Travel Blogging 102
Hi crew! Every week, I do an in-depth post into the industry. Previously, I wrote Travel Blogging 101 that talked about how to start a blog and monetize it.
Today, let’s dive a little deeper into the topic and answer some of my most commonly asked questions.
What’s the best way to build a blog?
You have 3 options for building a blog: DIY, hire someone, or buy an existing blog.
DIY means you’re setting up the hosting, theme, etc. It’s fairly easy to do, and I suggest this for anyone just getting started interested in keeping things on a budget. Your first year of blogging can be a <$100 investment. Generally, Wordpress is the preferred content management system if your goal is to ultimately monetize through display ads.
Hiring someone can be a good idea when you want to level up your website design or tackle a coding issue you don’t feel comfortable with yourself. I use Studio 117 Creative and highly recommend their services.
If you’re interested in making a profit right off the bat, you can always acquire an existing blog, usually for 2-3 years worth of their monthly income. Site like Flippa and Empire Builders facilitate this.
Do you need to know how to code to blog?
Nowadays, themes have built-in user interfaces and widgets so that you don’t really need to know how to code if you’re blogging. That said, if something comes up you may need to go into the code. Don’t let the prospect deter you from starting, just be aware it’s a possibility.
Turning your blog into leads
The biggest mistake I made when I started was not having a way to capture email addresses of all the organic traffic my blog was getting. The internet is a big place. Those people likely read what they clicked on and never returned. What a waste of eyeballs!
Don’t make this mistake. Have lead magnets for your top performing articles. Give people something extra of value that they have to give their email for and you can use your blog traffic to build your newsletter. Then, you have to actually email them, which we’ll talk about in a future 101 post.
Your blog posts are not only leads but case studies. You can track all the clicks and conversions your post drives, and use this to sell your sponsored content down the road.
Click here to read Case Studies 101.
Important blogging metrics
What are the stats you’re looking for?
Domain Authority (DA): this can be found on Moz by entering your URL in their Free Authority Checker and is improved by getting do-follow links to your site from reputable outlets over time, signaling your blog is a reliable and established website.
Unique Monthly Views (UVM): the number of distinct individuals who visit your blog at least once within a one-month period
Total views: how many views your blog gets per month
Location/top countries and cities: where your audience is located
Clickthrough Rate (CTR): measures how often people click on a link when they see it
Bounce rate: Percentage of visitors who land on a page and leave without visiting any other pages on the site (lower is better)
Time on page: how long a user spends on a post before navigating away, usually presented on average
Blogging SEO
I talk about SEO in depth in my book, From Blog to Business, but I’ll break it down here.
SEO stands for search engine optimization. You want your post to be written in a way that it is indexed and shown on organic search results. This doesn’t mean you’re writing for the algorithm, it means no one can read your post if they don’t know it exists.
You can still write whatever you want, but follow these best practices so your writing gets seen:
Do keyword research before you start writing
Don’t waste your time writing an article no one is searching for. Write an article that answers the most pressing topics people are looking for, and then use that to share the information you think it’s important. This is how you can end up being more useful to your readers.
Tools like Keysearch (paid) allow you to see the volume of searches for a particular keyword. Aim for longtail keywords, which are a phrase versus a single word, such as “20 best cafes to get a croissant in Paris” instead of “Paris.”
If you want a free research option, type the longtail keyword into Google and see what it lists under “People Also Search For.” This is a great place to source your headings from, so that you’re answering every question on the topic.
You want to find a keyword with high visibility and low competition from other high ranking outlets. This is the unicorn.
Once you have it, use the longtail keyword and related keywords in the title, subheading, and throughout the article organically.
Have a clearly formatted article
Google (the current king of search, although they’ve not been kind to bloggers, their serfs) has spiders crawling your site, trying to make sense of it. In order to do this, they need structure, like a table of contents. You do this by using H1 for the title, H2 for the headings, H3 for the subheadings, etc.
If you’ve ever written something requiring an outline on Word or Google Docs, you know that just writing the title is not enough to have it be recognized in the Table of Contents as the chapter title. You need to actually label it as a heading before the text is automatically pulled into the outline. Same with Google’s blog crawling spiders.
A lot of people think you need to request crawling from Google when there’s a new blog post or changes to an existing post. You can, it doesn’t hurt, and they already crawl regularly without request.
Use links throughout
You need both internal links and external links.
Internal links are to your own related content. They tell the spiders, “hey, I have a lot of related stuff on this topic! You should recommend me as an expert.”
External links are meant to be helpful to your readers. I would focus on affiliate links so you can monetize things like direct bookings from your posts.
Have robust content pillars
That library of related posts that you have on a topic or destination? That’s a content pillar!
Particularly in the travel space, Google likes to see that you have more than one post on something before it starts to recommend you as the foremost authority on it.
Identify the things you want to be known for, and write as many closely related, interlinked posts for every content pillar you want to establish.
Use alt text and your own photos
Alt text on your photos should be used to describe what’s in the photos and is meant for the visually impaired to be able to keep reading the article. Do not keyword stuff them. Instead, use a photo that is actually yours (preferred to stock photo) and a few words to describe it, like “coffee mug on hotel balcony.”
Using your own photos shows personal experience, which Google values, and using alt text shows your site is accesible. Along those same lines, you’ll want to make sure your site speed (how long it takes to load) is as quick as possible, your font is big and easy to read, and that your blog is mobile friendly.
How many blog posts do you need?
If you want to monetize, aim for a minimum of 50-100 blog posts. You can have 1,000+ but at that point 80% of your income is driven by 20% of your content and it becomes important to be efficient in identifying, building, and maximizing that.
Blog posts can be anywhere from 1,000-5,000 words. You can write more, but ask yourself if the text would be more user friendly if broken up into multiple related posts instead.
How long does it take to rank?
Usually SEO changes can take 6 months or more to take effect and start seeing rankings, but of course there’s always exceptions.
The important thing is there’s no timeline for when you can start making money off your blog (from affiliates, sponsored posts, direct sales or newsletter enrollments), only you holding yourself back from starting.
Have questions or a topic you want to see covered on a future 101 post? Drop them in the comments, I respond!