In Myanmar I found myself well and truly off the beaten path when I headed way up north to a town called Myitkyna. The 24 hour train ride turned into 34 hours and, as far as I could tell, I was the only foreign tourist on board.
When I arrived I saw a couple of South American guys I’d met in Mandalay but after they left, I seemed to have the place to myself. I was up there because I wanted to spend some time cruising down the Ayerawaddy River back to Mandalay, a journey I’d heard good things about. The boat ride was pretty cool and again, I was the only tourist looking person on board.
Apart from the adventure of journeys like this, there are some practical reasons why getting off the tourist trail can be good for the bottom line if your business is travel sites. How on earth could going to the back of beyond be good for business, I hear you ask? Well… this is just my theory but I’m thinking back to the word that is always driven into a web marketer’s mind from day one – niche.
Writing about things and places that few, if any, other people are writing about will give your sites unique content and search engines eat that stuff up. Sure, not as many people will be searching for information on boat rides from Myitkyna (most people probably can’t even spell it!) as will be searching for elephant treks from Chang Mai, but a few people will be and when they do, my (yet to be written) article will probably pop up at the top of Google.
Plus there’s always that slim chance that an off the beaten path type destination will find it’s way onto the path and if you can weasle your way to the top of Google early on, that will mean lots of visitors later.
Leave a Reply