Air Canada vs WestJet

Search Engine Optimization is a very important marketing tactic that organizations should strive to improve upon to further themselves in their industry. Today we are going to compare Air Canada’s SEO to WestJet’s.

WestJet website screenshot

Air Canada website screenshot

Keywords

The biggest thing when it comes to SEO Is how high your brand ranks when you type certain keywords into a search engine like Google. 

Air Canada’s keywords include; Air Canada, Aeroplan, Reservations, Book Online, Air Canada Flights, Airline Tickets, Airfare deals
WestJet’s keywords include; Buy Airline Tickets, Book Flights, Find Cheap Airfare, last minute flights and seat sales with WestJet. Book hotels and vacations with WestJet Vacations.

They both use different keywords, some of which pertain to their specific company (ie. Aeroplan), but some of the keywords are related like cheap airfare/airfare deals. The number of times a keyword pops up throughout the site allows for a better SEO. Both sites used their keywords between 0-5 times throughout, but Air Canada had two keywords which were Air Canada and Aeroplan that was used 11-15 times.

In regards to where they put their keywords it really varied. Air Canada’s keywords usually appeared in alternative texts, keyword section, anchor text, title and URL. WestJet’s was located in their keyword section, URL and title.

Upload Speed

Site upload speed is very important for a company’s website. This is because people don’t have much patience anymore and aren’t willing to spend more than 3 seconds on a page, or wait for content to load. WestJet loaded significantly faster than Air Canada (approx. 5 seconds to load media content via Air Canada). Air Canada’s site itself loaded quickly, but the media took way longer than WestJet’s did.

Alt Text & Captions

Although both airlines did use alternate texts throughout the site, WestJet’s were stronger. They were longer and more descriptive as well as found in more areas around the site. An example of an alt text WestJet put on their site was “Nothing says I love you like a sale on flights to all destinations within Canada and the U.S., and select destinations to Mexico and the Caribbean”. An example of an alt text that Air Canada used was “!” and “Valentines Sale”.

Air Canada also included no captions to their photographs, where WestJet used one almost under every photograph. An example would be “Hawaii, It’s closer than ever”.

Call To Action

 Both Air Canada and WestJet has the same call to action, this was “book a flight”.

Anchor text

The anchor text used throughout the air Canada site was “Contact Us, Cancelled flight service, Travel Alerts”. On WestJet's site they used “Contact Us, Book Using WestJet Dollars” as their anchor text.

Mobility

Both airlines have their own App available to smart phone users, but only WestJet has a mobile site available.

Overall Ranking

Air Canada ranked 7^th under the keyword “cheap airfare”. A lot of the other keywords brought up a ton of travel websites that weren’t owned by other airlines.
WestJet ranked 1^st under the keyword “Seat deals”. For their other keywords many travel websites popped up.

Conclusion

In conclusion, both Air Canada and WestJet have good SEO. They both have areas that they can improve upon to further enhance their SEO and rankings. Air Canada should look into creating a mobile site, enhancing media upload speed,and WestJet could put their keywords in more areas around the site itself. In my opinion the Airline that flew the highest in regards to this SEO search analysis would be WestJet. This is due to their excellent use of alt texts, overall site design and layout, mobility options, and more! 

American Airlines Vs. Porter

Search Engine Optimization can make a number one company show up as a number 10 company and a number 8 as a 1. Everyone knows Cineplex is the leader in Movie theaters, however if you google search and they are on the second page perhaps the untrained eye won’t notice that.

Gone are the days where being the best means you are the best. There is so much to do on the internet for companies from being mobile friendly to showing up first when searched. This paper will compare two brands American Airlines and Porter Airlines and their SEO.

Porter Airlines fails drastically on a lot of typical SEO fronts. They don't use Keywords anywhere on their site or any descriptions either which are both the easiest and simplest ways to be found on the internet. American Airlines however utilizes both of them, 17 keywords to be exact and three different descriptive words. Both sites are easy to browse around and find what's needed however American Airlines offers more cruise options and other travel options which can be beneficial clutters the sights and makes it difficult to find certain things. Porter however uses a minimalist approach with the home page being book a flight. 

Another very useful tool is optimizing your mobile website for phones. When you go to Porter they have an entire different website for when accessing from a mobile or tablet device. American Airlines' website stays the same, difficult to maneuver and very large which makes users have to scroll around the website to find half of the clickable links.

Both of the Airlines showed similar trend bumps around the same times. Since American Airlines has such a larger search results it makes the porter results seem smaller and not as viewable. January, May and October are the big hot spots for trends in searches.

Based purely on view ability of the site Porter is vastly superior, easy to find what you’re looking for without any form of issues. American Airlines utilizes SEO much more effectively while being a little more cluttered on their homepage.  

Using SEO is a key thing for brands in the airline industry, to show up first and to have your brand showing up first can mean the difference from a booking or not. American Airlines shows up almost always first amongst the normal key words for brands. While porter lags behind only showing up unless you search for Porter or Billy Bishop Airlines.

Aa.com, (2016). American Airlines - Airline tickets and cheap flights at AA.com. [online] Available at:   https://www.aa.com/homePage.do [Accessed 11 Feb. 2016]. Inc., P. (2016). Book Flights - Porter Airlines. [online] Flyporter.com. Available at:               https://www.flyporter.com/Flight?culture=en-CA [Accessed 11 Feb. 2016] Google.ca, (2016). Google Trends - Web Search Interest - Worldwide, 2004 - present. [online] Availableat:https://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=Porter%20Airlines%2C%20%2Fm%2F0z07&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B5 [Accessed 11 Feb. 2016]. https://www.flyporter.com/Flight?culture=en-CA [Accessed 11 Feb. 2016].