How Obokash Ranked 191 Keywords on Google Page One: A Travel Agency SEO Case Study

Obokash is a travel agency in Bangladesh offering umrah packages, international tour packages and visa processing services. When CEO Md Siddikur Rahman approached us in August 2018, the company had a website with no SEO, no real traffic and a design that was not helping buyers. By November 2019, Obokash had 191 keywords on Google page one, 6,630 monthly organic clicks and top-one or top-two positions for the most competitive travel keywords in Bangladesh.

The challenge

The travel agency space in Bangladesh is crowded. Large players dominate the top spots for terms like "travel agent in Bangladesh" and "umrah package from Bangladesh." A new, unoptimised website with zero authority was never going to rank without a complete strategy. We signed the project in August 2018 and began work in September 2018.

When we audited the Obokash website, the problems were structural. This was not a case of tweaking a few meta titles. The foundation needed to be rebuilt. Our audit found:

• Near-zero organic traffic and no keyword targeting on any page
• Poor URL structure with ugly, non-descriptive URLs
• Slow page load speed and no mobile responsiveness
• No Google Search Console, Google Analytics or XML sitemap in place
• No Google Business Profile optimisation
• Thin content not written for search intent, and no internal linking structure

Before any ranking work could begin, the website itself had to be fixed. You cannot rank a technically broken site.

Our strategy

We ran the engagement in three phases, fixing the foundation before chasing rankings and combining Local SEO with on-page and technical work.

Phase 1: Website redesign and technical foundation (Sep 2018 - Feb 2019)

This phase took six months and was the most important part of the project. We worked directly with the development team to guide a full redesign, planning every page around search intent, user experience and Google's quality guidelines. We provided full content for the homepage, about page, umrah packages, tour packages, visa services, privacy policy and terms pages. On the technical side we:

• Migrated ugly URLs to a clean, SEO-friendly structure and set up 301 redirects so no link equity was lost
• Set up Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 correctly and submitted an XML sitemap
• Fixed page speed, made the site fully mobile responsive and implemented HTTPS
• Added a proper header tag hierarchy across all pages and fixed broken internal links

Only after all of this was complete, in February 2019, did we begin active keyword ranking work. Our local SEO checklist follows the same foundation-first order.

Phase 2: Keyword research and on-page SEO (Mar 2019)

We identified 284 target keywords across four core service areas: travel agency terms, umrah package terms, tour package terms and visa processing terms. We started with lower-competition, high-intent keywords to build early rankings and authority, then pushed into the more competitive head terms. Every page was mapped to a specific keyword cluster so no two pages targeted the same primary keyword, which prevented cannibalisation from day one.

Phase 3: Local SEO and Google Business Profile (Mar 2019 onwards)

For a travel agency serving Dhaka and the wider country, local visibility was critical. Someone searching "travel agent in Dhaka" is ready to book, not researching. We built and fully optimised the Obokash Google Business Profile with complete NAP information, correct categories, keyword-rich service descriptions, photos and a customer review strategy. Running Local SEO in parallel with the website work gave Obokash two surfaces of visibility: the map pack for local searches and organic results for national ones. Our guide to ranking in the Google Map Pack covers the same tactics.

The results

By November 2019, fourteen months after we started, the numbers from Google Search Console were clear:

Key wins from the campaign:

• Position one or two for head terms including "travel agent in Bangladesh," "best travel agent in Bangladesh" and "travel agency in Dhaka"
• Position one or two for "umrah package price from Bangladesh," "umrah package in Bangladesh" and related umrah terms
• Top rankings for "tour package from Bangladesh" plus country-specific terms for Japan, Nepal and Thailand
• Top positions for "visa service in Bangladesh" and "visa processing agent in Bangladesh"
• A 10.3% average CTR, well above the typical 2-5% range, showing titles and descriptions matched buyer intent

Key takeaways

• Technical issues are silent killers. A slow site with broken URLs loses rankings before the race starts, so fix the foundation first.
• Local SEO is not optional for service businesses. Buyers search with location intent, and if you are not in the map pack you are invisible to the people most ready to book.
• Content depth wins in competitive niches. Thin pages do not rank for competitive travel terms; buyers need price, process, timeline and inclusions answered in full.
• Keyword mapping prevents cannibalisation. Mapping 284 keywords to specific pages before writing kept pages from competing with each other.
• Results compound. The first six months produced almost no visible movement; by month fourteen, 191 keywords were on page one.

If you run a travel agency, tour operator or service business and want the same structured approach, request a free SEO audit and we will show you what it could look like for your market.