Welcome to part 4 of how to start your own travel blog. So far, we’ve discussed how to get started, how to handle social media, and how to network and find your voice.
Now we’ve arrived at one of the most important steps of the process: finding your readers! I say finding your readers instead of letting them find you, because this is a pretty active part of the process and a big reason why lots of people have great content but a small audience. You can write the best travel blog on the planet, but if nobody knows about it, how will you be able to grow a readership?
The following are essential things to learn in order to grow your readership month-over-month.
Search Engine Optimization
Ideally, A big chunk of your traffic will come from search engines. Most readers find Be My Travel Muse by searching for various topics and often stick around or become regular readers.
Since you’ve already installed WordPress SEO by Yoast, this process will be a bit easier. Ideally, your blog name will already have a travel-related name without a lot of search competition which will help with Google rankings. Most importantly, however, your posts each need to be optimized. This means that the title, URL of the post, and keywords in the post itself and in the “focus keyword” box for the SEO widget will match.
Try to pick something that you would search for yourself and don’t make it too broad. For example, when I wrote about hiking Mt. Bromo in Java without a tour, I was targeting a very specific set of keywords, which has helped it come up close to first on Google. That post gets lots of search traffic from people looking for that exact set of information.
SEO is something you should never stop learning about. It is ever-changing and like it or not, Google is the main player in this category and what you really need to do is optimize to their constantly evolving algorithms. A myriad of companies out there focus on just SEO and charge a boat load of money for their consulting services. By learning about it yourself, you can essentially handle it in-house.
I’m always reading books on the subject, increasing my knowledge of SEO and writing in general. I’d highly recommend reading the following books for your blogging journey:
SEO Fitness Workbook: The Seven Steps to Search Engine Optimization Success on Google
by Jason McDonald
Ultimate Guide to Link Building: How to Build Backlinks, Authority and Credibility for Your Website, and Increase Click Traffic and Search Ranking (Ultimate Series)
By Garret Ward and Eric French
As with social media, don’t assume you know it all, and never stop learning.
Guest Blogging
Link building is also a highly important part of SEO. It helps Google to determine the trustworthiness of your site. The more high-quality websites point to your blog, the more Google decides to push you higher in the rankings.
In order to gain links, I recommend guest blogging. I blogged for other travel blogs constantly in the beginning of my blogging journey. As I freelance more, I have less time for guest blogs, but this was an essential part of my initial growth strategy for finding readers.
There are lots of blogs that accept guest posts, and lots that don’t (I, for example, do not because my blog is about my story). Take a look at your favorite blogs and see if they have guest posts. If so, maybe they’d want a post from you! Send a pitch to the owner of the blog and see if s/he likes your idea. Go for blogs that have a higher readership than yours, and be sure to check out Google Pagerank checker, which measures the trustworthiness of a site, to make sure their page rank is higher than yours (the lowest is 1 with most travel blogs falling between 1 and 4).
The following blogs accept guest posts and are a great place to get started:
Where Sidewalks End (especially interviews)
Write travel tips for Travel Dudes
and many, many more.
Connecting With Your Audience
Your audience is everything. They’re the ones who will share your stories, follow your advice, and help you to grow. I invest a lot of time in replying to emails, comments, and meeting up with readers abroad. Even though none of these things directly translates to cash in my pocket, I know that appreciating and responding to readers is the key to developing a following.
As seen by some email excerpts in the first post of this series, I have amazing readers who take time out of their days to read what I say and who often email me about their hopes and dreams. I can’t emphasize enough how much this all means to me and how important it is for you as a blogger. By always responding kindly and appreciating the time that they put in, you’ll help to cultivate these important relationships.
I’ve mentioned a Dave Kerpen book earlier in this series and am mentioning another one of his books now. Read Likeable Business: Why Today’s Consumers Demand More and How Leaders Can Deliver
.
Though this one is more business-focused and partially has to do with handling employees, it also has tons of invaluable information on how to best serve your customers, which are your readers. Dave’s books are highly worthwhile and if you only buy one book to start with, make it one of his.
In the next and final installment of this series we’ll discuss how to make money with your blog. Stay tuned!
Paul says
I found your blog after googling what to do after losing an ATM card overseas. After finding what I wanted, ended up wandering around the sight, voila, have been a lurker ever since.
By the way, if you ever end up in a place with no internet, period, what will you do?
Kristin says
Glad to hear you’re lurking! Haha. I do end up in places with no internet from time to time and if my cell also won’t work, these days I have to be careful about how long I stay without Wifi.
Rachel of Hippie in Heels says
great advice. I have heard google page rank doesn’t update that often. mine has been 0/10 since I started my blog a year ago, yet I’ve had over 60,000 page views for months and just searching “backpacking India” on google my blog is in the top 3 results even in an incognito search box.. Supposedly they haven’t updated rankings since 2013, so does that mean anyone who has a new blog doesn’t get ranked? :/
Kristin says
Check your domain authority instead. That’s more important these days.
Jasmine @ NomadGirl.co says
Thanks for these series of posts – i am a new blogger and it is good to know i am on the right track as well as learn some great tips from you. I really enjoy learning about blogging and sep – at first it was very stressful but helpful posts like this one a a great help 🙂 Thank-you 🙂
Kristin says
Should be fun rather than stressful! Glad you find them helpful 🙂
Michelle | Lights Camera Travel says
I am finding this series so helpful, thank you!
Kristin says
Yay!
Charles McCool says
This is fantastic. I have not read Part 1 through 3 but will do so soon. I just returned from signing up at Traveldudes. Thank you for the excellent explanation.
Michelle says
Great post! While I’m not a travel blogger, a lot of this applies to personal finance blogging as well. I really need to start guest posting again. I haven’t done a guest post in years it feels like!
Kristin says
It’s possible this would apply to a lot of different industries though I haven’t tested it in other areas.
Simone says
Thanks for the helpful tips. Trying to understand SEO and google rankings, so this was perfect timing.
Jack Albritton says
Great article.. Another piece of advice to add is that it is a marathon, not a sprint. Sometimes you have to just plug away using the right techniques for a period of time and with consistency you will see results.
Kristin says
Completely agree with this statement.
Sheri says
Hi Kristin! All of your posts are so helpful and inspiring. I was curious, did you ever pay for any travel blog classes? I see a lot of travel blog courses, some costing several hundred dollars. Travel Blog Success is one, also Nomadic Matt sometimes offers a course. I’m just wondering if they are really necessary. Thanks!
Kristin says
I just joined travel blog success so I’ll have to get back to you on how that goes. I was honestly extremely hesitant to do so because I believe blog success is individual. I think Matt definitely knows what he’s talking about but what each person does works for them, not everyone. Most blogs won’t achieve smashing success and others will, I attribute this mainly to content.
Camille says
Thank you Kristin! I’m a new blogger and this series has helped me already!
Kristin says
That’s great!
Graham Franklin says
Hi Kristin
Thanks for your helpful post on SEO. I’ve been using Yoast since launching my travel blog 4 months ago and it has taught a lot about SEO. I think my keywords are probably too overly used, although when I have used a log tail keyword it ranks on page 3 on Google, more keyword research I think…
kristin mcneil says
Hi Kristin, I started blogging a couple months ago and I have a technical question I’m hoping you can offer advice on. How should I be backing up my blog? I use BlueHost and they back it up for me but they also told me to back it up myself (which confuses me) so I installed the BackUpWordPress plugin (or something like that) and then I get a link sent to me email once per week where I can download the back up files, which I never do. I have an WD external hard drive I could put files on if you think I should. What do you do? Thanks!
Kristin says
I use a program called BackWPup which stores the files for me.
Neysha says
Kristin,
This is awesome! Thanks for sharing your insight. This actually the hardest topic to tackle (in my opinion). It’s just hard to keep up with everything. Even when you think you write great content and are in it for the love of writing, it sucks when ti doesn’t get picked up or read by many people. Super helpful!
Kristin says
You can put out great stuff but if others don’t see it then it falls on deaf ears. Glad you found this helpful. It’s the biggest part of building a successful blog. best of luck to you!
Simple Lifestyle says
Thank for the help, I am frustrating looking for site to submit guest post. By the way, do let me know if you accept any guest post as well. Thanks. =)
Kristin says
A lot of my submissions came through personal connections, which I made in person and via Twitter. If a site you like does them, get to know the person on twitter and then ask 🙂
I typically don’t unless it’s about a specific off the beaten path place in Southeast Asia or a really amazing and out of the ordinary story
Allie says
I have found all of the information that you have shared to be very valuable! I am in the very beginning phases of starting my own blog and your content is very inspiring and helpful. I am trying to gather as much research as possible and I am so excited give blogging a lot of effort. I would love to be able to make a living off of writing and traveling, but at the very least I will be happy to have a creative outlet.
Kristin says
That’s a good approach 🙂
Regex SEO says
Great insights, miss Travel Blogger! that’s something we all will use once we retire or give up our jobs 🙂