Create a travel blog And, let's face it, keeping it for a long time is not an easy task. We don't say it, the statistics say: most blogs close the year of its creation. We have been with Street Travelers for several years now, we are going to show you all the steps about how to create a travel blog And succeed. These tips are valid and applicable both for a travel blog, as well as for other types of blogs, be they fashion, cooking, makeup ...
All the data reflected in this post are based on our personal experience with the blog we currently have: travelerscallejeros.com which has more than 1,100,000 visits per month, 1,900,000 page views Y More than 600,000 followers on social networks (August 2018)
Before starting with the guide to create a travel blog step by stepWe want to make a little reflection. Lately it has become fashionable sell courses to have a successful blog and to be able to live on it, in a short time, if you follow the advice. We do not sell any courses, we only explain what we did to reach these figures, highlighting that a lot of work and perseverance is needed, and with special emphasis on the fact that the first year will surely be hard work, without having significant results or significant income.
With this we want to advise you something: To trust someone to help you, if you do not want to do it alone, the first thing you should do is confirm that your own blog has achieved success that promises that you will get yours by following their advice and guidelines. We have to keep in mind that a successful blog will always have thousands of visits, a large community and a high or very high interaction in social networks. If you have decided on any of these courses, it would be interesting to ask for a current capture of your Google Analytics to know the visits you have (from 100 thousand per month is a good traffic), and also screenshots of the results of the publications in social networks that show us the followers and above all the interaction that it has in its social networks in an organic way (without paying). If these captures do not convince you, you only have to think about one thing: How can someone who wants to sell you or give you a course to live from your blog and get thousands of visits and millions of followers help you, if not even he has succeeded? In the answer you will discover if it is worth spending your time and / or money with that person.
As we like to give examples of what we are talking about, we attach our numbers, with screenshots, from July 2017, so you can assess what we will talk about next:
Google Analytics Results August 2018
Results publication on Facebook. Organic results, that is, without paying
1. Technical aspects of a travel blog
1.1 Search and register a domain
The first step to create a travel blog is to find a name / title that is easy to remember and if possible, is related to the theme of travel. This is not an easy task, we have to think that most popular names that include words like travel, Travellers ortravels They are already registered and buying one of these domains can be a large outlay, especially if they end with .com, so it is best to use a domain search engine for example free domains and start testing with the names we like to see if any of them It is free and we can acquire it.
1.2 WordPress or Blogger
The next step in the creation of a travel blog is to choose the platform that we will use to manage the blog. We do not have much to choose from and it is that the best options go through two names: Blogger or WordPress. Within WordPress we can choose the free wordpress.com option, the premium wordpress payment and the wordpress.org option that is free but you need to hire an external hosting. For us and most blogs there is no doubt: wordpress.org is the best option. The basic reasons are that you have ownership of the blog at all times, you do not depend on third parties, the ease of use and the availability of very good plugins that will help us in the future to automate tasks such as SEO, Social Networks, Newsletter ...
1.3 Hire a hosting or hosting for your blog
If we have chosen the wordpress.org option, the next step is to hire a good hosting for the travel blog. It is a very important decision although at first glance it does not seem so. In our experience, you must meet these guidelines:
- Have a fast technical service, efficient and if it is in Spanish, better than better.
- That the blog loads as quickly as possible, a good tool to check the speed of the blog is Google's PageSpeed Insights.
- And last but not least: price according to the quality.
We have both blogs with Webempresa and we can assure you that they comply with all three premises.
If you decide on this accommodation, we have this coupon We company in which you can get a 20% discount at the time of hiring the Webempresa hosting: thanks20.
If you have a problem with WordPress or want to optimize it, the Codection company is a great option.
1.4 Choose a template
Once passed the first technical aspects of the creation of the travel blog, now we only have to choose one blog template. Within the large crowd that we can find the first classification we could do it in those that are obtained for free and those that are paid. Most do not exceed 100 euros, so have a good template from the beginning of blog creation: That is responsive, load fast and can be modified without each update deleting the changes, without a doubt it is a great investment.
We recommend you first lower the demo version, try it and if you like to buy it. We use the StudioPress Themes for WordPress and we can assure you that we have no complaints.
2. Travel blog content
2.1 Type of items
We already have the online blog and all the technical aspects resolved. Now we just need to upload content (articles or posts), one of the most important parts of the process of travel blog creation.
This is a very personal section, in which everyone must assess what they want / want to write and share. We can opt for several types of articles for the travel blog: travel diaries, rankings of places, articles about a certain destination, post photographic, video blog ... Analyzing the response of our followers once we start publishing, we can see what articles we like more and start creating our style. Right now there are many travel blogs so it is very important to find a market niche. This topic also influences and a lot, if we want to propose our travel blog as a hobby or monetize it, creating a possible stable job in the future.
2.2 SEO
We have to be very aware that right now any content that does not appear in the top positions or pages of Google is invisible content for potential blog readers. Knowing this, we will have to provide SEO with our content, it is not necessary to go over, since we can make the article illegible. As they say in the middle ground there is always virtue.
Before writing an article, we recommend that you think about what words or phrases most people search on Google that are related to the text we want to write. To be in the first positions we must verify that these words that we have selected, do not have much competition and then introduce them into the content. The Google AdWords Keyword Planner and the WordPress plugin Yoast SEO You can help us a lot in this task. Use them, at least at the beginning.
3. Marketing and promotion
3.1 Travel forums
Once the blog is created and that it has content, we must make it known to start receiving visits that are not from our family and friends and start positioning in Google. As you can imagine, this is not a one-day thing, it is something much more complicated, so we will have to wait a while to start receiving a good flow of Google visits. A good way to start appearing in the blogosphere and make yourself known is by writing good comments on different travel forums and putting the link of your travel blog In the signature.
Of course, keep in mind that here it is not worth entering right and left in all the threads of travel forums or blogs and start commenting in an uncreative way in all of them. With this you will only get the opposite effect and it is that after seeing 3 comments you are considered more spam Not a new member of the blogger community. Always write with common sense and comments with those who contribute something.
3.2 Interviews and publications in other blogs
Another good way to get visits on your travel blog is to write as a guest in other blogs that already have a good audience. Apart from the visits that this will bring us, if the blog mentions us with a link to our travel blog, we will increase the authority of the blog. This is a good way to upload positions on Google and start being more visible.
3.3 Social Networks
In these times, we believe it is the best way to promote your blog. If you increase your followers on social networks with good publications, you can get a good traffic to the blog quickly. In this case the RRSS with which you can get more visits are: Facebook and Twitter, so we must stay active in them and above all, enhance them. Instagram is very fashionable right now and although it is not a network that generates direct visits to the blog it is a great way to publicize your brand through images.
Other interesting social networks, but rather smaller in interaction and number of users to the previous ones would be: Linkedin, Google+ and Pinterest.
3.4 Newsletters
The Newsletter is a newsletter that we send to our subscribers when we publish a new article or a summary of the articles we have published over a period of time. That is why it is important to increase the subscriber list daily and retain them in some way. In WordPress we have several plugins to manage and increase subscribers, how could they be Mailrelay or Thrive Leads.
4. Bad practices of a travel blogger (which we should avoid)
4.1 Social Networks
- Increasing the number of followers on social networks has become an obsession for some bloggers, using any kind of techniques to achieve their goal, whether they are professional / ethical or not. The direct consequence of increasing followers quickly, either by buying or from the follow / unfollow technique, is that in the short / medium term these followers will stop interacting, since none of those who follow you really do it for your content or your brand. Your page will have thousands of followers but only a few likes or comments in each post, producing the opposite effect to that of a successful blog.
- Always answer your followers comments. It is the least they deserve, and more if they are not only commenting on your post, but they are asking you something directly. There is nothing worse for your blog than to devote the necessary time to interact with your followers.
- If you have been invited to an event, they have given you a service for free or a Tourist Office has helped you with your trip, it is great that you make them a mention in RRSS. Although that does not imply that you should flood your profiles with @ in all your publications. Your followers want to read to you, they don't care much that X has helped you with your trip. Maybe the company or even you think that the most beneficial thing is to name them at all times but nothing is further from reality, you will end up getting tired of your readers. "Aggressive" advertising in this sector is not beneficial, for either party.
- The RRSS are not always to blame for your little interaction. We agree that Facebook has lowered (to most pages) a lot the reach if you do not pay, but we assure you that it will not leave you at "0". If your content is of quality, you publish regularly and above all, you interact with your followers, Facebook will keep the reach of your page.
4.2 Content
Go from being a travel blog that promotes travel for free by hype and saucer, and then start publishing organized trips, either by Tourist Offices or travel agencies, without notifying its readers, is another of the most common ways to lose credibility. Think about how much it had cost you to get it and how easy it would have been to be honest and tell things as they are. Wanting to sell an organized trip as a great adventurous expedition for free is the worst way of presenting a trip, it can even be very tempting as a narrator to explain that at some point in that travel for free, you were about to be devoured by a lion, but can you really tell me that you would believe it from another blogger?
We do not want to be heavy, but we repeat it again: readers are not stupid. Even if they don't tell you, they know who is behind the words and especially why they read you. Nothing happens, have you signed up for an organized trip? Surely if you explain it, your followers will thank you and even more than one may follow your steps if you are sincere telling your experience.
Many blogs have now lost much of their blog interaction and in RRSS, and although they can maintain a good number of visits because they are well positioned, for all the previous work, they can see how their most faithful followers stop reading them, trust their recommendations and the worst, stop having them as a example of what they promote.
4.3 Humility
Right now traveling anywhere in the world is much easier that a few years ago, flights are cheaper, there is a lot of information in many ways and many facilities in every way. Believing yourself Indiana Jones or Willy Fog at this point is to fall into ridicule, as today thousands or millions of people travel anywhere in the world. Therefore, to think for example that we will discover some new destiny to our followers is practically impossible.
There is also the economic factor, and with money, you can get where you want, regardless of whether you want to focus on it later as a great expedition or one great exploration. That is already in your way of seeing or explaining the trip.
Above all, we must be humble and see that the only thing that differentiates us from many other travelers / tourists / people, is that we have enough time to write our experiences in a blog. Do not exaggerate the experiences or make them more difficult than they really have. At first readers may see you as a reckless traveler, but think that there can always be someone who has done the same and (may) write it as it really is, leaving your credibility on the floor.
5. Maintenance
5.1 Updated blog
Once we have reached certain success both in number of visits and in followers on social networks, it is necessary keep the blog updated with a minimum of one or two good weekly publications. This is the best way to maintain a loyal audience and for new readers to see that the travel blog is in permanent motion and with current advice.
5.2 Analyze the results
Right now we have many tools to analyze blog visits and social networks. The best tool for the blog is Google Analytics an instrument that allows to obtain all kinds of Information of the users who visit our travel blog.
For social networks, both Facebook and Twitter have their own statistics with which you can see and analyze if your strategy is on track or you should change it.
5.3 Adapt to the new times
Being alert to news, new social networks or tools that can give more diffusion or make work on the blog easier is one of the most important tasks for a good travel blogger. The online world changes very fast and if we let time pass before making a major change or promoting a new social network, we can fall into oblivion.
With this article we do not intend to discourage any traveler who wants to create a travel blog, if not quite the opposite. We will not deny that behind what you see there is a lot of work. But we can also say that all that effort is worth it when you receive emails or comments of thanks for the advice and recommendations you publish. We would also like to recommend that you start the blog as a hobby and not only as a tool for live traveling. Time will tell if you can make it your profession and why not, make that dream come true.
"If you don't build your dreams, someone will hire you to build theirs. Undertake"
** All images have been provided by Shutterstock
