Getting into the tourist and travel business is easier than ever before. Few traditional brick-and-mortar tourist agencies are in operation now since almost everyone relies on online resources to ease the often complex task of planning for a trip. Here are the most important steps you should follow if you want to start a successful travel blog.
1 – Identify Your Target Audience
It’s important to know who you want to influence when creating your travel blog. Knowing your target audience would make it easier for you to find the right recommendations for them. For instance, if your target audience is women around the age 30 to 50 years old, you should start focusing your site around tourist attractions that are suitable for their needs. Today, only targeted sites can offer you the chance to thrive and be successful.
2 – Use A Catchy Name For Your Blog
Your travel blog’s name is a crucial factor in its success or failure. Branding is important in attracting and retaining customers, so it’s better to have a catchy name that everyone will recall when they encounter it online. Your blog name should have no foreign accent or difficult punctuation. Another vital thing is to keep your blog’s name similar to the name of your WordPress site and social media. That will help people recognize your brand no matter where they navigate. If you want to be even bigger, your blog’s name shouldn’t be connected to a certain geographical location.
3 – Connect Your Blog To Google Analytics
After deciding on the name, it’s important to start creating your blog in WordPress. This is the easiest way to have a new site. WordPress also eases the pain of maintaining the site by yourself. When you reach this stage, you should be ready to connect the blog to Google Analytics. This will show you the number of clicks your blog has received and the location distribution.
It’s easy to create a truly global site if you want, but you always need to have Google Analytics by your side. At a later stage, you may also need to monetize your site via AdSense. Monetizing will help you have some income coming to you to support the various blog functionalities such as hosting.
4 – Create a Great User Interface
Blog customization is a necessary act to show your audience that your blog is different from the others. It’s necessary to work with graphics specialists and web designers to create a unique user interface that’s both memorable,appealing and business-like. Your business logo should be recognizable at first sight, and the colors you use should depict your mindset and how you want to run your business.
As a truly global travel blog, you should insist on having simple but great themes that take into account cultural differences. Since your travel blog would be accessed by people worldwide, you need to ensure the symbols and themes do not offend any part of your clientele. Uploading some themes to your personal Pinterest account and checking the audience’s reactions would be the perfect guide to deciding the right logo for your travel blog.
5 – Sign Up for Tours and Write About First Hand Experiences
Many of the most successful travel bloggers offer personal anecdotes and first-hand experiences in order to provide their readers with a more intimate perspective on what they’re writing about. This is because a lot of people will relate to an article more when they can attach a real person to it, which means that you should have your own unique stories whenever possible. If you want to create a blog that will be remembered, then this is one way for you to do so – by being personable and adding your voice into the mix.
Here is a great example of experiences you can write about. Imagine you’re a tourist visiting Toronto.
- Identify what the top things to do in your destination are. For example, if you go to Toronto, Canada, one of the top activities is visiting Niagara Falls.
- Figure out the best way to do it, so you can share the example with your readers. In this case, we can find a tour from Toronto, like Queen Tour Niagara Falls Tours.
- Since this is a tour, you’ll want to make the most out of it – consider finding additional experiences. In Niagara Falls, this might mean taking a helicopter ride or boat ride during your tour.
- Take lots of photos and videos – these will have meta data that help Google know which location you’re speaking about.
Speaking about these first hand experiences will make a compelling story for your readers and help you gain credibility.
6 – Upload Unique Content
Setting up a successful travel blog means paying extra attention to the content you upload. Your copywriters and editors should work with you to identify the niche you want to publish articles for on the main page. As a travel blog, you need to focus on the most relevant destinations and upload unique articles with new information. By doing this, you will be fulfilling your visitors’ intent and making your site an authority. No one would like to read the same old information they have been through in dozens of travel blogs online. The best way to approach this is to focus on female traveling or alternative destinations that are not covered in other travel blogs.
The uniqueness and value of content would definitely make you rank higher in the organic Google search. This is because Google algorithms prioritize unique content and downgrade low-effort content. It’s always better to hire professional writers to get you high quality content than to have low-quality content on your site.
7 – Learn About SEO Basics
If you want to become a successful travel blogger, you should learn SEO basics. That means you should have knowledge of keywords and backlinks, which are all important in offering your site a better ranking. Even though it’s not your job to perform keyword searches and SEO reports, it’s useful to know about the industry’s jargon. That should help you speak the same language as your SEO experts and upload content that will be informative and SEO friendly to help your site evolve in Google ranking. Remember that no matter how well structured your travel blog is, it will fail if people cannot find it in the first pages of Google.
8 – Ensure All Your Graphics And Pictures Are Selected Carefully
Everyone loves to see graphics and images that nobody has ever uploaded before on other sites. Social media platforms like Instagram work through the power of images, so you need to have breathtaking images to advertise your travel blog to new audiences. Each blog you share should have new and unprocessed images bonded with the articles and relevant information you want to publish. Another way to make your blog posts better is by adding great looking tables and charts. One quick way to do that is by using a WordPress tables plugin.
9 – Tips for Getting Newsletter Registrations
A newsletter is a form of electronic mailing list that is typically created and transmitted through email. This type of mailing list is becoming increasingly popular because it allows publishers to send email updates to their readers, while requiring less time and money than mailing out paper newsletters. A blog newsletter can be a great way for an individual blogger to establish themselves as an authority in their field by providing useful information to subscribers on a regular basis.
You should try to incentivize your readers to register on your blog with attractive sign-up bonuses. This is a proven way of driving new traffic and increasing the chances of getting them interested in signing up for your travel blog. You can offer attractive cash prizes or discounts that would make it worth their while. It’s advisable you approach social media influencers for this.
10 – Sharing Events, Tours And News Information
Your readers would have their interest peaked if you publicize events and tours that they can attend. You should be organized and make sure your website has the tour calendar up to date always. Let them know when the event will take place, its location, venue details and the contact person they would need to get in touch with if they want to be on the list of participants. There is also the option of sharing news information that is relevant to your blog. This can include new destinations rating high in adventure, nature or any other interesting topics your target readers would find fascinating.
11 – Becoming Profitable
The ultimate goal of starting a travel blog (for most people) is to be profitable. Although the journey can be fun, you should take it seriously and work hard to achieve the results you want. If your content is useless and not interesting, then there’s no way your readers will stick around long enough to help your site rank high in the search engines. By having a detailed plan of what you want to achieve, you should be able to get started on the right foot and make the most of your efforts.
Here are some of the ways which you can make money from a travel blog.
- The easiest way would be through sponsored ads that bring in revenue every time somebody clicks on them.
- Another way is by selling products that tie in with your content or brand identity and give back some of that profit to you for every sale made.
- Use affiliate links to promote products and make money. With affiliate links, you can earn a commission every time somebody buys a product without you having to do anything other than setting the link and getting it out there.
- You can also charge for your podcast service or video production services, create e-books, or even conduct live tours.
- Finally, there’s the most difficult option which is asking for donations from followers who want to support your work; this will take a long time before any income comes out of it, but if managed properly it could eventually result in making profits.
12 – It’s Time to Get Started
If you’re looking to start a successful travel blog, it’s time to get started! Creating a travel blog is easier than ever before, should you use the right online tools. It’s a challenge worth picking and can enable you to become profitable if done right. Being sincere with your public and offering them quality posts is the road to success. The process is easier than ever before with the right online tools and will be worth your while if done correctly. You should always offer quality posts that are sincere in order to gain readers who will eventually make you profitable. Share events, tours or news information for an added bonus of attracting more visitors. Setting goals for yourself from the beginning can help keep you on track towards success. Good luck!
