[Help] SEO Strategy Review: Travel Niche

Hi everyone,

I’m posting here because I’m embarking on a new adventure and need a "reality check" on my strategy to see if I’m heading in the right direction.

The Context I’m a Computer Science graduate (so I know algorithms and logic, but I have zero experience in SEO, marketing, or web dev). For the past two months, I’ve been helping my uncle, who owns an excursion agency in Eastern Sicily. He already has someone managing Ads (which are doing very well), but my job is different: to create a "lifeboat." Currently, we sell well on GetYourGuide and TripAdvisor, but we want to stop depending entirely on them and push direct organic sales. Right now, we are essentially invisible (Page 2, 3, or 4 for almost all main keywords).

The Technical Problem (The War with Elementor) The site was built by an agency using WordPress + Elementor. There is a massive disparity:

• Desktop: The site flies. Even without a cache plugin, it was hitting scores of 95-100 (the old agency had disabled LiteSpeed Cache because it broke the icons).
• Mobile: This is a disaster. We are stuck at a score of 50 (without cache active). I re-enabled LiteSpeed Cache and fixed the previous icon issues, but I’m at a dead end. If I activate aggressive optimizations (minification, removing unused CSS, JS delay) to boost the mobile score, the Elementor layout breaks. So, I’m forced to keep the handbrake on.
• Question: Can I rank against competitors with a mobile score of 50 if the content is good, or is this a losing battle?

The "Skeleton in the Closet" & Early Signs of Life The domain history is worrying. From 2017, when the site was born, it started gaining links (likely bots or spam). There was a strange peak in 2023 (500 spam links?), followed by a vertical drop post-Google Update. The Domain Authority (DA) crashed from 24 to 10 in 6 months during 2023.

However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I started working seriously in early November. Since then, I’ve gained 15 backlinks. I think it’s too early to see an effect on authority, BUT comparing Google Search Console data from the last 2 months vs. the previous period, I see the site has started ranking for over 300 new keywords. They are still low positions, but the trend seems to have unlocked.

Competitor Analysis (My Theory) The niche consists of 15-20 players, with about 7-8 "medium" ones. I noticed two anomalies:

1. The "Visibility Leader": The site dominating the SERP has a low DA (26) and very few backlinks (approx. 500). However, the site is translated into 7 languages. My theory is that they are winning thanks to extensive localization.
2. Another Competitor: They were stable on page 1 with 9,000 backlinks (probably a PBN). They recently dropped to 1,000 links but haven't lost their ranking positions.

Content Insights I noticed that a blog post linked to a "Godfather Tour" (where we describe a character from the movie) gets 30 organic clicks a month (compared to 1-2 for other pages). I want to write more articles like this to capture clicks and impressions.

The Strategy for the Next 12 Months Based on this data, here is the plan. Please tell me if it makes sense:

1. Language Strategy: Currently, we are in IT, EN, FR. I want to add German, Russian, Spanish, and Dutch using WPML. The goal is to copy the "Leader" by adding languages to capture long-tail traffic in native languages.
2. "Pop" Content: Given the success of the "Godfather" page, I want to create vertical articles on other characters from the film/cinema related to Sicily. Additionally, I’ve analyzed 5 competitors and want to replicate/improve upon 4-5 of their best-performing blog posts.
3. Link Building (The Budget): I have a budget of €300-400 per month. Since competitors don’t have millions of links, my plan is to buy 3-5 high-quality guest posts per month for a full year. Note: I use a link insertion platform (won't name it), but if you have advice on reliable vendors that aren't scams, I’m all ears.

The Final Question Given the positive signals on GSC (+300 keywords), a budget of €400/month, and a technically "heavy" mobile site, can I recover that DA drop and get back to page 1 within a year?

Thanks a lot!

submitted by /u/Zealousideal-Gap-963
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