Why Travel Bloggers Need to Learn About SEO

I remember when I first started blogging all those years ago, I didn’t even know how to publish a blog post!! I started off on Blogspot.com back in my early days and I was writing a lot of travel and lifestyle articles on the move. It later developed into a blog on WordPress.com once I got the hang of it and had a few hundred blogs typed up. Finally by 2012, I had transformed Don’t Stop Living as I know it into its own self-hosted website. But I needed it to be noticed and to be read more regularly before I could start to earn money from it, which happened in late 2012 when suddenly I was a Professional Travel Blogger and earning cash on the move. But it wasn’t an easy journey, there was lots of research, late nights and good internet awareness involved.

Typing up my travel blog in Yangshuo China

Here are 4 reasons why travel bloggers need to learn about SEO. The beast otherwise known as “Search Engine Optimisation”, a whole industry on its own now, as companies like SEO Training in London prove. Try and crack your SEO and your travel blogging life becomes a whole lot easier!

Learn about SEO!!

1.There are Too Many Travel Blogs
When I first started travel blogging in 2007, there were not many of us! It was a small market and we wrote real life articles for fun. However, the last 8 years have seen far too many travel blogs crop up, some even from fake travellers. This means that blogs from people who are not actually travelling could rank higher than your real travel blog!

You’re a real traveller, so you want traffic to justify it!

This might sound ridiculous but it’s true. Google doesn’t have time to proof-read your articles to contrast whether yours is real or the next guy’s is real. Google only looks at SEO, what sites link in to yours, how many people are reading, what keywords tell Google to rank your site high. The only way to get your blog to rank higher is by understanding SEO. Stand out from the crowd.

Stand out from the Crowd

2.To Gain More Readers
In order to gain more readers, naturally ranking higher on Google and Bing allows more spontaneous readers to visit your site, and the situation snowballs from there. By having good SEO, consistently, over time your readership will grow.

Meeting new DSL readers in Ankara, Turkey

3.To Rank High on Keywords
Think about what you personally will search for when looking to travel. It might be backpacking in Lithuania, top sights of Debrecen or how to get from Hong Kong to China. You’ll notice I keyword my posts and my anchor texts both inbound and internally to try and rank higher than my competitors. It’s dog eat dog in travel blogging now. Give it your best bark!

Go walk the dog and give it some bark!

4.To Make More Money
So finally once you have developed a good understanding of SEO, you now realise you are gaining more readers, more exposure and suddenly, advertising offers flood in. Yes it was hard work, but you relied a lot on good SEO along the way. It really does work. Try it out. And it all starts with having a good understanding of Search Engine Optimisation. For further reading you can also check out Nomadic Matt’s course on making money from your travel blog.