We've evaluated a litany of SEO metrics to establish strengths, weaknesses, and opportunity gaps. Then we turned our data into actionable SEO strategies essential for destination marketing.
Our research encompassed 221 US city websites and yielded an immense amount of highly valuable data. To simplify our findings, we leveraged complex formulas to give these websites the following scores:
Domain Authority (DA) is a score that measures the strength of a domain or URL. We determine that score by evaluating the domain or URL’s linking root domains and the number of total links. The resulting score is less a measurement of SEO strength and more of a metric that weighs your website against the strength of other websites.
It follows that the website with the highest DA score is more likely to rank higher in the search engine results page. This is because higher scores mean more quality backlinks, which lend your site more credibility in the eyes of the search engines.
Through our research, we calculated the average DA score for city marketing niche, making it crystal clear what number you must beat in order to outpace the competition.
We used a combination of Citation Flow and Trust Flow to compile DA scores and find trends.
Citation Flow, a trademark of Majestic, is a score between 0-100 that helps measure the link equity - or "power" - a website or link carries. It represents an evolutionary leap from the old metric, ACRank, and predicts how influential a URL is based on the number of sites that link to it. Links are not all created with equal weight, and because a strong link will have a relatively stronger influence on URLs, Citation Flow is based on stronger, more iterative mathematical logic than the old metric of ACRank.
Also a trademark of Majestic, Trust Flow is a quality-based score between 0-100 and is used in conjunction with Citation Flow. Majestic collated many trusted seed sites based on a manual review of the web, a process which forms the foundation of Majestic Trust Flow. Sites closely linked to a trusted seed site have higher scores, whereas sites that may have some questionable links have lower scores.
Together, the Citation Flow and Trust Flow form the Majestic Flow Metrics algorithm.
(score range is 0-100, the higher the score the better)
Winners | Losers | ||||
Top 1 | gohawaii.com | 65.0 | Bot 1 | thisiseverett.com | 12.5 |
Top 2 | choosechicago.com | 62.5 | Bot 2 | cwcinlandempire.org modestocaonline.com | 13.5 |
Top 3 | travelportland.com denver.org visitphilly.com | 62.0 | Bot 3 | oceanside.com | 14.0 |
Chart:
Figure 1: Domain Authority of US city websites.
gohawaii.com
choosechicago.com
You might have noticed that the top cities are also some of the most popular cities in the country, which leads to the obvious conclusion that a city’s popularity is solely controlled by its DA score. I mean, no one ever heard of Portland before the Internet.
Ah, if it were only that simple. The average DA score for the 221 city websites is 46.324. The majority of the 221 cities scored a 30 or higher. Only 13 city websites achieved a DA score lower than 30. In comparing the DA scores with the most visited cities in the US in 2017, we found that almost all the most visited cities had a stronger DA score than average.
There are a few exceptions, however. The relatively small cities of Richmond, CA and Lancaster, CA scored a 33,5 and a 39 respectively. Richmond is home to a little over 100,000 people, and Lancaster has 156,000.
visitrichmondca.com
destinationlancasterca.org
The answer is pretty straightforward. Raising your DA score greatly influences your search engine ranking. The figure below shows a clear correlation between Domain Authority score and Search Visibility score, proving again just how huge of an impact backlinks have on the amount of traffic and ranked keywords for city websites.
Chart:
Figure 2: Domain Authority and Search Visibility comparison.
We cannot stress enough how vital quality backlinks are to your DA score. So when trying to improve yours, evaluate your website’s backlinks for quality. If you find that many of your backlinks come from less than credible sources, work with your marketing team to put your URL in the hands of better, more credible websites. Get backlinks from relevant websites with high DA scores of their own.
If someone audited your site’s SEO, would they find a clean, error-free technical infrastructure? Or would they find broken links and unorganized metadata? Precise technical SEO is crucial for high DA scores. And don’t forget to build strong internal linking.
Content low on good keywords can affect a DA score. So can content stuffed with too many keywords. It’s also smart to diversify your content. Don’t harp on just one subject. Regularly add useful, engaging, and informative content on a variety of topics. And make sure it’s shareable.
A website’s Search Visibility (SV) score is the percentage of clicks it receives due to its search engine ranking among other websites from our research (competition). It determines how each city website is organically ranked, as well as the results of any Adwords campaigns, and how much organic and paid traffic they receive.
Two major components of your SV score are organic rankings and pay-per-click advertising, which can boost website traffic and conversion opportunities through keyword rankings. To maximize their impact, both organic rankings and PPC content should be high quality and built around niche concepts and phrases that website target audience use or search for.
(score range is 0-100, the higher the score the better)
Winners | Losers | ||||
Top 1 | nycgo.com | 66.6 | Bot 1 | exploreelkgrove.com modestocaonline.com | 0.01 |
Top 2 | gohawaii.com | 66.3 | Bot 2 | oceanside.com | 0.02 |
Top 3 | washington.org | 56.5 | Bot 3 | visitcarrollton.com | 0.04 |
Chart:
Figure 3: Search Visibility of US city websites.
nycgo.com
washington.org
Yes, the gap between the top and bottom websites is massive. This is because the city websites maintain large differences in traffic size and number of ranked keywords. The bottom websites, as you might have guessed, receive incredibly low amounts of traffic.
Some cities such as New York and Los Angeles will always garner large swaths of traffic. Competing with them is nearly impossible without a huge offline promotion. But there are opportunities for websites with low SV scores to increase traffic, namely: building a strong digital city marketing strategy and investing in offline promotions.
Furthermore, the correlation between Search Visibility Score and DA Score is clear. The bottom websites have very low DA scores, and the top websites have very high DA scores.
exploreelkgrove.com
While SEO can take months to see a return, paid advertising can quickly and significantly affect the Search Visibility score. Since organic traffic depends directly on the DA score, the only way to achieve a near-immediate improvement to SV score is by promoting a city website through ads.
For example, experiencescottsdale.com has an average DA score (47.5), but its SV score (23.459) is much higher than average.
experiencescottsdale.com
Thus, if you want to improve your Search Visibility fast, implement paid promotion. But don’t neglect SEO. While paying for traffic can provide immediate gain, good SEO will bear fruit long after a promotion has ended.
The On-page SEO score reflects how well meta tags, headings, content, and page loading speed are optimized. These key metrics are strong indicators of your competitiveness in Google, and websites optimized to Google’s liking are more likely to rank higher.
The website title tag is by far the most important website optimization element. A title tag should be short, yet descriptive enough for visitors to identify you and your business. Since title tags are the first element search engines see and index, they carry tremendous value. After all, one title tag is competing with thousands of others, so it not only has to be attractive to search engines, it must also appeal to users and entice them to further exploration.
The meta description should include a brief description of your website, focusing on the areas and services your business specializes in. And because meta descriptions pop up under a site’s search engine listing, try to think of them as small snippets of content. When a user scrolls through search engine results, your meta description can act as a selling point by grabbing their intention, addressing their query, and whetting their palette. But users might dismiss your website if the meta description is too generic or written poorly.
Good On-page SEO shows visitors what you want them to see, and guides visitors where you want them to go. This is accomplished in part by emphasizing certain areas of your website through various HTML tags, such as header tags [h1] [h2] [h3], Bold [strong], and Italic [em]. These tags tell search engines to consider the content within the tags important.
A page’s main body content should provide users with capacious and comprehensive information. Therefore, it is vital for you to create unique content targeted at a specific audience. Headings and pictures alone will not win over the search engines.
Page speed influences visitor behavior and search engine position, so compress your images, improve your hosting plan, and do whatever else you have to get those numbers down.
(score range is 0-100, the higher the score the better)
Winners | Losers | ||||
Top 1 | visitwichita.com shreveport-bossier.org visitfortwayne.com | 96.2 | Bot 1 | visitjackson.com | 25.6 |
Top 2 | newport-news.org catchdesmoines.com sunny.org | 96.0 | Bot 2 | boise.org | 28.8 |
Top 3 | visitspokane.com | 95.8 | Bot 3 | cwcinlandempire.org | 35.0 |
Chart:
Figure 4: On-page SEO of US city websites.
visitwichita.com
shreveport-bossier.org
visitfortwayne.com
An average On-page SEO score of 75.240 is pretty great, and only 14 sites have a score below 50. It follows that most city websites care about thoughtful, well-formatted titles, descriptions, H1 heading presence, content, and page loading speed.
The On-page SEO score directly impacts the number of ranked keywords and organic traffic, because the more your site is optimized for users (and search engine robots) the higher it will rank in the search engine results.
To put these insights into perspective, just look at Oklahoma City’s website, travelok.com. It has an On-page SEO Score of 95 and is ranked organically by 107,799 keywords, meaning it should rank pretty high ... and would you look at that! It currently maintains eighth place in the rankings of best websites (by the number of organic keywords), right after Philadelphia, San Diego, and Chicago.
travelok.com
visitphilly.com
sandiego.org
The figure below depicts the influence of on-page optimization on search visibility (aka the amount of traffic and ranked keywords). While there is a clear dependence, one major defect is that popular city websites like New York City receive large amounts of traffic and rank for many keywords simply because they are very popular destinations.
Nevertheless, there is a visible score dependence, so it's safe to say that SEO optimization levels directly affect a website’s traffic amount and ranked keywords.
Chart:
Figure 5: Search Visibility and On-page SEO comparison.
So when promoting a city website that lacks intrinsic popularity, it is crucial to emphasize SEO in order to drive traffic.
The Mobile Optimization (MO) score reflects both mobile friendliness and mobile speed. A mobile-friendly website is one which displays correctly on mobile and hand-held devices, such as an iPhone, Android, or Blackberry, as well as iPads and tablets. Also known as responsive web design, these mobile-friendly websites “respond” to any device or display, making for a streamlined web-viewing experience.
Earlier this year Google rolled out the mobile-first indexing, meaning that Google will first use the mobile version of the website for indexing and ranking.
And since Google wants to provide its users with the best experience, they rank websites based on how mobile-friendly they are. The mobile experience of your website is now a key factor in this evaluation.
(score range is 0-100, the higher the score the better)
Winners | Losers | ||||
Top 1 | visitknoxville.com visitmilwaukee.org | 87.5 | Bot 1 | visitglendale.com | 33.5 |
Top 2 | explorewesternmass.com minneapolis.org experiencegr.com | 86.5 | Bot 2 | highpoint.org | 35.0 |
Top 3 | newport-news.org | 86.0 | Bot 3 | visitrenotahoe.com | 45.5 |
Chart:
Figure 6: Mobile Optimization of US city websites.
visitknoxville.com
visitmilwaukee.org
Our research reveals that the average MO score just isn’t good enough to provide users with the best mobile experience. And while the importance of mobile optimization has been widely understood for some time (In 2018, 52.2% of all worldwide online traffic was generated through mobile phones), even some of the top city sites still have low MO scores.
Just look at:
discoverlosangeles.com
What’s even more concerning is that the tourism market targets users who typically rely on their mobile devices while traveling.
The overall rank score combines Domain Authority, On-page (SEO) optimization, and Mobile Optimization.
(score range is 0-100, the higher the score the better)
Winners | Losers | ||||
Top 1 | sunny.org | 78.7 | Bot 1 | cwcinlandempire.org | 32.7 |
Top 2 | visitknoxville.com | 78.3 | Bot 2 | visittyler.com | 37.7 |
Top 3 | bostonusa.com | 78.1 | Bot 3 | thisiseverett.com | 39.5 |
Chart:
Figure 7: Overall ranking of US city websites.
sunny.org
bostonusa.com
The research shows that the most popular cities don’t necessarily achieve top OR scores. This is because their on-page SEO and mobile optimization are average, if not below average.
The table below displays the scores of our winners. While they all have very low Search Visibility scores (meaning they lack significant traffic and high search engine positions in comparison with sites like washington.org, gohawaii.com, nycgo.com), each excelled in optimizing their websites for users and search engine robots.
Overall Rank (OR) | Mobile Optimization (MO) | Domain Authority (DA) | Search Visibility (SV) | On-page SEO | ||
#1 | sunny.org | 78.667 | 81.00 | 59.0 | 15.75 | 96.00 |
#2 | visitknoxville.com | 78.333 | 87.50 | 55.5 | 5.45 | 92.00 |
#3 | bostonusa.com | 78.133 | 81.00 | 60.0 | 9.78 | 93.40 |
In addition to our scorecard, we researched a few more metrics that you might find useful:
An organic keyword is a keyword used to attract free traffic through SEO. Organic keywords contrast with PPC keywords, which are bid on via paid search marketing campaigns. Organic keywords research identifies how many keywords are ranked organically.
By determining what keyword searches are most relevant to your business's offerings, you can bid on where to place your ads in the search results for relevant keywords. For example, if you sell footwear, you can ensure that people searching for keywords like "sneakers" or "women's boots" see your advertisements.
Winners | Losers | ||||
Top 1 | nycgo.com | 297,711 | Bot 1 | exploreelkgrove.com | 83 |
Top 2 | discoverlosangeles.com | 205,695 | Bot 2 | modestocaonline.com | 103 |
Top 3 | washington.org | 132,562 | Bot 3 | oceanside.com | 229 |
Top 1 | gohawaii.com | 89,461 |
Top 2 | experiencescottsdale.com | 36,909 |
Top 3 | lafayettetravel.com | 21,559 |
We don’t have statistics for low scoring websites because many city websites don’t use paid ads.
Charts:
Figure 8: Organic keywords of US city websites.
Figure 9: Paid keywords of US city websites.
lafayettetravel.com
Our research into organic keywords shows that a sizable number of city websites are ranked with a small number of keywords. On the flip side, half of the websites ranked up to 10,000 keywords. The best-ranked website is nycgo.com, which comes in 297,711 keywords (WOW!). To put this into perspective, the NYC website eclipses other city websites to such a degree that it has twice as many organic keywords and ranks as the third top website of Washington, DC.
Our research into paid keywords concludes that only half of the destination websites actually engage in paid advertising with Google Ads. It’s a mistake to underestimate the benefits of a paid advertising strategy, as Google Ads will help increase your city’s brand awareness while marketing and remarketing to high-quality audiences. Plus, with paid promotion you’re able to see results as soon as you configure the ads. Just look to top city websites like Seattle, WA, Indy, IN, and Independence, MO, which are integrating paid keywords into their digital promotion strategies and seeing fantastic results.
seattlesouthside.com
visitindy.com
visitindependence.com
Another area of focus was the geographic locations of the city websites. Red dots represent a high DA score with a high concentration of websites while green dots represent a low DA score with a low concentration of websites.
Figure 10: Map showing geographic location of city websites’ Domain Authority scores
We also reviewed the geographic locations of city websites that have low Search Visibility scores. Green dots represent a low SV score and red dots represent a high SV score.
Figure 11: Map showing geographic location of city websites’ Search Visibility scores
Figure 12: Map showing geographic locations of all city websites included in the research