this, in my opinion, is one of the easiest things that Inghams should consider implementing.

Each of the posts in the brand’s three Insider Guides sections should clearly be assigned to an author who is classed as a subject matter expert in the respective niche. These should be highlighted in author boxes on the page that showcase the author’s name, their job title, profile picture and a short bio.

This could mean experts tho are knowledgeable and experience in ski holidays, walking holidays or Lapland holidays, or they could choose to go deeper and build out an editorial team that specialises even further. For example, they could attribute content as granularly as ‘French Ski Holidays.’

And there’s the perfect space to do this, right there in the sidebar to the right of the guides’ main content.

Here’s what that could look like:

So this is just a really quick mockup I did, but shows how these could easily be implemented into the current template being used. This definitely shouldn’t be a huge job to implement and definitely not involve a redesign.

But Inghams’ efforts to better profile their experts shouldn’t stop at adding author boxes. These author boxes should link through to dedicated author profile pages for each.

Check out my recent roundup of author page examples to get an idea of what’s working for other brands, but as a minimum, these pages should include the author’s:

• Name
• Job title
• Description
• Profile picture
• Links to social profiles
• Summary of experience & expertise
• Links to content published on the site

There’s more, though.

Once author boxes are added and author pages built out, Schema should be implemented to better define these authors as entities.

On the guides themselves, a basic example of Schema markup is this:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "mainEntityOfPage": {
    "@type": "WebPage",
    "url": "https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insiders-guide-best-high-altitude-ski-resorts",
    "@id": "https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insiders-guide-best-high-altitude-ski-resorts"
  },
  "headline": "THE BEST HIGH ALTITUDE SKI RESORTS",
  "description": "Discover the best high altitude ski resorts for your next ski holiday. Inghams has an amazing collection of ski resorts at altitude, from glacier skiing destinations to resorts with stunning scenery.",
  "image": {
    "@type": "ImageObject",
    "url": "https://res.cloudinary.com/dqc68ksfw/image/upload/f_auto,c_lfill,w_590/v1/Inghams/media/13071699/inghams-insider-guide-to-the-best-high-altitude-ski-resorts.jpg"
  },
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Joe Bloggs",
    "jobTitle": "Ski Holiday Advisor",
    "url": "https://www.inghams.co.uk/authors/joe-bloggs/"
  },
  "datePublished": "2024-01-01",
  "dateModified": "2024-01-01",
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Inghams",
    "legalName": "Hotelplan Limited",
    "url": "https://www.inghams.co.uk/"
  }
}
</script>

There’s more that could be added here, but this would be a good start and step up from what’s in place at the moment.

Notice how the Schema is referencing the author and where to find them? e.g. linking to the author page?

On the author pages, an example of Schema markup that could be used is this:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@graph":[
  {
    "@type":"ProfilePage",
    "headline":"Joe Bloggs",
    "url":"https://www.inghams.co.uk/authors/joe-bloggs/",
    "@id":"https://www.inghams.co.uk/authors/joe-bloggs/#profilepage",
    "mainEntity":{"@id":"https://www.inghams.co.uk/authors/joe-bloggs/#person"},
    "isPartOf":{
      "@type":"WebSite",
      "name":"Inghams",
      "url":"https://www.inghams.co.uk/",
      "@id":"https://www.inghams.co.uk/#website",
      "publisher":{
        "@type":"Organization",
     "name": "Inghams",
    "legalName": "Hotelplan Limited",
    "url": "https://www.inghams.co.uk/",
    "@id":"https://www.inghams.co.uk/#organization"    
      }
    }
  },
  {
    "@type":"Person",
    "name":"Joe Bloggs",
        "familyName": "Bloggs",
        "givenName": "Joe",
        "nationality": "United Kingdom",
        "email": "[email protected]",
        "description": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse quis commodo ipsum. Sed nec nibh eget sem egestas accumsan. Nullam egestas condimentum sodales.",
        "image": "https://www.inghams.co.uk/images/joe-bloggs.jpg",
"gender": "Male",
    "url":"https://www.inghams.co.uk/authors/joe-bloggs/",
    "@id":"https://www.inghams.co.uk/authors/joe-bloggs/#person",
    "worksFor":{"@id":"https://www.inghams.co.uk/#organization"},
    "sameAs":[
      "https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-bloggs/"
    ],
    "jobTitle": "Ski Holiday Advisor",
    "knowsLanguage":["english"],
    "knowsAbout":[
      {
        "@type":"Thing",
        "Name":"Skiing",
        "@id":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q130949",
       "sameAs":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiing"
      }
    ]
  }
  ]
}
</script>

Schema helps to connect the dots between webpages and entities, and there’s a big opportunity to leverage this to help Google understand who is behind the content on the site.

Spend time browsing through the Imghams site, and you won’t find a blog. At least not in the typical sense.

Instead, as I’ve already looked at, they use an Insider Guides section for each of their offerings; ski, walking and Lapland.

And I agree that, for a brand with three distinct product types, each with its own market, it absolutely makes sense to do this. This is far more user-focused than having everything under one blog.

But start looking at the site’s URLs indexed on Google, and it doesn’t take long to find this:

The first things that stand out here are that the blog uses an old site theme and branding and that the latest post was published in April 2020.

Is this a forgotten blog?

It definitely looks that way.

Inghams’ site has been through a full redesign and rebrand since this last post, but for whatever reason, the blog wasn’t included in this. But neither was it killed off.

The /blog/ URL isn’t linked to from anywhere on the current site’s main pages. But just because users no longer know it exists, that doesn’t mean Google doesn’t.

In fact, 940 URLs from the /blog/ folder can be found on Google.

It’s also got some level of visibility on the SERPs…

Some of this content, though, shouldn’t exist on Inghams site anymore. Not when we consider that the oldest of these posts dates back to 2012.

With over 370 posts live on the old Inghams blog, there’s a need to undertake a detailed content audit to understand what needs to happen to each of these.

For this, I’d recommend an audit that suggests one of three different courses of action against each post:

• Keep
• Improve
• Merge
• Remove

The reality is that no posts would be placed in the ‘keep’ group here, as all of the content is at least four years old. Even the posts with the potential to rank would need to be improved from both a content perspective and migrated into one of the Insider Guides sections of the site.

Some posts would need to be merged with existing content on the Insider Guides sections, and a lot would need to be removed.

For example, this post adds no value at all, given that it’s a single day’s snow report from 2012 and the video within it is broken:

This isn’t just a case of blogs being live on an outdated template. This is almost 400 pieces of content that are orphaned from the main site, that need updating or removing and some that could be working a lot harder for the site’s organic growth.

And that’s not to mention the 5,000+ broken internal links I found on the site, most of these coming from the /blog/ folder…

There are a lot of opportunities in this one issue alone…

I’m a big believer that URLs should be short, descriptive and free from fluff… and on those grounds, there are lots of opportunities to improve the site’s URL structure.

Let’s look at a few examples of URLs that I would look to improve and what I’d rewrite them to:

Current URL	Proposed URL
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-holiday-types/all-inclusive-ski-holidays	https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/types/all-inclusive
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/accommodation-options/chalets	https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/accommodation/chalets
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/getting-to-resort-ski-holidays/ski-holidays-by-train	https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/by-train
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insiders-guide-best-resorts-for-intermediates	https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/best-ski-resorts-for-intermediates
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insiders-guide-where-are-the-best-ski-resorts-for-foodies	https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/best-ski-resorts-for-foodies
https://www.inghams.co.uk/walking-holidays/holiday-types/lakes-and-mountains	https://www.inghams.co.uk/walking-holidays/types/lakes-and-mountains
https://www.inghams.co.uk/destinations/italy	https://www.inghams.co.uk/walking-holidays/destinations/italy
https://www.inghams.co.uk/walking-holidays/holiday-types/walking-holidays	https://www.inghams.co.uk/walking-holidays/destinations/europe
https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/resorts/laplandfinland	https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/resorts/
https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/lapland-excursions	https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/excursions
https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/santa-breaks/resorts/laplandfinland	https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/santa-breaks/

There are a few things that I’m suggesting here, and these are, by no means, the only URL improvements I’d suggest. There are a lot of URLs I’d change, and, in many ways, this recommendation is to re-look at how URLs are structured as a whole.

Here’s a summary of the suggestions I’m making:

• A lot of URLs are, in my opinion, bordering on ‘keyword stuffed.’ And this comes down to the naming conventions used across folders.
  
  Take this URL, for example: https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-holiday-types/all-inclusive-ski-holidays
  
  There’s no need to reference ‘ski holidays’ three times in this URL path.
  
  I regard this as over-optimisation and would simplify the URL structures as suggested.
  
• Many URLs are also unnecessarily long. And this comes from folder naming conventions that don’t really add any value. I’m a big fan of keeping URLs as short as possible.
  
  For example, https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/accommodation-options/chalets can easily be shortened to use /accommodation/ rather than /accommodation-options/
  
• The Insider Guide URLs need looking at for a few reasons.
  
  If we look at this example- https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insiders-guide-where-are-the-best-ski-resorts-for-foodies – this could be improved by sitting the guides straight into the ‘articles’ folder, removing the unnecessary /winter-insider-guides/. /articles/ could be rewritten to /insider-guides/ if wanted.
  
  The post slug itself doesn’t need ‘insiders-guide’ in it (at the start of the last section), nor does it need to fully replicate the page heading. Simplifying this to /best-ski-resorts-for-foodies makes so much more sense.
  
• One thing I spotted is that, on the ‘walking holidays’ section of the site, the destination pages don’t actually sit within this subfolder. They sit in the site’s root.
  
  Given Inghams has three distinct offerings, it makes the most sense to replicate the same structure across all three, and also, considering that the rest of the ‘walking holidays’ pages sit within /walking-holidays/, it looks like an oversight that the destination pages don’t.
  
  https://www.inghams.co.uk/destinations/italy should become https://www.inghams.co.uk/walking-holidays/destinations/italy for example.
  
• The Lapland resorts/destinations URL sits on https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/resorts/laplandfinland right now, but https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/resorts/ 301 redirects to this. It makes no sense and seems unnecessary.
  
  The destinations page should sit straight on https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/resorts/ as far as I’m concerned, in turn shortening the URL path.
  
• The ‘Santa Breaks’ navigation menu item links to https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/santa-breaks/, but this then redirects to https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/santa-breaks/resorts/laplandfinland.
  
  Again, this feels unnecessary and the recommendation would be to sit the ‘Santa Breaks’ page straight onto the URL the menu links to.

There are big opportunities to improve the site’s URL structure as a whole, and a lot of this would involve rewrites, redirects and, maybe most importantly, creating guidelines for those publishing pages and posts to follow.

The on-page basics, to me, include:

• Title tags
• H1 tags
• Meta descriptions
• URLs

And so often, these fundamentals are overlooked. Yet they’re still so important and form the foundation of a page that ranks well on the SERPs.

Spending time digging through the Inghams site, I see so many opportunities to improve the basics, and this pretty much all comes back to the need for effective keyword mapping.

Every site needs a clear plan that outlines for every page URL:

• The main target keyword
• The intent of that keyword

And from there, it’s easy to ensure the on-page SEO basics are covered.

This means that the main target keyword should:

• Feature near the start of the title tag
• Be included within the H1 tag, and any H2 – H6 tags where relevant
• Be included within the page’s URL slug
• Be included within the page’s meta description (no, it’s not a ranking factor, but these get bolded on the SERPs)

Let’s look at a few examples where Inghams could improve their on-page SEO.

URL: https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/santa-breaks/resorts/laplandfinland
Current Title Tag: Lapland Holidays 2024/25 – Santa Breaks with Inghams | Inghams
Proposed Title Tag: Lapland Santa Holidays in 2024/25 – Book Online from £985pp | Inghams
Current H1 Tag: SANTA BREAKS HOLIDAYS IN LAPLAND/FINLAND
Proposed H1 Tag: LAPLAND SANTA HOLIDAYS
Current Meta Description: Santa Breaks, Lapland/Finland – Treat yourself and your family to a magical break in Lapland, home to Father Christmas with Inghams today.
Proposed Meta Description: Book your Lapland Santa Holiday from just £985pp with Inghams and treat yourself and your family to a magical Festive break.

URL: https://www.inghams.co.uk/lapland-holidays/lapland-excursions
Current Title Tag: Safaris & Excursions | Winter activities on a Lapland Holiday | Inghams
Proposed Title Tag: Lapland Safaris & Excursions for the Whole Family | Inghams
Current H1 Tag: LAPLAND SAFARIS & EXCURSIONS
Proposed H1 Tag: LAPLAND SAFARIS & EXCURSIONS
Current Meta Description: Thrilling activities in Finland/Lapland including reindeer, husky and snowmobile safaris, plus shorts breaks to visit Santa and his elves!
Proposed Meta Description: Browse our Lapland safaris and excursions to complete your break, with reindeer, husky and snowmobile safaris, Santa visits and more available.

URL: https://www.inghams.co.uk/walking-holidays
Current Title Tag: Summer Holidays 2024 | Walking Holidays in Europe | Inghams
Proposed Title Tag: 2024 Walking Holidays – Your Ticket to the Great Outdoors | Inghams
Current H1 Tag: 2024 WALKING HOLIDAYS
Proposed H1 Tag: 2024 WALKING HOLIDAYS
Current Meta Description: Stroll, ramble or stride through the most beautiful parts of Europe this summer. Discover our amazing walking destinations & summer holiday deals.
Proposed Meta Description: Stroll, ramble or stride through the most beautiful parts of Europe this summer on one of our 2024 walking holidays.

Getting the basics right can have quick win results, and aligning on-page SEO with the best-fit keywords for each page is essential.

For example, the current ‘Santa Breaks’ page is optimised primarily for ‘Lapland Holidays’ – which makes no sense given that there are better-fit pages for this term. Then there’s also the basis that ‘Lapland Santa Holidays’ is searched for way more than ‘Lapland Santa Breaks.’ These little wins all add up to big wins.

When I search Google News for Inghams, these are the top results for the last year:

Ok, so there’s some press coverage that’s come in. There’s no doubt that some publications are talking about Inghams.

But even when we go more granular and search ‘Inghams Ski,’ the volume of coverage is a little disappointing:

Don’t get me wrong, any coverage is better than no coverage, but it feels like some of this has come about naturally due to Inghams’ position in the market, that some has been in response to journalist requests, and that very little of this has come about as a result of proactive digital PR. Although it does look like the brand has potentially kicked off some level of activity to support the walking holiday’s side of the business in the past few weeks.

And that’s just looking at this from a PR perspective.

Turn back to SEO, and we can see that Inghams link profile could be stronger. In fact, the site has just 1.7k referring domains pointing to it.

But looking at a link profile at the top level doesn’t really tell us much.

Here’s how these referring domains break down by DR:

DR Range	Number of Referring Domains
All	1,653
DR 10+	1,034
DR 20+	836
DR 30+	680
DR 40+	498
DR 50+	408
DR 60+	290
DR 70+	194
DR 80+	75
DR 90+	26

There are some great links pointing to the Inghams site, but to stay competitive and drive further growth, there’s lots to suggest that a proactive approach to digital PR could be doing SO much more here.

And that’s only looking at the SEO benefit of earned links.

Let’s not forget that digital PR, especially relevant links and coverage, also:

• Increases brand awareness
• Drives referral traffic
• Builds associations with top publications
• Increases brand searches
• Increases affinity with key topics
• Builds E-E-A-T signals
• Drives social engagement

And Inghams is the PERFECT brand to leverage digital PR. In fact, product PR, expert insights and thought leadership AND data-driven campaigns could all have a huge impact for the brand. And that’s not just their SEO performance. For the brand as a whole.

At Digitaloft, we’re no strangers to leveraging the interest in the ski season to earn links and coverage, and here’s just one example of data-driven campaigns that we saw as a big success:

This campaign saw us earn 56 links from 31 referring domains.

The relevancy and authority of these links, though, is spot on. Here are just some of the examples:

A strategic approach to digital PR could be a smart move for Inghams, helping to contribute to organic growth all around.

Oh, and whilst we’re talking about links, there are currently a handful of links pointing to 404 pages on the Inghams site that should be 301 redirected to reclaim the authority that’s currently being lost from these…

Inghams’ Insiders Guide content should be an incredible opportunity to engage with potential holidaymakers right across the funnel and in each micro-moment.

Whether someone is dreaming about, planning, booking or experiencing a ski, walking or Lapland holiday, there’s an opportunity for Inghams to be there and to help them to enjoy.

The Insiders Guides aren’t going to be the route to getting in front of the target market in every micro-moment, but they can absolutely play a role in them to a large extent.

And this means that these guides should be seen as a huge opportunity to leverage SEO to rank for all sorts of queries, not just those related to planning and booking.

Of course, it’s not just SEO that influences these moments; social, PR and other channels play a role too. But when we’re talking about SEO, the Insiders Guides are a big deal.

So when I find content gaps, topics that Inghams should be creating content for (and ranking for) and haven’t done, this stands out as a huge opportunity.

Conducting a bit of quick keyword research, here are some suggestions for content that doesn’t exist on the site right now that would be perfect as one of the Insiders Guides, backed up by an example of the keyword’s current rank and MSV:

Content Topic	Target Keyword	MSV	Current Rank
What is Apres Ski? Everything You Need to Know	Apres Ski	8,100	151
X of the Best Ski Resorts in Austria	Best Ski Resorts in Austria	1,600	49
X of the Best Ski Resorts in France	Best Ski Resorts in France	1,300	63
X of the Best Ski Resorts in Italy	Best Ski Resorts in Italy	1,300	19
X of the Best Ski Resorts in Andorra	Best Ski Resorts in Andorra	480	39
Is Skiing or Snowboarding Easier?	Is Skiing or Snowboarding Easier?	320	N/A
Revealed: The Highest Ski Resorts in Austria	Highest Ski Resorts in Austria	320	36
Revealed: The Best Places to Ski in December	Best Places to Ski in December	210	17
Revealed: The Highest Ski Resorts in Italy	Highest Ski Resorts in Italy	210	22
X of the Best Ski Resorts in Austria for Beginners	Best Ski Resorts in Austria for Beginners	170	28
X of the Best Family Ski Resorts in Austria	Best Family Ski Resorts in Austria	140	100+
When Does the Snowboarding Season Start?	When Does the Snowboarding Season Start?	110	100+

One thing you’re bound to be wondering is why I’m suggesting creating new content when some of these keywords are ranking in second-page positions at the moment.

And it’s a good question. A very good one, in fact.

Yes, some of these keywords rank in reasonable positions, but not traffic-driving ones. And I’m confident that the current ranked page will never rank higher than it does at the moment.

Why?

Because it’s the wrong intent.

Have a look at the page that ranks for those keywords from the above currently ranking in position 30 or lower:

Target Keyword	Current Rank	Ranking URL
Best Places to Ski in December	17	https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/when-to-go/december-skiing
Best Ski Resorts in Italy	19	https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-resorts/italy
Highest Ski Resorts in Italy	22	https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insider-s-guide-top-10-snow-sure-ski-resorts-in-europe
Best Ski Resorts in Austria for Beginners	28	https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-resorts/austria

None of these pages really match the query that they’re ranking for. Not really. Here’s what they should be:

Best Places to Ski in December: A detailed editorial roundup of the best destinations to go for a ski holiday in December

Best Ski Resorts in Italy: A detailed editorial roundup of the best resorts for a ski holiday in Italy

Highest Ski Resorts in Italy: A detailed editorial roundup of the highest ski resorts in Italy

Best Ski Resorts in Austria for Beginners: A detailed editorial roundup of the best resorts in Austria for a beginners’ ski holiday

One of the biggest opportunities in travel SEO is understanding how to use ‘best…’ queries as part of your strategy.

And these opportunities should be capitalised on.

What shows on the SERPs is likely very different to what you’d expect.

Just look at the SERPs for “Best Ski Resorts in Austria” and “Best Ski Resorts in Italy”:

You probably expected to see a roundup of resorts with accommodation available for booking, right?

These are informational queries, and hence why pages like this aren’t ranking: https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-resorts/austria

Inghams should be doubling down on a content strategy that properly matches intent and lets them capitalise on this. Someone searching for “best ski resorts in Austria” is in their dreaming or planning phase…

Inghams’ content strategy shouldn’t just be about creating new content, though, far from it.

Between the content that should be migrated over from the /blog/ section and the current content published as Insiders Guides, there are SO many opportunities to improve the content that’s already live and make it work harder for traffic acquisition.

Let’s use this example to talk through how I’d go about making improvements to help it rank higher:

URL:	https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insider-guides-best-resorts-for-snowboarders
Target Keyword:	Best Snowboarding Resorts
Current Ranking Position:	47

This guide ranks in position #47 for its main target keyword at the moment, and we all know that’s not a traffic-driving position…

I ran the URL through the Surfer Audit Tool and can instantly see that this guide could be improved when comparing against what’s ranking at the top of the SERPs:

Don’t get me wrong, tools like Surfer should only ever be used as a guide and shouldn’t ever be followed as gospel.

But diving deeper into this report, a number of key suggestions start to stand out:

Inghams’ guide is significantly shorter in length than those competing pieces of content that rank in the top 5 positions. And whilst content length doesn’t necessarily align with quality and helpfulness, it often indicates a lack of depth.

Let’s try to break down what’s needed here…

Here’s Inghams’ guide:

Here’s the #1 ranking result:

Whilst Surfer highlights that the length of Inghams’ guide needs to be increased to compete, when we dive into it, there’s more to it than this.

Inghams’ guide rounds up 5 resorts in its ‘best…’ guide. On The Snow includes 10, and Iglu Ski includes 20.

Starting to see where the focus is needed?

Focusing on 5 resorts when top-ranked content is rounding up 10 and 20, respectively, makes it easy to see why it’s ranking lower. And Iglu Ski’s goes further than this, grouping the resorts to recommend for different groups of snowboarders.

Even by spending a few minutes looking at the content that ranks at the top of the SERPs and we can make two key recommendations for Inghams’ guide:

• Expand the number of resorts included in the roundup to 10+
• Group the resorts to include recommendations that are more specific for different groups of snowboarders, as well as an overall recommendation

We also see, when analysing the content of the Inghams guide using NLP, that there are opportunities to better optimise the content based on those that are ranking higher on the SERPs.

In my opinion, tools are great to help you find areas to explore further. And here, we’ve seen how Surfer can help us identify things to look at. However, the best way to identify ways to improve content is to spend time comparing it against what’s currently ranking at the top of the SERPs.

And to ask ourselves if it’s as good.

In this case, it’s pretty easy to agree that Inghams’ guide isn’t as ‘good’ as On The Snow and Iglu Ski’s guides. Whether we take good to mean as helpful to the user or something else. We can quickly identify gaps.

Even by implementing these few suggestions (there would be more), I’m confident the ranking would increase for this page.

Then follow this same content optimisation process across the rest of the guides, making them work harder to drive organic traffic.

That’s some big wins we’re looking at…

Improving internal linking is possibly one of the quickest wins that exists in SEO.

It’s a tactic that you’re in full control of, is easy to implement and almost always has a noticeable impact on rankings.

And this is why one of the first things I always look to identify on any site is whether internal linking can be improved. It usually can be.

For Inghams, this is definitely the case.

Let me walk you through my process to get the biggest impact out of internal linking, using the target keyword “ski holidays” as an example.

This keyword ranks in position #4 at the moment, and I’m confident the site could see an increase here by improving internal linking.

Here’s the URL that’s ranking for the keyword: https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays

I want to find opportunities to internally link back to this URL with the anchor text of “ski holidays” or a variation.

And the first place I head to help me find these is Google, running a search for:

site:inghams.co.uk “ski holidays”

I’m looking to find pages on the site that already mention the keyword and can quickly check whether or not they internal link.

I’ll manually go into these results and look for opportunities.

Yes, I could use a tool here; but I’m just as interested in the context of the internal link as I am the link existing and the anchor text. For example, I know that internal links that are more likely to get clicked hold greater value, and just because a link exists, that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.

Here are 10 pages I found in just a few minutes that internal links that point back to the /ski-holidays/ page should be added to:

URL with Internal Linking Opportunity
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-holiday-types/family-ski-holidays/best-resorts-for-families
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/ski-resort-activities-to-keep-you-busy-off-the-slopes
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-holiday-types/ski-holidays-for-beginners/beginner-skiing-faqs
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-holiday-types/ski-holidays-for-beginners/what-to-pack-for-skiing
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insiders-guide-successful-ski-trip
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insider-s-guide-the-best-ski-resorts-for-groups
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/sunniest-ski-resorts-in-europe-canada
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insiders-guide-ski-touring
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/we-make-your-ski-holiday/breathtaking
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-holiday-types/ski-holidays-for-beginners/skiers-code-of-conduct

This is just a handful of opportunities, I could keep going.

There are a few things to mention here, too:

• The breadcrumbs on URLs within the ski holidays site silo do link to the URL with the anchor text of “ski holidays,” but these aren’t in-content internal links. And for that reason, I’m ignoring them for this purpose.
  
  Yes, breadcrumbs are important, and they definitely help to demonstrate the relationship between pages. But they’re not as impactful as internal links that exist within the body of the content. Remember I talked about links that are more likely to get clicked?
  
• There are other URLs where an internal link to this page does exist, but in my opinion, it needs reworking. Heres one example: https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insider-s-guide-perfect-resorts-for-skiers-or-boarders
  
  The anchor text here is “Discover more Inghams holidays here >” pointing to the ski holidays URL. This is also placed right at the very bottom of the page content.
  
  I’d want an anchor text closer to “ski holidays” and for this to be within the main content itself, not at the bottom as an afterthought.

I can go through keyword after keyword and find opportunities to improve internal linking, and I’m massively confident that taking the time to follow this process for page after page (main keyword after keyword) would deliver big wins.

HTML sitemaps often don’t get talked about. Certainly not as much as XML sitemaps.

But I’m a big fan of getting HTML sitemaps right (and often, this means implementing them from scratch), as they can help to reduce the number of orphan pages on a site, as well as helping to ensure key pages are accessible in less clicks (at least when followed by search engine spiders).

The good news… Inghams’ site has an HTML sitemap in place. It’s just got opportunities to be improved.

If I were being really picky, I’d recommend grouping this into a structure that better represents the site’s hierarchy.

But the main issue here is that there are pages missing.

Examples include:

• https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/deals/from-edinburgh
• https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/deals/from-heathrow
• https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/deals/from-stansted
• https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/deals/austria
• https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/deals/christmas

One thing that does stand out is that these “missing” URLS are all within the /deals/ site section. And one thing I’m quickly asking is whether some of this section is causing keyword cannibalization issues.

Let’s explore this as the last opportunity.

I suspect Inghams is being held back by keyword cannibalization issues, with duplicate pages (with the same or very similar intent) targeting the same keyword(s).

Look at these URLs and the keywords they’re targeting:

URL	Target Keyword(s)
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-resorts/austria	Austria Ski Resorts, Austria Ski Holidays, Austria Skiing, Austria Ski Chalets
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/deals/austria	Austria Ski Deals, Austria Skiing Holidays
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/ski-resorts	Ski Resorts in Austria, Ski Resorts in France, Ski Resorts in Italy, Ski Resorts in Canada
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/deals/next-winter/austria	Austria Winter Ski Deals
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/deals/ski-chalets/austria	Austria Ski Chalet Holidays
https://www.inghams.co.uk/ski-holidays/articles/winter-insider-guides/insiders-guides-skiing-and-snowboarding-in-austria	Skiing in Austria, Snowboarding in Austria

Experience tells me we’re facing keyword cannibalization issues just from looking at this.

But to identify this issue properly and prove my suspicion to be correct, I’ve turned to Keyword Insights, using ‘Austria’ as an example.

To target the group of keywords that the pages above are optimised for, there should be 5 different pages:

• Ski Holidays Austria
• Ski Resorts Austria
• Cheap Ski Resorts Austria
• Ski Chalets Austria
• Snowboarding Austria

Ultimately, at the moment, what we’re seeing is fragmented optimisation. Rather than clear targeting for each page against the keywords intent, we see pages optimised for mixed terms – e.g. ‘Ski Resorts Austria’ and ‘Ski Holidays Austria’ on the same page.

The intent and SERPs suggest these need different pages. The expectation for each is different.

And when it comes to the ‘deals’ URL, this isn’t ranking for the term “Austria Ski Deals,” it’s the /ski-holidays/ski-resorts/austria URL that does.

Finding and fixing clear keyword cannibalization issues would open up the ability for the primary pages to rank; and also resolve the (assumed) issue of URLs switching in and out of the SERPs.

The “deals” pages do have their purpose, at least to a certain extent, but these should be optimised for “cheap” deals, not just deals in general.

Looking at the “Austria Ski Deals” page, we see:

And then the page that actually ranks for this term right now:

I see the place that both of these pages have in the journey, absolutely. It’s just identifying the right target keywords for each page … and in this instance, “deals” searches aren’t this type of page.

We see Crystal Ski’s page that ranks for “Austria Ski Deals” very similar to what Inghams’ is:

Whilst I first suspected a keyword cannibalization issue when I saw the ‘deals’ URLs, missing from the HTML sitemap, this is actually a wider issue. It comes back to “if something doesn’t look right, explore it further…”

Inghams has an opportunity to take the site’s SEO success to the next level in 2024 and catapult organic traffic and bookings to an all-time high.

Whilst these aren’t the only issues that exist, and the fact that those I’ve highlighted aren’t all simple fixes, the opportunity is there.

And I’ve always said that opportunities are there to grab… if you’re not taking that traffic, someone else is.