Search engine visibility of national tourism promotion websites

Abstract

In the past, tourism has played an important role in elevating socio-economic status of least developed countries. As a result, many least developed countries have developed national tourism Web portals in order to endorse tourism sector on the Internet. Search engines have become the most preferred way of seeking information on the Internet. Therefore, national tourism portal's visibility on search engines is crucial for Nepal because tourism is the major source of foreign income earnings. The objective of this study is to evaluate search engine visibility of Nepal Government's national tourism Web portal. The study is mainly divided into three parts. The first part of the study starts with identification of keywords that were previously used by tourists to search information related to Nepal prior to their travel. The frequently occurring keywords were then used to conduct the search engine ranking analysis of the portal. The second part of the study examined the portal's home page against popular search engine optimization guidelines that are prescribed to improve Website's search engine visibility. The third part of the study investigated Nepal government's effectiveness towards utilizing the World Wide Web to market the portal. The findings showed that the portal had low search engine visibility, minimally conformed to search engine optimization guidelines, and the Web was not effectively used to market the portal.