It’s a great time to get into agritourism with your farm if you haven’t already!
Agritourism is a lucrative sector that’s only set to grow over the coming years: in the US alone it generates a staggering $949 million in sales per year, and globally the industry is set to grow by an impressive 13.4% by 2027, according to Allied Market Research. With agritourism making up nearly 20% of the entire tourism market, it’s clear that the opportunities are ripe for the picking.
So how can you ensure your agritourism business is set up to attract its share of these agriculturally-inclined customers?
We’ve got you covered! In this blog, we’ll dig into SEO tips for agritourism businesses so you can reap the harvest of new customers and help your business bloom.
Make the Most of Specific Events and Seasonal Activities
In the vibrant world of agritourism, every season offers a chance to set yourself apart from your competitors! From flower picking in spring and summer fruit festivals, to corn mazes and harvest festivals in the fall and heartwarming hayrides in winter (perhaps with a warming cup of homemade cider?), there are so many ways to make the most of the seasons—and each of these seasonal gems give you the opportunity to create new content that will attract customers to your farm!
Write blog posts about upcoming events, create calendars of events for your website, and share updates and sneak peeks, along with vibrant images on your website to help attract visitors (and make sure you are updating your Google Business Profile with this information, too).
Do Your Keyword Research
Just like planting the right seeds at the right time of year, choosing targeted keywords is vital for a successful SEO strategy for agritourism. The first step is making sure you are targeting the right keywords, specifically terms related to your agritourism activities, such as “fruit picking in [your location],” “family-friendly farm tours,” and “hayrides near me.” There are lots of keyword research tools where you can check to see what people are searching for and how competitive the keywords are.
I recommend using long-tail keywords to attract both local and global audiences. Short tail keywords are concise and general search terms like “farmer’s market” or “farm activities,” whereas long tail keywords are more specific, such as “apple picking farm near me” or “family-friendly pumpkin patch near X.”
It’s important that you incorporate these keywords naturally into your website copy and blog posts, making sure that it makes sense in context. Targeting strong keywords on your site will help you rank higher on Google and reach more customers searching for what your agritourism business has to offer.
Create Pages for Your Services
This might be my top overlooked SEO tip for agritourism businesses. A great way rank for a variety of keywords related to your services is to create dedicated pages for the different things you offer, such as a page with information about flower picking and a different page with information about corn mazes.
Now you don’t need to go crazy and create 50 different pages for every single thing you offer! You can definitely group things together and combine related offerings on a page. Flower picking can be one page, you don’t need separate pages for the different flowers you offer, and you can group together different fall or winter activities where it makes sense.
But by having separate pages, you can target a variety of different keywords. If you just have a single Home page, it’s going to be much, much harder to have that one page rank for everything from strawberry picking to Christmas wreath workshops (and it will probably have so much information that it could be confusing to your customers).
So create separate pages for your different services to target a variety of keywords so you can rank better and get more traffic, and so you can have all the information about each service on its own page to keep it clear for customers.
Update Your Google Business Profile for More Online Visibility
Your Google Business Profile page is a simple but effective way to attract customers to your agritourism business! Keep your profile up to date with accurate information (especially if your hours change seasonally), and make sure to include contact details, opening hours, and descriptions of your attractions and services.
Also, you should always encourage customers to leave reviews, and respond in a timely and friendly manner as potential customers are likely to read them! Did you know that 95% of travelers read at least seven reviews before making a booking, according to recent studies? So, if you don’t have a place where people can leave or view reviews of your agritourism business, you are likely missing out on potential customers who will skip on to the next place that does have reviews that they can check out.
If you want more information on creating your strategy, I have an entire post on Google Business Profile for you!
Create a Mobile-Friendly Website
Something that you can’t miss when optimizing your website for potential customers (and getting good rankings on Google!) is ensuring it’s mobile-friendly. This means that it’s easy to navigate while accessing using a mobile device, and that all the text and images are displayed correctly (and large enough to see clearly).
As a tourism business, there is a chance that some of your visitors will be travelling without access to a computer, so it’s almost guaranteed that they will be accessing your site from their mobile phone. Their experience of your business starts as soon as they access your site, and so it needs to feel easy for them.
Grab Attention with Beautiful Images
Like colorful flowers in a well-tended garden, great images can make a huge difference to your site! Make sure to optimize your website with plenty of high-quality images showcasing the beauty of your agritourism business and the different services you offer, and always use relevant images that go with the content.
You can also optimize by naming images with clear, descriptive titles, as well as making sure you are using the correct image dimensions and that you aren’t using massive file sizes that can slow down your website and loading speed.
You will also want to think about alt text for your images. Alt text is a short description that you add to images on your website (also known as alt tags). Writing descriptive and concise alt text enhances user experience and accessibility as it describes the image’s content when it can’t be seen, which is especially useful for visually impaired users, as well as contributing to SEO by helping search engines understand what your image is and why it’s being used.
By implementing these SEO tips for agritourism business, you’ll be able to see an increase in rankings on Google and reach more potential customers who are searching for what your farm has to offer! But as always, remember that SEO takes ‘thyme’ before you see results, so be sure you’re optimizing your site well before you’re marketing specific events or offerings.
Comment or contact me with any questions you have or if you’re interested in working together to get your agritourism website optimized 🙂
