CRUISE HOLIDAYS. Sector Report

CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report JUNE 2015 0845 299 7668 hello@insideonline.co.uk www.insideonline.co.uk

Contents 1. SEARCH VOLUME OVERVIEW 2. SEASONAL TRENDS 3. KEYWORD COMPETITIVENESS 5. NUMBER OF KEYWORDS 6. VISIBILITY YEAR ON YEAR 7. SHORT TERM POTENTIAL 8. RATE OF LINK ACQUISITION 9. AUTHORITY OF LINKING DOMAINS 10. VISIBILITY VS AUTHORITY 11. VISIBILITY VS INDEXED 12. UNDERPERFORMING SITES 14. SOCIAL INFLUENCE 15. CONTENT PERFORMANCE CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report

See the world like we do In the world of SEO & digital marketing, data defines us, data measures us and data drives us. We see past the physical appearance of campaigns and look straight to the core of the data to build a view of the online landscape. We wanted to show you a view of the Cruise Holiday market. Having access to data has been a constant passion of ours for years and we have acquired data from a huge array of sources in order to build our reports. Within this report we will share sets of data we have created for your sector and explain the implications of this information on the Cruise Holiday industry. I hope you find the insights useful and we would love to hear what you think. Andy Cooper - Managing Director DDI: 01244 564505 ANDY@INSIDEONLINE.CO.UK CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report

Search Volume Overview We can see that 2014 showed an increase in search volume compared to 2013. Cruise Holidays is a growing sector showing a year on year incline in search volume for search terms. According to The Cruise Experts the UK cruise market is still growing and retains its position as No.1 in Europe. The Mediterranean remains the go-to destination although Northern Europe looks set to become the top choice for cruising. The increase in social media influence, content marketing campaigns, brand ambassadors and fierce competition within the industry means it is more important now more than ever for companies to cement their positions within the search engines. BRAND SEARCHES PER MONTH DESKTOP VS MOBILE SEARCH royal caribbean 135000 barrhead travel 90500 celebrity cruises 74000 Cruise* 60500 msc cruises 27100 iglu cruise 27100 po cruises 22200 planet cruise 22200 ncl 18100 red sea holidays 18100 club med 14800 cruise nation 14800 fred olsen cruises 12100 costa cruises 9900 cruise and maritime 8100 cunard 4400 cruise direct 2900 princess 1900 jetline cruise 1600 the luxury cruise company 70 DESKTOP 52% MOBILE 48% Note: these figures are approximate search volumes taken from Google. *denotes generic searches CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 1

Seasonal Trends The graph below shows how the UK weekly search volume for Cruise Holidays compares between 2013 and 2015. The data has been normalised, therefore the trend lines show the percentage of peak search volume (y axis). The trend lines are designed to give some insight into what has been a turbulent year for online retail as a whole. CRUISE HOLIDAYS SEARCH VOLUME TRENDS 2013 2014 2015 The data above is taken from Google UK search only. The trends take into account searches from desktop and mobile devices. It is important to highlight that the above seasonal trend is just for a single keyword. The trend shown is unlikely to represent the overall search volume within the industry. If the search volume for the keyword above is down year on year, it may be that the search volume within longer-tail queries has increased. CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 2

Keyword Competitiveness The chart below shows how monthly search volume for each specific keyword compares to the organic competitiveness of each keyword. Such analysis helps to identify low hanging fruit within the industry: keywords which have substantial search volume, but with limited competition in the search results. An effective search strategy will constantly review keyword strategy, examining short, medium and longer-term goals. How does your keyword strategy compare? KEYWORDS: *closely related statistics 1. cruises 2. caribbean cruises 3. cheap cruise deals 4. all inclusive cruises 5. cheap cruises 6. mediterranean cruise 7. river cruises 8. last minute cruises 9. jetline cruises 10. cruise ships 11. cruise companies 12. cruise uk 13. world cruise 14. med cruises 15. family cruises 16. short cruises 17. mini cruise 18. cruise liners 19. cruise ship holidays 20. cruise holiday 21. *luxury cruises 21. *cruise offers 22. cheap cruise holidays 23. last minute cruise 24. cruise specialists 25. carribean cruises CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 3

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Number of Keywords When we analyse the websites within these reports we also take into consideration the size of the sites. Some sites rank for keywords because they cross multiple markets, where some operate in more niche areas. This chart gives an indication of how large these sites are or how many keywords they rank for overall. This data is taken from Search metrics where every keyword that a site ranks for is take into account. this is regardless of position or amount of traffic. It represents your current standing within the search engines. CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 5

Visibility Year on Year So what does this mean? Every market has a level of growth and opportunity, here we can see how domains have fared compared to the whole market. A domain may have increased over the year, but if the market has grown by a greater margin - has there been an opportunity lost? ORGANIC SEARCH JUNE 2015 JUNE 2014 DIFFERENCE VARIANCE cruises.ebookers.com 60288 57419 5% -2% royalcaribbean.co.uk 25024 9225 171% 153% pocruises.com 24569 22140 11% 4% iglucruise.com 13731 24073-43% -47% cunard.co.uk 7125 5833 22% 14% princess.com 6722 5981 12% 5% barrheadtravel.co.uk 6417 8860-28% -32% fredolsencruises.com 5941 6788-12% -18% redseaholidays.co.uk 5931 5097 16% 9% celebritycruises.co.uk 5286 6028-12% -18% cruise.co.uk 3577 4020-11% -17% ncl.co.uk 3546 3118 14% 6% clubmed.co.uk 2706 2009 35% 26% cruisenation.com 2629 1766 49% 39% cruisedirect.co.uk 2418 1203 101% 88% msccruises.co.uk 2082 3235-36% -40% cruise1st.co.uk 2027 1840 10% 3% AVERAGE GROWTH 7.11% 2014 saw fewer updates than in previous years from Google, however the updates themselves were larger, incorporating more of the core algorithm. Penguin 3 in October and Panda 4.1 in September were the biggest updates and are the most likely to have had an effect on a domains visibility. Other factors such as site changes (expanding or reducing site size for example) or making significant structure changes are other common reasons for observing big increases or decreases in organic visibility. CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 6

Short Term Potential The graph below shows the number of unique organic keywords each website has ranking on page 2 or 3 of Google (positions 11 to 30). This is one way of measuring a sites short-term potential, as such keywords are unlikely to be generating much traffic (if any) in these positions. With a little push, it is entirely realistic to push many of these terms from page 2 or 3 onto page 1. In order to make the most of the short-term potential each site has, it is essential to know which keywords are ranking just outside of the traffic generating positions. Once this is known, some simple onsite tweaks may be required to give these terms the push they need to begin attracting organic traffic. Alternatively, if all possible onsite tweaks have been exhausted, the primary focus should switch to increasing the overall authority of the domain. CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 7

Rate of Link Acquisition The greater the number of links a site has pointing towards it tends to correlate with the authoritativeness of the domain, which in turn tends to correlate with organic visibility. Therefore, not only is the current state of a domains link profile important, it is also vital to understand who is building new links the quickest (and how they are doing it!). The graph below shows the average rate at which each domain has acquired new links over the last 11 months. The source of this data is Majestic SEO. As a general rule, the larger brands manage to obtain the highest number of links per month due to their ability to naturally gather links. If smaller brands are managing to gather links at a higher rate, it could be that aggressive link manipulation is taking place. CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 8

Authority of Linking Domains In light of recent Google updates, the quality of linking domains has never been more important or under as much scrutiny by Google. The graph below shows the number of unique linking domains each site has pointing to it, broken down by the authority of each linking domain. Such factors carry significant weighting within the Google algorithm, and are likely to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Very Authoritative Domains 70-100 Above Average Domain Authority 50-69 Average Domain Authority 30-49 Low Domain Authority 10-29 Very Low Quality Domains Under 10 The ultimate goal of any link acquisition drive is to achieve links from domains within the 70 100 range. 1 or 2 of these links have the potential to rapidly increase a sites organic visibility. Sites which have a large number of lower quality links are advised to do a full review to ensure none of the links are in breach of the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Action should be taken immediately on any links which are found in breach of these guidelines. CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 9

Visibility vs Authority As a general rule, there is a positive correlation between the number of inbound links and domain authority. Likewise, there is usually a positive correlation between domain authority and organic visibility the greater the authority, the greater the potential the site has to rank for organic keywords. The scatter graph below shows how each site s organic visibility score (as measured by Searchmetrics) correlates with its domain authority score (as measured by SEOMoz). URL: 1. cruises.ebookers.com 2. royalcaribbean.co.uk 3. pocruises.com 4. iglucruise.com 5. cunard.co.uk 6. princess.com 7. barrheadtravel.co.uk 8. fredolsencruises.com 9. redseaholidays.co.uk 10. celebritycruises.co.uk 11. cruise.co.uk 12. ncl.co.uk 13. clubmed.co.uk 14. cruisenation.com 15. cruisedirect.co.uk 16. msccruises.co.uk 17. cruise1st.co.uk CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 10

Visibility vs Indexed All the work that a website does to increase its domain authority is worthless without a well built out site, including a number of different pages to target each of the important relevant keywords and keyphrases within that niche. A high number of indexed pages would generally correlate with a high level of organic visibility as there are more pages that could rank for any given keyword query. URL: 1. royalcaribbean.co.uk 2. iglucruise.com 3. princess.com 4. fredolsencruises.com 5. ncl.co.uk 6. cruise.co.uk 7. clubmed.co.uk 8. cruise1st.co.uk 9. cruises.ebookers.com 10. pocruises.com 11. cunard.co.uk 12. redseaholidays.co.uk 13. barrheadtravel.co.uk 14. celebritycruises.co.uk 15. cruisedirect.co.uk 16. msccruises.co.uk 17. cruisenation.com CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 11

Underperforming Sites Sites which are underperforming organically have an obvious major common factor they have a limited number of unique linking domains (almost a quarter of that of the performing websites). Each of the sites listed ranks reasonably well for one or two of the generic organic keywords, but rarely more than this. In a lot of these cases, organic visibility is limited by poor onsite optimisation and poor long-tail strategies. URL ORGANIC VISIBILITY UNIQUE LINKING DOMAINS DOMAIN AUTHORITY costacruises.co.uk 1462 515 42 planetcruise.co.uk 1405 268 36 cruiseandmaritime.com 1301 504 45 jetlinecruise.com 1007 428 28 theluxurycruisecompany.com 340 187 34 Average of Underperforming Sites 1103 380 37 Average of Visible Sites 526 286 29 CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 12

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Social Influence Social Influence is starting to affect the search engines more over time. We re seeing a shift from basic how many likes does a page have towards engagement with the user. Active pages that promote great content and engagement have higher performance metrics than those who build pages purely with the motivation of having a well liked page. This data shows who has been the best at promoting engagement through the social channels. TOTAL INFLUENCE RETWEETS FACEBOOK VOTES GOOGLE+ STUMBLEUPON cruises.ebookers.com 0 0 0 0 0 royalcaribbean.co.uk 1016 66 930 20 0 pocruises.com 12459 401 9435 2619 4 iglucruise.com 591 117 294 163 17 cunard.co.uk 996 17 834 47 98 princess.com 75221 1386 648 72910 277 barrheadtravel.co.uk 1559 131 914 483 31 fredolsencruises.com 1266 92 212 961 1 redseaholidays.co.uk 1635 765 555 314 1 celebritycruises.co.uk 129 59 2 49 19 cruise.co.uk 12754 4536 7196 1018 4 ncl.co.uk 631 167 447 15 2 clubmed.co.uk 450 0 212 237 1 cruisenation.com 1870 86 1444 339 1 cruisedirect.co.uk 23333 23290 23 19 1 msccruises.co.uk 1019 0 381 637 1 cruise1st.co.uk 1049 159 273 607 10 CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 14

Content Performance Understanding how existing content is performing is an integral part of building an effective content strategy. Here we look at the top engaging content produced by the top brands within this report and measure how effective it has been at gaining social media shares. This gives an example of the type of content which is most engaging to the Cruise Holidays market. When this analysis of competitor content is produced at scale it is a powerful resource for content idea generation. TOP 10 SHARED CONTENT FOR CRUISE HOLIDAYS FACEBOOK GOOGLE+ TWITTER LINKEDIN PINTEREST Your Guide to Anthem of the Seas - royalcaribbean.co.uk/blog 572 0 1 0 0 Total = 573 5 Things You Never Knew About Anthem of the Seas - royalcaribbean.co.uk/blog 497 0 5 0 0 Total = 502 10 Signs Youre a Royal Caribbean Cruise Addict - royalcaribbean.co.uk/blog 243 0 4 0 0 Total = 247 Best Holiday You & Your Partner Will Ever Have - royalcaribbean.co.uk/blog 231 0 1 0 0 Total = 232 Get the Most Out of Island Beach Life on Caribbean Vacations - princess.com 3438 34 23 0 0 Total = 3495 10 Best Beaches to Visit on Caribbean Vacations - princess.com 1820 24 16 0 0 Total = 1860 What We Got Up To on the Perfect Family Holiday - royalcaribbean.co.uk/blog 217 0 1 0 0 Total = 218 P&O Reveal Exclusive Wine and High Street Brands For Britannia - iglucruise.com/blog 52 0 0 0 0 Total = 52 The 8 Best Cocktails On Anthem Of The Seas - iglucruise.com/blog 36 0 0 0 0 Total = 36 Old world elegance in Dubrovnik, Croatia - princess.com 0 111 27 0 0 Total = 138 CRUISE HOLIDAYS Sector Report - 15

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