Battle of the Airline Blogs: Cathay Pacific vs. Singapore Airlines

There's a lot of similarities between Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines. Both were started in the '40s, both are flag carriers of their respective home cities, both are 5 star airlines according to Skytrax. They both also have blogs.

While each airline publishes around 60 posts per month, Cathay Pacific's blog earns 3x more organic search traffic from Google.

What is Cathay doing that makes them so much better and how well are they converting that traffic into flight tickets?

Singapore's blog has been around longer and has more posts

Singapore Airlines started their SilverKris blog in January 2019 and at first published just a handful of posts per month until August 2021, when they published a whopping 982 posts, only to be outdone a month later by publishing 1,334 posts. Since then they've maintained a pace of around 60 posts per month.

Cathay Pacific started their blog, which they simply call Inspiration, in July 2022 and since then have also published around 60 posts per month.

In total, as of April 2025, Cathay's blog had 1,877 posts while Singapore's had 4,305. So it's not just Cathay's blog earns more organic search traffic because they published more posts.

Singapore Airlines sells the world; Cathay Pacific sells Hong Kong and the travel lifestyle

Each blog publishes two main types of content:

1. Destination guides (e.g. cooked food markets in Hong Kong, bars in Colombo, etc.)
   
2. Experiential content (e.g. the Indian art of Kalamkari, the world’s most underrated archaeological sites, etc.)

Here's how they differ in both areas:

Destination Focus

Singapore Airlines

• Top Destinations: Australia (195 posts), Singapore (179), USA (128), China (111), Japan (92)
• Broader global coverage with more balanced attention across regions
• Relatively less emphasis on home base (Singapore content is 4.2% of total)

Cathay Pacific

• Top Destinations: Hong Kong (320), China (64), Japan (28), Bangkok (20), Singapore (19)
• Stronger focus on home base (Hong Kong content is 17% of total)
• More concentration on Asian destinations, particularly Greater China

Experiential Content Themes

Singapore Airlines

• Nature & Adventure (701) - outdoor activities, travel tips, sightseeing
• Food & Drink (518) - restaurants, bars, culinary experiences
• Arts & Culture (369) - entertainment, museums, heritage

Cathay Pacific

• Hotels (193) - strong focus on hospitality
• Cathay Brand (193) - more brand integration
• Travel (104) - general travel tips and the act of traveling itself (rather than specific destinations)
• Art (77) - artistic attractions and experiences

Both airlines' content strategies reflect their route networks. Singapore's balanced global coverage aligns with its extensive global network, while Cathay's Asia-centric content aligns with its strength in Asian routes.

You'd think with more posts published and those posts focused across more destinations, Singapore's blog would earn more organic search traffic, but that's not the case.

Cathay publishes more posts about topics people actually search about

It's as simple as that. Despite starting later, having less posts overall, and focused on a smaller set of cities, Cathay is able to bring in 3x the organic search traffic.

Singapore really dropped the ball in terms of keyword research - repeatedly - when deciding what to write about. 

Take their post These 10 family-friendly outdoor activities in Hong Kong will thrill your kids for example. Nobody searches things like:

While there is search volume for "outdoor activities in hong kong" (60 searches/mo), Singapore already has another blog post focused on that - Wallet-friendly ways to enjoy the outdoors in Hong Kong - so it doesn't make sense from a search perspective why they'd write the post These 10 family-friendly outdoor activities in Hong Kong will thrill your kids.

According to Ahrefs, Singapore has 430 keywords ranking in the top 10 positions, bringing in 3,868 organic traffic per month, while Cathay has 2,200 keywords in the top 10 that bring in 13,199 organic traffic. That's a 3.4x difference. That's the power of keyword research.

How well are they converting this traffic?

Airlines maintain a blog to help put butts in seats. That is, to sell flight tickets. Here's what each are doing to fill up their planes:

Cathay Pacific

Top of blog post asks readers to find the best fares

Sticky sidebar contains "chat with us" button

Internal links point to booking pages

Bottom of blog post reminds readers to find the best fares

One mistake they made here though is not moving the "Hong Kong travel information" section above the "More inspiration" section, since they're likely to lose readers who click through to one of the related posts featured in "More inspiration" and not scroll below that.

Singapore Airlines

Sticky sidebar asks readers to "book flights now"

Bottom of blog post nudges readers to book a flight

Here's an example:

For more information on Singapore Airlines flights to Singapore, visit singaporeair.com.

Cathay Pacific does a better job at blogging than Singapore Airlines

While they both do a decent job nudging their readers to book flights, Cathay excels at publishing posts on topics people actually search for, allowing them to earn more organic search traffic than Singapore Airlines and ultimately push that traffic to their flight booking funnel.

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