Do you eat, sleep and breathe travel? Does seeing new places and meeting new people fuel you like nothing else? If so, and if you love to document those experiences, then becoming a travel blogger in 2024 might just be the profession for you.
But what about the travel blogging industry being oversaturated, I hear you cry? Well, the truth of it is that yes, there are lots of bloggers in the travel sector because its a hughely popular topic. However, because its so popular it also means that there is plenty of demand for good travel blog too.
Indeed, if you can stay upto date with the latest travel blogging trends and developments, which you will wind below, you have as good a shot of being successful in this sector as in any other. Just keep keeping to find out all bout the most important aspect of travbelling blogging in 2024.
Image sourced at Pixabay – License CC0
Don’t expect miracles in the first week
Im sure there are some hot shots out there that started ranking for their keywords top 10 in the serps in their first week, but for most of us climbing the long road to the first page is lengthy affair. What that means is that you can optimize your site, write killer content, and include the best visuals early on, only to see it languish at lower positions than you’d like.
Whats important to rember here is that this is OK, and totally normal for things to take some time to get going at the the beginning of your travel blogging experience. Indeed, content with keywords rated as medium difficulty usually takes around 9-12 to get to a first page position so you really have to ibvest and think about it as a long game.
Publish human & helpful content
You’ve probably heard about the helpful content update that happened in March 2024. You know the one that started deprioritzing content stuffed with keywords solely for the purposes of SEO.
Well that update is still active and if you want to run a successful travel blog in 2024 you’ll need to take heed of what it says. Of course, what you need to do is in the title of the content – make it helpful. That means it needs to answer searchers and readers questions and provide them with useful information first and be a vehicle for keywords second.
Your content also needs to be personal and written from you own experience or research as this is an angle that AI can’t provide. In essence as long as you put the reader first, you should be able to weather this update and continue to get plenty of site visits.
Use content pillars
Google EEAT loves content pillars because they clearly show what your website is about. That is why you need to build the content around 3-4 content pillars on your site. A good way to think of these pillars is similar (or even the same as!) the topic categories on your site.
Each content pillar will need a more general post that mentions all the sub-topics that the pillar will contain. Then you can link out to these subtopics while describing them in more detail, all while giving Gioogle what it needs to see you are a reliable source of information on this subject.
For example, a content topic on a travel blog could be New York, then within that pillar you could have sub-topic blogs or cluster content as they are also know on the best places to eat, the best places to stay, and the best sights to see. Later on you could further breakdown these these clusters into even more detail information and link them back to their parent cluster and pillar.
Think about monetization from the start
You may not realise this when first starting out, but they way in which you plan to monetize your site will impact the domain, host, and type of site you need to create. For example, a travel blog may tend towards advterising revenue and sponsored posts for monetization. What this means is you will need a site that is responsive, and that can handle as many visitors as possible. Experts often suggest that this means you should build your site on WordPress.org (not .com) as you can change and adapt things as you go to accommodate larger volumes of site visitors.
However, if you are planning on monetizing your travel blog through ecommorce then you will need a an ecommerce set up available through shopify, wix, or woocommerce. Indeed, selling digital, real life, and POD or print on demand products through your travel site can work if you get the angle right. For example, you could sell digital prints of the photos you have taken of the paces you have been, or lightroom presettings. Digital guides on specific locations or types of travel such as female solo travel and safety can be profitable too. Lastly if you build up a brand you may want to start selling merch with your logo on it, and POD services are perfect for this.
Original visual content are vital to success
Do you love reading ravel content with poor quality and sparse images, making it hard to picture the location being described? Of course, you don’t. Indeed, its often a striking visual of a mist shrouded mountain or a azure blue ses that pulls you in, and the same will go for your readers. That is why making sure you capture orgional visual content on your travels is so important.
The good news is that its never been so easy to capture original high quality images for your travel blog as equipment like digital cameras and drones have never been so affordable! In particular a good digital DSLR camera is a good investment as is a DJI Mini 4 Pro Drone, which is foldable and compact enough to fit in your luggage with ease. Its ultra light weight of under 249 grams design even eliminates the necessity for training or registration in the majority of countries and regions, making is as easy as possible to get the best travel video footage for your blog.
Add a newsletter to your blog
If you are travel blogging in 2024 you need to have a newsletter. Its super easy to start one as all you’ll need to do is collect site visitor emails and then send it to those addresses. To get people to sign up you can offer access to gated content such as free digital product in exchange for their email.
The great thing about newsletters is that they can be used for multiple purposes. Firstly they are a great way of keeping you audience informed and upto date with your content. They are also great for re-engaging users as it reminds them of your site and encourages them to visit it, especially when you include those all important links. Lastly, newsletters can even be monetised to add an additional revenue stream. Most travel bloggers do this by selling space on their newsletter to companies looking to reach that bloggers target demographic. For example, travel insurance, suitcase retaillers, and discount flight operators may be interested.
Another options that is like a newsletter, but more interactive and engaging for your audience is a Substack. The major difference between a substack and a newsletter is that the former allows comments, so it can really help you build up a genuine community around your blog and brand.
Name your images for an SEO boost
Rmeber that every piece of text on your site will have an impact on how you rank in the search engines. To that end, you can get an additional boost by naming your images before you upload them. In fact, the best process here is to compress your images so they take up less space and load faster, and name them at the same time.
The key to proper naming of your image files is to focus on the keyword or longtail keyword phrase you want to rank for. Writing a post with the title ‘The best way to spend 48 hours in New York? Then be sure to save your images as The best way to spend 48 hours in New York? Before you upload them. You can then add alt text describing each images separately after.
Maks sure blog is mobile responsive
In 2024 there is no excuse for having a site that only displays properly on PCs. After all, most people use mobile devices including their phones more often, especially when searching for travel and leisure content!
That is why you have to make sure your website looks just as good on mobile as it does on desktop. Yes, this may require a bit of tweaking here and there, but most website tools allow you to toggle between each view checking the mobile preview and making adjustments as necessary. You might even want to start building from a mobile view, and toggle back to the desktop one when you’re done?