How a U.S. Airport Directory Grew Site Traffic by 5,929% YoY
https://www.airport.guide/
Stats
3.8K to 226.4K Monthly Visits
Industry
Travel & Tourism
Niche
Travel Guide
Reporting Date
December 2024
Airport Guide is an online directory of U.S. airports. It organizes airports by city and provides comprehensive coverage of the airport, its terminals, maps, and more.
Despite being online since 2021, Airport Guide’s website experienced minimal traffic over the first few years.
However, 2024 unlocked a new level of visibility for Airport Guide, skyrocketing traffic to 226.4K monthly visits by year-end.
In this SEO case study, we’ll explore the strategies behind Airport Guide’s year-over-year (YoY) growth.
You’ll learn how they transformed their online visibility and what you can do to replicate their wins on your WordPress website.
In This Article
The Catalyst: How Airport Guide Reached 226.4K Monthly Visits
1. New Content Triples Keyword Rankings
Between December 2023 and December 2024, Airport Guide increased the content on its website from 1.8K to 13.2K pages.
This growth was largely achieved by creating a more comprehensive user experience.
For example, each airport has its own landing page where users can find details about that airport.
Over the past year, Airport Guide built out these landing pages to include additional categories, such as:
- Terminal information
- Airlines that serve that airport
- Destinations and domestic routes
- Current weather and weekly forecasts
- And more
In the example below, we can see how users can easily access this information via the left menu on an airport landing page.
Each of these navigation options opens a new page.
In the screenshot below, users discover their parking options at the Cincinnati CVG airport.
Ultimately, this content creation strategy has a two-fold impact:
- Improving the user experience by creating a one-stop shop for all things about specific U.S. airports.
- Increasing search engine rankings by targeting new keywords on each page.
The latter is self-explanatory when we compare keyword rankings over the last year.
Airport Guide went from 42.4K rankings in December 2023 to 246.3K by December 2024.
This equates to a 481% increase in 1 year.
Why this matters:
This organic growth demonstrates the power of a user-centric content strategy.
By understanding travelers' needs, Airport Guide transformed its website into an invaluable resource for airport information.
Search engines rewarded the website with new rankings, while users appreciated a streamlined site experience.
How to optimize content:
Content optimizations are the backbone of SEO. These optimizations ensure your content is search-friendly while also helpful to users.
Here are some tips on how to optimize your content:
- Use content optimization tools to increase a web page’s visibility.
- Understand your audience and business goals.
- Perform keyword research to identify high-value search queries.
- Focus on creating high-quality content that meets user needs.
- Add internal links to assist in content discovery and site crawling.
Tools for content optimizations:
The All in One SEO (AIOSEO) Writing Assistant is a new WordPress tool for content optimizations.
It provides real-time feedback regarding your content and how it compares to the competition.
For example, the Overview dashboard shows how your content scores compared to websites ranking in the top 10 search positions.
It also provides related keywords and usage insights to increase your web page’s visibility in search results.
Ultimately, Writing Assistant helps you streamline keyword and competitor research to optimize your content for higher rankings.
It’s user-friendly and intuitive and helps you improve your organic search performance.
2. Google Rewards Comprehensive Topic Coverage
As we just saw, Airport Guide focused on providing users with all the information they need regarding U.S. airports.
Search engines picked up on these efforts and rewarded Airport Guide with thousands of new rankings in Google People Also Ask (PAA).
This section of the SERP provides users with questions related to their query.
Users can expand these questions to reveal the answers, as shown below.
People Also Ask rankings are highly coveted by website owners due to their visibility in SERPs.
They appear near the top of search results and generate high clickthrough rates (CTR).
And at the end of 2024, Airport Guide got many of them.
They received about 7.9K PAA rankings in December alone.
As for how they got them, besides providing a comprehensive topic coverage, Airport Guide was also strategic with its optimizations.
They weaved questions throughout their content to mimic natural language and address common user queries.
For example, on this page, we see how Airport Guide optimized its H2 by asking, “What airlines serve Terminal 5?”.
Search engines can easily read subheadings and used this H2 and the body copy to generate the PAA result we saw earlier.
Airport Guide also includes FAQs on certain pages, like the Parking Guides.
This format works particularly well in PAA because it follows the same question-answer model.
My one feedback for Airport Guide?
Include FAQ schema on pages where these questions appear.
Schema markup helps search engines understand your web page more easily.
Search engines can also use this information to generate SERP features, like PAA rankings, boosting your visibility in search results.
Why this matters:
The increase in PAA rankings underscores the importance of creating content that directly addresses user questions.
By weaving relevant questions into their content, Airport Guide effectively taps into user intent and provides valuable information in a format that Google readily recognizes and rewards.
How to rank in Google People Also Ask:
This article shows you how to optimize for People Also Ask.
Here’s a quick recap of its teachings:
- Use the proper SEO tools to streamline your optimizations.
- Conduct keyword research to locate question keywords.
- Create user-centric content with comprehensive topic coverage.
- Implement FAQ schema on the appropriate pages.
- Analyze competitor PAA rankings for further insights.
Tools for PAA rankings:
The AIOSEO Schema Generator allows you to easily add schema markup to your website. You can choose FAQ schema from the catalog, and the plugin will format it properly for search engines.
AIOSEO also offers FAQ blocks, which you can add directly to the post or page you’re working on.
Like the Schema Generator, these blocks will implement FAQ schema for you.
3. Internal Links and Breadcrumbs Earn Sitelinks
In 2024, Airport Guide earned another highly sought-after SERP feature: Google sitelinks.
Sitelinks are links in search results that appear under a listing.
They appear on a per-search basis when search engines think they’ll be helpful for the user.
This means you can’t force search engines to show them, but there are a few best practices Airport Guide uses to get them:
- Link internally across pages to aid in content discovery.
- Use descriptive anchor text for your internal links.
- Use a logical URL structure to showcase your site hierarchy.
- Ensure your navigation menu matches your page structure.
- Implement breadcrumbs on your web pages (example shown below).
These optimizations proved fruitful, earning Airport Guide 2.6K rankings with sitelinks by December 2024.
Why this matters:
The acquisition of Google sitelinks represents a significant milestone for Airport Guide.
Sitelinks enhance your website's visibility in search results while providing a more convenient way for users to navigate to specific pages.
By linking across its website and showcasing the depth of its content, Airport Guide has improved its credibility and user engagement.
How to get sitelinks:
This article discusses how to get sitelinks for your website.
It includes the earlier best practices by Airport Guide and the following optimizations:
- Make page titles and subheadings informative and descriptive.
- Ensure that the anchor text of your internal links accurately reflects the linked page.
- Avoid excessive link repetitions in your content.
Tools for sitelinks:
Breadcrumb plugins make it easy to add and show breadcrumbs on WordPress.
With AIOSEO, you’ll get full control over how they’re displayed. Plus, the plugin adds the schema markup automatically for you.
Standout SEO Wins
Before we address how to replicate Airport Guide's growth on your website, let's review a final winning SEO strategy:
Self-Referencing Canonical Tags Prevent Duplicate Content Issues
Canonical tags tell search engines which URL is your preferred version of a page.
This implementation can be particularly useful when you have multiple URLs with the same or similar content. (Think eCommerce pages that have different pathways to reach the same product or a web page with both an HTTP and HTTPS version.)
Without a canonical tag, search engines will determine which page to serve in search results.
And it might not be the one you want to rank.
To avoid any confusion, a canonical URL tells search engines “This is the page I want you to rank and serve.”
And a self-referencing canonical tag simply refers back to the page itself.
For example, in the screenshot below, we see how the URL is for the KATL international terminal. We also see that the canonical tag is for the same URL.
This means the canonical tag references itself.
Note: The above screenshot was taken using the All in One SEO Analyzer by AIOSEO. This free Chrome extensions allows you to analyze websites in seconds.
Ultimately, self-referencing canonicals ensure there is no room for confusion from search engines.
Google's John Mueller also advises using them as a standard SEO best practice.
Tool: You can customize and edit canonical URLs easily in the AIOSEO settings.
Takeaways
You've learned how Airport Guide grew their traffic, but what about yours?
Let’s see how you can leverage their strategies to increase your website’s visibility.
Top 3 Strategies to Emulate
- Create user-centric content. Effective content creation is an integral component of any successful SEO strategy. Your audience should be at the forefront of your efforts, prioritizing their needs and interests. You can use keyword research to understand their questions, pain points, and information-seeking behaviors. These insights will empower you to tailor your content to their needs, ensuring your content becomes a valuable resource.
- Provide in-depth topic coverage. Go beyond surface-level information and dive deep into the complexities of your chosen topic. This comprehensive approach allows you to address all facets of your niche, serving users and building topical authority. It's also an excellent way to demonstrate Google E-E-A-T, which shows you're a trustworthy source on a specific topic.
- Optimize for SERP features. Keyword optimizations are the backbone of on-page SEO, but don't forget to optimize your SERP listings, too. These optimizations require a more strategic and, at times, more technical approach. For example, adding schema markup to your website is one of the best ways to earn SERP features. Schema markup helps search engines understand your content and generate rich snippets. You can also use breadcrumbs and logical URL structures to earn Google sitelinks.
Bottom 3 Strategies to Reconsider
- Not implementing schema markup. Despite Airport Guide's recent organic growth, its technical SEO could be improved. Most notably, it lacks schema markup. Schema markup lives within the HTML of your website. It communicates important details about your content to search engines in a way that's easy for them to understand. Using it on your web pages can improve search rankings and help search engines generate SERP features. For your website, I'd recommend using a schema generator plugin to add it to your site. It doesn't require coding, and the plugin formats it properly for Google.
- Ignoring image SEO. Image SEO is the practice of optimizing your images for search engines. It includes using keyword-rich image file names, descriptive alt text, and more. And while Airport Guide doesn't really optimize its images, that doesn't mean you should skip it too. Image SEO can set you apart from the competition, giving your website the boost it needs to outrank competitors. It can also help you rank in Google Images, where there are over 1 billion searches every day. Plus, it's super easy to do with an image SEO plugin like AIOSEO.
- Exceeding metadata character limits. Some of Airport Guide's metadata exceeds SERP character limits. This leads to truncation in search results, which isn't an ideal user experience. You should aim to keep SEO titles between 50–60 characters and meta descriptions around 150–160 characters. These limits ensure optimal use of the space while allowing for complete metadata in SERPs. To check your metadata before publishing, you can use a SERP preview tool. These tools show how your listing looks in search results, allowing you to tweak it for maximum efficacy.
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Unlock Greater Online Visibility With AIOSEO
Airport Guide's growth strategies aren't rocket science, but they do take time.
And when you're running a business, we know that's a resource you're short on.
That's why All in One SEO was created with business owners in mind.
AIOSEO is the best WordPress plugin for SEO. It has over 3 million active users and thousands of 5-star reviews.
AIOSEO equips you with user-friendly tools that make SEO fast and easy. You’ll get streamlined optimization recommendations, real-time feedback, and comprehensive performance metrics. This puts all your most important SEO insights in one place, empowering you to make the right optimizations for your website and business.
Here are a few customer-favorite tools:
- Cornerstone Content: Mark your most important pages as cornerstone content to make internal linking a breeze. This tool works with Link Assistant to streamline your link-building strategy.
- Writing Assistant: Connect your SEOBoost account to AIOSEO to get content optimization suggestions directly in the WordPress editor. You’ll get real-time feedback to improve your content’s visibility in search engines.
- Rich Snippets Schema: Win more rich results with AIOSEO’s user-friendly schema generator. Just pick the schema type you want, and we’ll format the structured data properly for Google.
- FAQ Blocks: Add FAQs to your content to increase the likelihood of appearing in Google’s People Also Ask box. These results help boost brand awareness and increase clickthrough rates.
- Breadcrumbs: Create a breadcrumb trail that shows users where they are on your site in relation to the homepage. You can customize the look and show them exactly where you want on your site.
- Search Statistics: Track your website’s organic performance with comprehensive and easy-to-understand reports. Search Statistics helps you monitor keyword rankings and understand the effectiveness of your SEO over time.
