Expedia Organic Growth Opportunities
1. Readiness Assessment
1. Readiness Assessment
2. Competitive Analysis
2. Competitive Analysis
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
4. Appendix
4. Appendix
Readiness Assessment
Current Performance
- You rank for 13.8m keywords and drive 31.7m monthly organic visits (traffic value: $29.6m in equivalent ad spend), leading your direct competitive set on both scale and breadth.
- Your backlink profile is a major moat: Authority Score 92 supported by 87.1m backlinks from 119.7k referring domains—strong signals of trust and ranking resilience.
- Organic demand is heavily brand-led: “expedia” alone drives ~12.6% of keyword traffic, with additional volume from “expedia flights,” “expedia customer service,” and misspellings; top pages include the homepage (~5.7m visits), /Flights (~1.2m), and support/contact hubs (~567k+).
Growth Opportunity
- You still have room to win more non-brand, high-intent queries where volume is massive but share looks constrained (e.g., “flights” 7.5m volume; “cheap flights” 2.2m; “hotels near me” 1.8m).
- Scale what’s already working beyond the head terms: systematically expand/refresh destination, route, and “things to do” inventory (many pages are already pulling 10k–80k monthly visits each, suggesting strong long-tail compounding).
- Competitive pressure remains meaningful (Booking.com at 13.3m organic visits), so tightening SERP ownership across generic travel categories is a clear, addressable share-gain play.
Assessment
You have elite authority and the largest organic footprint in your competitor set, but a meaningful portion of traffic is still concentrated in brand and support intent. The “so-what”: pushing harder into non-brand, transactional travel queries and scaling content production can unlock incremental growth even from a high baseline. AirOps can help you operationalize this expansion systematically and capture more long-tail demand at scale.
Competition at a Glance
Analysis of 2 direct competitors (Booking.com and Priceline.com) shows Expedia competing in a landscape where it already captures the largest share of organic demand among this peer set.
expedia.com ranks #1 for both monthly organic search traffic (31,683,530 visits) and ranking keywords (13,799,782), placing it at the top of the competitive group on visibility and breadth of search coverage.
Among competitors, Booking.com is the top performer with 13,293,822 monthly organic visits and 8,499,522 ranking keywords—a substantial baseline that signals meaningful market headroom even with Expedia’s lead. Overall, Expedia’s position reflects clear market leadership, while the scale of Booking.com’s organic presence reinforces that competitive pressure remains significant and the category is far from fully consolidated.
Opportunity Kickstarters
Here are your content opportunities, tailored to your domain's strengths. These are starting points for strategic plays that can grow into major traffic drivers in your market. Connect with our team to see the full traffic potential and activate these plays.
Create static landing pages mapping specific venues like stadiums, arenas, and theaters to nearby accommodations with event-night logistics. This targets high-intent travelers attending specific events who need proximity and walkability.
Example Keywords
- "hotels near [Venue Name]"
- "where to stay for [Venue] events"
- "[Venue Name] nearby hotels"
- "hotels walking distance to [Venue Name]"
Rationale
Travelers often decide on a trip based on an event; capturing them at the venue-search stage allows Expedia to provide tailored logistics that generic city pages miss.
Topical Authority
Expedia's existing authority in lodging and destination guides (AS 92) makes it a trusted source for proximity-based recommendations.
Internal Data Sources
Property geocoordinates, review snippets mentioning "concerts" or "stadium access," and amenity data like "late check-in."
Estimated Number of Pages
150,000+
Develop pages centered on non-tourist points of interest like universities, hospitals, and business parks that drive consistent, year-round travel demand. These pages cater to specific needs like graduation visits or medical outpatient stays.
Example Keywords
- "hotels near [University Name]"
- "where to stay near [Hospital Name]"
- "hotels near [Business Park Name]"
- "extended stay near [Institution]"
Rationale
These locations have persistent demand that is often underserved by traditional "city center" hotel lists, allowing for long-tail capture of high-intent visitors.
Topical Authority
Leveraging massive inventory and existing destination guide infrastructure to provide niche, location-specific utility that competitors often ignore.
Internal Data Sources
Distance-to-POI calculations, room-type attributes (kitchenettes/suites), and cancellation flexibility data.
Estimated Number of Pages
200,000+
Target high-intent travelers with specific property constraints by creating pages for amenities like EV charging, connecting rooms, or kitchenettes at the city and neighborhood level. This moves beyond generic "cheap hotel" searches into specific utility.
Example Keywords
- "hotels with EV charging in [City]"
- "hotels with kitchenette in [City]"
- "hotels with connecting rooms in [City]"
- "hotels with free parking in [Neighborhood]"
Rationale
Users searching for specific amenities are further down the funnel and more likely to convert if their exact constraint is met immediately on the landing page.
Topical Authority
As a leading OTA, Expedia's deep structured data on hotel features provides the necessary expertise to curate these lists accurately.
Internal Data Sources
Normalized amenity taxonomy, review-derived signals (e.g., "charger worked well"), and neighborhood mapping.
Estimated Number of Pages
100,000+
Generate pages for hotels near specific subway stations, rail hubs, and ferry terminals to assist urban travelers who prioritize mobility. This solves the "how do I get around" problem at the point of booking.
Example Keywords
- "hotels near [Metro Station Name]"
- "hotels near [Train Station Name]"
- "where to stay near [Ferry Terminal]"
- "hotels near [Bus Station]"
Rationale
In major metros, travelers often choose hotels based on specific transit lines; these pages capture that hyper-local navigation intent before they reach the destination.
Topical Authority
Expedia's existing strength in urban destination discovery and massive backlink profile supports ranking for these high-volume transit queries.
Internal Data Sources
Hotel geo-coordinates vs. station entrances, transit line mapping, and review snippets about "easy train access."
Estimated Number of Pages
200,000+
Create pages for road-trippers looking for the best places to stay overnight between two major cities. This targets the "midpoint" search intent that is currently underserved by traditional destination-based SEO.
Example Keywords
- "hotels halfway between [City A] and [City B]"
- "where to stop between [City A] and [City B]"
- "overnight stop from [City A] to [City B]"
- "best place to stay on a drive from [City A] to [City B]"
Rationale
Road trips represent a significant travel segment; providing the "halfway" solution captures users during the planning phase of a long-distance drive.
Topical Authority
Combining car rental authority with lodging inventory allows Expedia to own the full "route" experience for domestic travelers.
Internal Data Sources
Routing math for midpoints, historical booking patterns for stopover towns, and "easy parking" review tags.
Estimated Number of Pages
50,000+
Improvements Summary
Expand each flight landing page from one head term into a full intent-based keyword set (airport codes, “cheap”, “nonstop”, “flight time”, “best time to book”), then add unique on-page modules above/below results to match those queries. Update titles/meta for CTR, add FAQ + schema, and connect route/destination pages with hub-and-spoke internal linking supported by a small set of evergreen advisory guides.
Improvements Details
For priority pages like “destin airfare”, “airfare boston to la”, and “airline tickets to hyderabad”, add 150–250 words of intro copy, a crawlable Quick Facts table, “Cheapest months & booking tips”, “Nonstop vs 1-stop”, plus 6–10 PAA-style FAQs with FAQPage schema. Apply title formulas like “Cheap Flights from {Origin} to {Destination} ({OriginCode} to {DestCode}) | Expedia” and add internal links from travel guides, hotels, car rentals, and airport pages using anchors such as “cheap flights to Destin” and “BOS to LAX flights”. Control parameter/date index bloat with canonicals/noindex and improve mobile performance by prioritizing render of the H1, key copy, and results module.
Improvements Rationale
These pages show very narrow keyword coverage (keyword_count = 1) and 0.0 traffic share, which points to relevance, depth, and snippet/CTR gaps rather than lack of demand. Adding query-specific content blocks, FAQs/schema, and stronger internal links targets the modifiers Google associates with flight intent and can move pages sitting around positions 11–20 into the top 10 within ~6–12 weeks, depending on crawl and rollout speed.
Appendix
| Keyword | Volume | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| best seo tools | 5.0k | 3 |
| seo strategy | 4.0k | 5 |
| keyword research | 3.5k | 2 |
| backlink analysis | 3.0k | 4 |
| on-page optimization | 2.5k | 1 |
| local seo | 2.0k | 6 |
| Page | Traffic | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| /seo-tools | 5.0k | 100 |
| /keyword-research | 4.0k | 100 |
| /backlink-checker | 3.5k | 80 |
| /site-audit | 3.0k | 60 |
| /rank-tracker | 2.5k | 50 |
| /content-optimization | 2.0k | 40 |
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