Marketing
Experience
Strategy
Invite Us To Pitch
This is where you get your problem fixed. Save your team 12 months of guesswork.
This is where you get your problem fixed. Save your team 12 months of guesswork.
Riviera Travel, a leader in the travel industry, offers bespoke trips, tours, and cruises, focusing on excellent, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Given this, site visibility and conversion rate are crucial. Salience was tasked with improving visibility in key areas, ensuring Riviera Travel remained one of the most visible brands in the business.
From November 2024 to August 2025, Salience aimed to improve organic visibility across the site by 5% for Riviera Travel’s River Cruises and 10% for European tours and Holidays. Similar growth was also targeted for Worldwide Tours and Holiday products. Additionally, we needed to deliver 15 pieces of linked coverage with a domain authority of 60+ and a monthly audience reach of 60 million.
This required a two-pronged approach. Keyword research identified a crucial issue with Riviera Travel’s site structure. After reviewing the site and customer intent, we created a new strategy that led to excellent organic visibility and growth. We also used targeted data campaigns in Digital PR to spread awareness of Riviera’s travel packages. Both approaches enabled us to exceed our goals.
Riviera’s site structure was the main issue. Tour and Destination pages weren’t aligned with user intent, often repeating content aimed at different audiences. Keyword research confirmed this. Customers searching general terms like “Italy holidays” were at the research stage, while those searching “Italy tours” were ready to buy. Both groups landed on similar pages, causing confusion and weak engagement.
Intent analysis revealed two competing pages per destination. Once identified, the fix was clear — each page type needed its own goal. Destination pages would attract and inform; Tour pages would convert.
We began by tackling authority through Digital PR. Using link intersects, we found high-value publications linking to competitors but not Riviera Travel. We reviewed backlink quality, prioritised travel-relevant categories, and created a refined target list. We then focused PR activity on high-volume travel periods to push coverage and awareness where it mattered most.
Our data-driven campaigns delivered strong results. The Safest Holiday Destinations Index generated 172 coverage pieces and 26 backlinks — even shared by the Croatian Tourist Board — earning Riviera visibility in national and travel press.
We restructured Destination pages into navigational hubs linking directly to Tours. These pages offered useful content on food, culture, and attractions while guiding users to key commercial pages. For Tours, we built content around user queries and prepositions identified in keyword research, aligning headings with customer concerns and intent.
The goal was simple: make it easy for users to self-select based on their needs — inspiration on Destination pages, booking intent on Tour pages — while strengthening internal linking between them.
Once the structure worked for land-based tours, we applied the same logic to River Cruises. The same principles of clear intent, improved headers, and keyword alignment were used to refresh and standardise content across major category pages. This consistency improved user experience and created a joined-up content hierarchy across the site.
We had over 20 priority destinations needing rewrites and layout changes. To move fast, we developed a repeatable content template and briefed Riviera’s internal team to roll it out efficiently.
Digital PR presented its own hurdles. Anti-tourism protests made journalists cautious, so we pivoted with a Least-Visited Destinations in Europe campaign — a timely data-led hook that reignited media interest. Mid-campaign, Reach PLC introduced a “no link-out” policy, cutting off major outlets. We solved this by auditing competitor backlinks and targeting active publishers outside Reach PLC, regaining coverage momentum.
By redesigning site architecture to match customer intent, Destination pages became navigational hubs addressing general country questions. Tour pages were rewritten to answer questions for customers more invested in the specific location.
We layered these changes with creative PR, turning sector headwinds into opportunities. When anti-tourism protests dominated headlines, we flipped the story with “Hidden Gems” and “Safest Destinations” campaigns, earning over 70 high-authority links per month.
Fill in the simple form below and our expert SEO team will get back to you ASAP!
