How to start a successful travel blog in 2020: tips for creating epic content

Great. So, today we're going to be talking about how to create a successful travel blog after COVID-19 and we'll be focusing specifically on how to create Epic Content. So, let's get started. So that's a little bit about me and let's talk more about my background. I run the Solo Female Travel Blog – Somotoseeks.com. I've been blogging since September 2017 and I've been featured in publications like the Matador Network, Huffington Post, Travel Noire, Nomadic Matt, and a couple of others. Now

I want to talk about what you will be learning today during this presentation. The first thing is we were talking about the travel blogging landscape, post-COVID-19, what will this travel blogging world look like and how will it change? And, what can you expect, to look differently after we get through this pandemic? We'll be talking about specific things you need to do before you launch your travel blog, to make sure that you set it up for success. And then lastly, we'll be talking about

the key components of Epic Content that appeals to travelers and drives a lot of traffic to your travel blog. So first start with predictions for the travel blogging niche after COVID-19. So, I do predict that the travel blogging niche will become smaller just because this pandemic has had such a huge impact on the travel industry. Lots of businesses in the travel industry have had to make huge adjustments and travel bloggers have experience a huge decline in traffic than usual. And so, I

believe that based on the conversations I see that are happening on Facebook groups and travel blogging forums, we're going to see a lot of people moving out of this niche and invest in other careers, that haven't been as impacted by COVID-19 as a travel niche. So, I think that we will be seeing a smaller travel industry and a smaller travel blogging niche as well. So, despite this contraction of the travel blogging industry, I think that established bloggers, those who have been around for

10 plus years or even five plus years will have an easier time bouncing back because they have more established brands. On the other hand, newer bloggers will need to niche down even more to stand out in the travel blogging niche. And what I mean by niche down is to focus on an even more specific topic in the travel industry, in the travel world. So, you can't just have a general travel blog anymore that won't really be as effective in the new landscape that we're going into, or you have to

be even more specific and address a specific problem for an even smaller group of people. And I also think that local travel will be more popular because of all the restrictions that we've seen with borders closing and countries being more particular about who they allow in. I think people will be more prone to explore places closer to their homes. Explore the cities, explore places that are in their country. For example, in the USA right now, people are doing road trips around the country

. People are exploring national parks and more local destinations as opposed to traveling to Europe or traveling to Latin America. So, I think there'll be an explosion of searches for local travel destinations. So, these are some of the really important things to do before you launch a travel blog. They're absolutely critical, and you have to do these things in order to set yourself up for success. So, the first thing is to: Establish your why. Then you can choose a niche. Research your tar

get audience. Determine how you're going to make money. And Then create a blog business plan. And we'll go over each of these items one by one. So, the first thing is to establish your why, and this is because you need a compelling reason to start and continue to grow your blog for years to come. You need to have a specific motive that is driving you to create this travel blog and to continue to grow it and to write content, weeks and months and years in the future. Because, growing a travel

blog, it might seem glamorous on Instagram. It might seem like, Oh, you're just jumping from one Island to another, but there's a lot of work behind the scenes that goes into writing Epic Content and continuously attracting visitors to your site. There's a lot of writing, there's a lot of planning that goes on behind the scenes. And so, you really need to have a reason, that is going to keep you motivated throughout your journey. So, in addition to that, you need to have a mission. So, wh

at is the purpose of your blog? Who do you serve? Why does what you do matter? Why is it important for your blog to exist? What would be missing in the marketplace if your blog didn't exist? So, these are some of the really important questions to ask. You have to do some soul searching to figure out what's really driving you. And those may also be personal reasons. What is it personally, that's making you want to start this blog? For me, when I started my travel blog, I had been looking for

content online, specifically for black female solo travelers when I was traveling alone in Europe. And I couldn't find anything, I couldn't find any specific advice for a black female solo traveler who was trying to visit Barcelona or Rome. So, I decided to create that content to help other black females solo travelers like me, to navigate those destinations more easily. And I also had this deep burning passion for travel, and I wanted to share it with the world. And I saw other people like

me, creating successful travel blogs. And that was a really strong motivator for me to keep going because I saw other people doing it. And so, I wanted to get my voice out there and get my perspective out there. And so that really kept me going, even when I didn't get a lot of traffic in the beginning. And when, I was struggling to land bank collaborations and grow my income as a travel blogger. Those reasons really kept me going throughout the difficult stages in the beginning of my jour

ney. And then, we also have to choose a niche when you're starting a blog. And basically, a niche is a specific topic that your blog revolves around. So, for instance, my niche is solo female travel. So, all my concepts somehow tie back to solo female travel. And then I also have a sub-niche, which is black travel. So, I talk about solo female travel as a whole. And then I talk about female travel as a black woman. And so, having a niche is a really important because you need to solve a spe

cific problem for a specific group of people. Especially in this current landscape now that the travel industry is contracting you need to be able to stand out by having something that you're known for. And that's what a niche is. So, when you're choosing a niche, there are five critical questions to ask. So, first question is, what am I knowledgeable about? So, think about, what you really understand well, like what types of topics do you find yourself researching? What topics do you find t

hat you're able to talk about endlessly? For instance, for me, when I was starting, I knew a lot about Spain and Portugal because I had lived in Spain for over a year and I spent a lot of time in Portugal. So, I could talk endlessly about different destinations, different restaurants, even like food. I knew so many things about these places. So, I felt like I was very knowledgeable about it and I could write about it endlessly. Then after you figure out, what are you knowledgeable about? You

have to figure out, is there an audience for this niche? Are there people who want to learn about this topic that you're knowledgeable about? And for me that was easy to find out because I know we'll just do some research. Oh yeah. People want to learn about Spain definitely. People want to learn about things to do with Spain, places to visit, festivals. And people definitely want to learn about Portugal with all the beach cities. All the festivals, the food and all of that stuff. So, it wa

s very easy to validate my niche in the beginning because of the sheer scale of inquiries for these destinations. And we'll talk more about how to validate your niche in a second. So, the next question you have to ask is, can I make money writing about this niche? Even if your niche is popular and there are a lot of people searching for it, you still need to figure out whether the audience that you attract is willing and able to pay for a solution to their problems. So, is your audience loo

king for guided tours? Is your audience looking for transportation options at these destinations? Is your audience looking for hotels and flights and things like that? So, you need to figure out is your audience actually able to pay for solutions to their problems, or are they just looking for free information? So that's something else that you need to figure out in order to determine whether or not you can actually monetize your expertise. And then the first question is, how much competit

ion is there in this niche? Competition is actually a good thing because it means that there are other people who are already making money in this niche. And that's evidence that you can also, make money in this niche, but at the same time, if there's too much competition. Like if you're writing about a topic that is dominated by the really big travel blogs out there, like the Matador Networks and the Connexus Travelers and the BBC Travelers are you going to be able to compete with those rea

lly big brands or should you find a more specific topic within that niche to address that you could be able to compete with more easily? And then the final question is, can you write about this niche for the next two years? This is really important because in the beginning, a lot of bloggers are really excited. They have a lot of ideas and they write their first 10 posts and they're still really excited. But then how are you going to feel after 20 posts, 30 posts, 50 posts have gone by? Are

you still going to have the same momentum? Are you going to be excited about the topic you're writing about? So, you have to really be able to figure out whether you can actually stick to writing about this niche for the next two years. And I say two years, because that's the amount of time, I would say you should give your blog to get to the optimal level in terms of like Google rankings, Pinterest rankings. I think two years, so that you really have a long-term approach to starting your b

log, as opposed to thinking about the next six months or the next year, just think about what you can do in the next two years. So now we're going to talk about tools and strategies for researching your niche. And we'll first start with, Google Trends. So, Google Trends is a free tool, that helps you determine the popularity of keywords, which are basically search terms over time. So, you can look at how a keyword has performed over those spans of years to see whether it's going up, down or

whether it's more steady. And this can give you an idea of the popularity of that keyword and the chances that you can continue to get traffic from that keyword going forward. So, let's take a look at an example right here. So right here, we have an example of, Africa Travel. So, I looked at Africa Travel over the past five years, and you can see from 2015, through 2019, it's pretty steady. The chart looks pretty steady. It's kind of going up and down. And then we get to around early 2020,

and it shoots up. And this was kind of around, when COVID started to really spread. I think people were maybe looking for alternative destinations to travel to. And so that's when we saw the spike in Africa Travel. And then even more recently, we're still seeing Africa Travel trend upward because I guess Africa hasn't been as affected by COVID as other regions of the world like Europe and Asia. So maybe that could explain why Africa Travel is trending upward. So, if you were, for example, t

hinking about starting up a blog about Africa Travel, this would be a good sign that, Oh, Africa Travel is just trending upwards. So, people are really searching for Africa Travel destinations, and maybe that's a good topic for me to focus on for my blog. And another example is Asia Travel. So, we can see here from 2015 to around 2019 as well, it was pretty much more or less consistent. And then around early 2020, again, we saw a spike in Asia Travel. And the explanation for this one will be

a little bit different because, Asia was really affected by, COVID-19. So, people were probably searching for like travel advisories for traveling to Asia, whether or not they should. Maybe cancel their trip or whether or not, they could even get into certain destinations. I think that probably explains the uptick we saw around the early 2020, and even more recently, we see that Asia Travel is trending downward. So, that kind of makes sense with what's going on. So, if you wanted to start a

travel blog about Asia right now, I don't really think it would be as successful as a travel blog about another region like Africa, just because of what's going on in the world. And people aren't really planning, travel to Asia as much right now. So, Google Trends helps you understand, the popularity of different keywords and helps you decide your niche based on this data. And there's no hard and fast rule, like if a keyword is trending upward, and that means that I should write about it.

If a keyword is trending downward, that means, I shouldn't write about it. It just gives you an overview of how the keyword is performing over time. It helps you make a more informed decision about what you should choose as your blog niche. And then another really great tool it's called BuzzSumo and what BuzzSumo does, it shows you the most popular content, by social media shares for any keyword. So basically, what BuzzSumo does is it aggregates the number of shares that posts have receive

d on social media and shows it to you all in one place, by keyword. And so, you can compare to popularity of different niches, using BuzzSumo by looking at the popular content, that's in each niche. So, let's take a look at an example here. So, for example, we have here small group Travel. So, if you search BuzzSumo for the keyword small group travel, it'll show you on the top post for this keyword. This time, we're looking at over the last six months. And as you can see here, we're getting

around, 1.2 thousand, eight hundred and the top posts are getting, 700 is around 1.2 thousand posts. So, that's a fair number of shares, but the helpful thing about this tool is that you can compare this to another keyword that you're considering. So, let's see here, I think there was another example. So, there was another example that I had here of, couples travel. So, Couples Travel was getting around 17,000 shares on BuzzSumo. So, if you compare like small group travel and Couples Trave

l, and if you were considering between the two options, then you could see that Couples Travel definitely has the upper hand because it has a higher potential to be shared. So that can help you inform your decision for what niche you want to choose. And then we're going to go over now, one of my favorite tools, for blogging, and that is Pinterest. Pinterest is an amazing tool. It is a visual search engine. And it has the, right now over 400 million monthly users. Pinterest is all about helpi

ng people discover new ideas and inspirational content. And that's why, travel is always constantly in the top 10 most searched topics because travel naturally lend itself to new ideas and inspirational content. You can find out about, bucket list destinations, the best cities to visit, food culture. Naturally travel lends itself to inspirational content. That's why travel does so well on Pinterest. And so, for example, we have here, a screenshot from the Pinterest home feed. So basically,

how Pinterest works is that it monitors the activities of different users and based under activities. It suggests content to them that it thinks they may be interested in. So, for instance, if I search for Barcelona and the Pinterest search bar, it'll show me the most shared content related to Barcelona. So, you see the pins here. Those are like the most popular topics related to Barcelona at the time of the search. And if you look at the top, you will see different color-coded boxes that

have words in them, and what these words are, are the most popular topics related to Barcelona. So, the most popular topics related to Barcelona are photography things to do in Barcelona are Spain, the keyboard like the football team, food, fashion, travel nightlife. So, this gives you an idea of what people on Pinterest want to know about Barcelona. So, if you're planning your content, this is actually a really good way to figure out content ideas just by going on Pinterest. And, seeing w

hat search terms people are looking for with regards to different destinations, different travel topics. And that gives you a wealth of information that you can use to craft content that is virtually guaranteed to be popular, because you can see that people are searching for those topics. And then we have another example here of travel packing. So, if I search for travel packing on Pinterest, it'll give me that list of color coded boxes, or that tells me the related searches. So, I can see

here that people are looking for travel packing lists, travel packing tips, minimalist travel packing and travel packing hacks, checklists. Travel packing for winter backpacking and things like that. So, if I'm planning to write a post about travel packing, hey, I have a bunch of ideas here of different posts I can write about. And I've actually used this to write, travel packing checklist, travel packing tips and posts that I have trending on Pinterest and I've driven thousands of pages to

my site just because I looked at what people were searching for. And I created content to answer people's questions and that drove traffic to my site. And another tool that you can use to research your niche is blog income reports. Now, there are different bloggers out there who publish their income reports to detail the income streams that they use to make money from their blogs. And this is a great source of information because you can take a look at how other bloggers are making money in

your niche, and then figure out some of the products that they're recommending, how they're monetizing their blogs. Are they using the ads? Are they using affiliate marketing? Are they using sponsored posts? Just to give you some ideas about the different ways that you can make money with your own blog. And let's say if a blogger is promoting a product that you already use and making a lot of money with it, then maybe you could think, Hey, I have used this product already. And maybe I can p

romote it as well. For instance, I was using, a pocket Wi-Fi device that was really popular. So, I found other people who were promoting this pocket Wi-Fi device and earning a lot of commissions. So, I started writing reviews and comparisons to showcase this pocket Wi-Fi device. And I started earning affiliate income just by researching what other people in my niche were already using to monetize their own blogs. So, if you search like travel blog income reports on Google, you'll find a lot

of examples of these income reports and that can help you determine how you can also monetize your blog. And then the last thing I want to talk about is creating a blog business plan. Now people normally think that a business plan is optional, but I highly recommend it because it really helps you put your mission, your strategy and goals in writing. And as we know that research shows that when you write something down, you're more likely to accomplish it than when you just have it in your

head. So, having a blog business plan gives you a clear roadmap to achieve your blogging goals. So, your blog business plan you could have your mission, your target audience, your marketing plan, your traffic strategy, and your specific goals for each year. And when you write that down, it's like you're taking it seriously. And you can reference this document throughout the year and even throughout your blogging journey. And you're turning your blog into something that was once an idea into

something that's a concrete business. And that's why having a blog business plan is very beneficial. I created a blog business plan, when I first started my blog and I update my business plan every year, based on my goals. And this is really helpful for keeping you focused, motivated and treating your blog like a business, because what you're running is not really a blog. You're running a blog-based business. And so, if you want to be successful with your blog-based business, you have to t

reat it like a business and not a hobby. And having a blog business plan helps you take your blog seriously as a business. And now I'm going to go into my favorite topic, which is creating Epic Content. So, a blog revolves around content, it revolves around creating consistent high-quality content that drives quality visitors who can then take an action on your site. Like joining your email list, or purchasing from your affiliate links or purchasing your own products. But it all starts with

getting traffic. Traffic is the lifeblood of any blog. So, if you can't get traffic, you're going to really struggle with blogging. But the good thing is that getting traffic is easier than most people make it out to be. And it just starts with understanding the components of creating Epic Content. And so now we're going to go over those, creating Epic Content starts with addressing one topic in depth. So, for instance, these can look like the ultimate guide to backpacking in South America

or the ultimate guide to solo travel or the best beaches in Barcelona or the best beaches in, let's say, the Caribbean. So, you write an exhaustive guide to one specific place or an exhaustive guide for one specific travel topic. And you go in depth in it and you focus on only one topic. And another component of Epic Content is offering a new perspective or addressing something that most other posts admit about this topic. And we'll go over how to figure it out what's missing from other pos

ts and how to craft your own unique perspective. And then the third thing is, so Epic Content is optimized for keywords because keywords are very important to get found on any search engine, whether it's Pinterest or Google or Bing or Yahoo. Keywords are very important, but at the same time, you're focusing on your reader first because your reader is the person who comes to your site, looking for information. And your goal is to meet your user's needs to satisfy user intent. So, while you'r

e optimizing for keywords, you also want to make sure that you're addressing the needs of your reader first, because your reader ultimately is the person who's going to purchase from you to generate your email list and to help you monetize your blog. So, your readers always come first and search engines a close second. So, the process for writing Epic Content starts with keyword research. Epic Content always begins with proper keyword research and people make a big mistake when it comes to

keyword research. And this is something that I made a mistake in when I first started. So, the typical approach to keyword research is that you brainstorm a bunch of ideas of what you think your audience may be interested in. So, you think your audience is interested in learning about, travel packing. You think your audience is interested in learning about, let's say beaches in California. And so, you just brainstorm a bunch of random keywords that you think they might be interested in, an

d then you plug them in into like a keyword research tool like Ubersuggest or Keysearch or Ahreps, and then you kind of search for the competitiveness. And then if it's competitive then you skip it, if it's not competitive, then you choose it. This is the wrong way to do keyword research. It's based on guesswork because you're just basically guessing what your audience is interested in instead of actually getting valid proof that your audience is actually interested in that topic. So that's

why I always recommend doing competitor research as opposed to brainstorming keywords from scratch because your competitors, if they're already ranking for certain keywords, then that means that you can also rank for those keywords. And, you know, for sure that your audience will be interested in those keywords because your competitors are already ranking for those keywords. So, it takes out all the guesswork and you're doing keyword research based on valid evidence as opposed to guesswork

. And the second step to creating Epic Content is to read through the top 10 to 20 posts on the search results and look for opportunities to add missing information or new perspective. For instance, if you're trying to write, like a walking tour of a specific city, let’s say, Paris, you can search on Google, walking tour of Paris or self-guided walking tour of Paris. And then you read through the top 10 posts and see, what's mentioned there, what neighborhoods do they talk about? What, diff

erent, monuments or landmarks would they talk about? Are they missing something? Is there a specific, um, piece of information that you think your audience could find beneficial? That's not mentioned anywhere else, and you start writing down these ideas, and this gives you, a way to craft a new perspective that may be missing from other posts that you can use to set your own posts apart. And then the third part is you have to write long and in-depth content. There was a research study done

by, Backlinko, which is a really popular site on SEO. And it found that the average length of a top 10 posts on Google is 1500 words. So, Google favors, long form content and readers also favor long form content because long form content implies value. Implies that you are taking the time to research and provide thorough information to your audience. So, people generally look at long-form content as something that's more valuable than a post that's, 200 words, think about it in your own exp

erience. If you find a post that's 200 words about places to eat in Prague versus a post that's 2000 words about places to eat in Prague, which one would you think is more useful? The 2000-word posts, of course, because it's more in depth, it covers more angles, it covers more restaurant, or it gives you, more tips of how to get to those restaurants. Whether you should tip a certain amount or not. So long-form content is perceived by the readers and Google as being more valuable. And that's

why it's really important to write a long-form content. I would aim for between 1200 and 5,000 words for every post. This is not a hard and fast rule. You can always write more or less. It really depends on the specific niche that you're targeting. And we'll go over a little bit more about how much content you need to write for each keyword. So, we have Keyword Research tools that help us evaluate, what type of content we should write, how long they should be, what keywords we should use. A

nd I'm going to go over a couple of those Keyword Research tools here. So first we have Keysearch and Keysearch I think, it's about $19 a month. Don't quote me on that. I think it's about $19 a month and it's specifically the cheapest option for, keyword research. It's great for beginners because it's also user friendly and not as complex as the other tools that we have here. So Keysearch allows you to determine the competitiveness of different keywords that you're targeting as well as the

domain authority of the top 10 posts. So, domain authority refers to the number of backlinks a website has. And backlinks are the number one indicator of authority to Google. So, the number of other sites to have linked to a site help Google decide whether that site has authority or not. So, domain authority is a number between one and a hundred. The closer to a hundred you are, the higher that your domain authority is. And so, if you have a high domain authority, then it's easier for your

site to rank on the first page of Google. If you have a domain authority of, let's say 10, then you have to do a little bit more work to rank highly on Google. So, you always want to aim to have a high domain authority. So, when you plug in a keyword in Keysearch, it'll show you the posts that are in the top 10, their domain authority and other information that can help you determine whether or not you can actually compete for this keyword. Another, Keyword Research tool that's really helpfu

l is SEMrush. I use SEMrush for about six months, it costs about $9 a month, which is expensive, which is out of the range for new bloggers. And which is why I don't recommend it. So, you have an established blog and you maybe have, a hundred posts or more, and you're getting like a good amount of traffic and you want to do more advanced SEO work. I don't recommend SEMrush until you are more advanced, SEMrush has a wealth of information and it can make a big difference in your SEO strategy.

For instance, if you search for a keyword in SEMrush, it can actually tell you the lanes of the blog posts that are ranked for that keyword. So, if you're trying to write a post about, the best things to do in, Puerto Rico and you search on, on SEMrush, it'll actually show you all the posts that rank in the top 10. And if you click on those posts, it'll tell you how long those posts are. And so now you have an exact reference to determine how long their own posts should be, and it makes y

our writing process so much easier. And it makes you, better able to compete with those posts in the top 10, because you can even write a longer post than the ones that are in the top 10 and then you’re signaling to Google, like, Hey, I have better content. And then Google maybe even get you to rank higher than those posts that are already in the top 10. And then the last, Keyword Research I want to talk about is Ahrefs. Ahrefs is also an advance tool, and I don't recommend it for beginners

. I recommend it for someone who is more intermediate or advanced. And Ahrefs is really good for link-building because it gives you a wealth of information about the backlinks that your competitors have. And based on that information, you can build backlinks to your own site and grow your domain authority, because if you grow your domain authority, that means you're better able to rank on Google for competitive keywords, and it helps you get more traffic to your site. So, if you always want

to be focused on keywords and domain authority throughout your SEO journey. When you first start your blog, I wouldn't focus as much on link-building because it does take time. It's more advanced. I would just focus on creating quality content that you can actually build links to. So, you have to have content that people actually want to link to before you can start link building. So maybe focus on the first three months or so on just writing quality content for your first three to six mon

ths. And then after that, you can focus on driving links to that quality content that you've already created. So, we're going to go over an example here of a key search. So, I searched, on cheap things to do in Madrid. So, Keysearch is showing me the top 10 posts. Number one. So, it's showing me the domain authority and the page authority. The page authority is similar to domain authority. It refers to the authority of the individual page, the individual posts while the domain authority ref

ers to the authority of the overall website. So, you see here, Synthesis.com is number one, followed by TripAdvisor, Culture Trip and Skyscanner. So, I want to make an important point here in that while domain authority does matter. It's not everything that Google considers. Google considers over 200 different ranking factors to determine what posts to show and the top 10 or top 20. And just because you don't have a high domain authority doesn't mean you can't rank in the top 10. Having a h

igher domain authority makes it easier, but it's not everything. For example, you can see this post, this website down here, Franklin students has a domain authority of 15 and it's in the top 10. So, domain authority it definitely helps you, but it's not everything. Like the length of the posts, the quality of the posts, the number of shares the post has and a bunch of other ranking factors also impact your ability to get into the top 10. For instance, this post that I wrote here is over 5

,000 words. And I think that maybe played a part in the fact that it ranked so highly, even though, TripAdvisor and Matador Network and TripSavvy, all these really high authority sites are also ranking here. Maybe because I wrote a longer post and it's 101 things to do in Madrid. So, it's very long, very in depth. So, if you write long in-depth content that can help you rank on Google and beat out sites that have a domain authority of 93 or 86 or 80. So you don't need really a high domain au

thority to rank highly, but you do need high-quality content. So, we're going to go over some examples of Epic Content. So, what does content actually look like in real life. So, one example here is one post that I wrote about two years ago. It's a 4,000-word posts about racism in Spain. And so, I talk about my experience living in Spain as an Ex-pat and as a study abroad student and the different encounters I had with racism. I talk about, racism on a day-to-day basis and racism as an Afr

ican immigrant, racism for an American ex-pat. So, I addressed the topic from different angles and globally indefinitely the topic. And so right now in this post ranks, number one for the keyword racism in Spain, and it's ranked number one for the last two years. And so, this shows you an example of, writing really in-depth content and covering one topic only. So, in this post I write about only one topic and that is racism in Spain. It's very specific. And I talk about, different angles of

the subject. I talk about, even black face. I talk about, the different traditions that they have in Spain that are considered racist by some. I talk about my own experiences, experiences of other people, other black travelers that I've met. So, I go really in depth. And that's why this post does really well. It's been number one on Google for two years, and it's also been shared a lot on social media. So, take the time to really think through your content. And even if you write fewer conte

nt. It's better to write fewer content and go really in depth. Than to write a lot of content, that's like 500 words and doesn't really get you anywhere. So just take time to write your posts, go as in-depth, as you can, make them long and make them comprehensive, make them engaging and really, start a conversation. That's how you really get people to visit your site. And that's how you really get the attention of search engines, because if people are visiting your site, sharing it, those ar

e all good signals to search engines as well. Another example here is, the poster I talked about earlier, the 101 free and cheap things to do in Madrid. So, this is a 6,000-word mega post. It covers virtually every activity you can possibly do in Madrid, from restaurants to shopping, to museums, to day trips, to parks. So, I talk about everything you could possibly do in Madrid. It's, 6,000 words, as I mentioned, and this ranks number one on Google for 'Cheap things to do in Madrid'. And so

, this is a really in-depth post. It covers only one topic, which is things to do in Madrid, and it goes over it in very different angles and really goes in depth into it. Another example is, a much shorter post. So, this shows you that you don't really have to write a 5,000-word posts for it to be popular. You can write a much shorter post, that can also do well. So, for example, this post is 1300 words and it's about the top sites to visit in Barcelona on a walking tour. So, I think what

makes this post successful is because I take an unpopular stance. So normally when I searched the top 10 to 20 posts about this topic, it was all about glowing recommendations how Barcelona is the greatest city in Europe and Barcelona is so amazing. It's the best city in Spain, and you should definitely go to Barcelona. But I felt differently. I thought that Barcelona was actually not as great as people say it is. I didn't think it was. I definitely don't think it's the best city in Spain.

I thought that it was a little bit overrated. And so, I talk about that in the beginning and that got a lot of people talking like, people agreeing with me, people disagreeing with me and it generated a lot of comments and as a result generated a lot of shares. So, this post has been shared on almost 70,000 times on Pinterest, just because I decided to share my opinion. So, don't be afraid to share your opinion, even if it's not popular, don't be afraid to challenge conventional wisdom. Don

't be afraid to take an unpopular stance because that can really stir-up conversation and help your posts perform well. Even if the post is not 2000 words or 5,000 words. The post can only be 1300 words, and it's getting shared so many times, so you can really stir up conversation and drive traffic to your site by taking an unpopular stance, or just stirring up conversation to get people talking. And that really gets your content out there and makes other people wonder, like what's going on

here? Why is everyone talking about this? And that drives attention to your blog. Another example is from another travel blog called Hand Luggage Only, and the post is focused on, the islands of Croatia. So, this post is really effective because they use stunning imagery to showcase the islands of Croatia. If you look through the posts, it's just like one gorgeous shot after another. So, with travel content, you always want to focus also on photography because, travel is a very visual nich

e by nature. People want to see the places that you're talking about. People wants to even see videos. So, when you're traveling, you don't have to be a professional photographer. But really do take the time to capture images, that aren't really the typical images that you would see out there on Google. If you can take the time to capture different angles of a place in different locations that maybe people don't normally see that can really help you stand out. That's something that Hand Lug

gage Only does really well to capture really stunning images of different angles and different places that people maybe haven't seen before. And that's, something that really attracts travelers, just imagery. If you can create a travel blog with amazing imagery that can definitely build your audience quickly, because travelers are very visual. They want to see where you're going. They want to see what you're recommending. And so, this posts about the 13 best islands in Croatia. It ranks num

ber one on Google for islands in Croatia, and it's pretty long, it's around 2000 words. So that's within the range that you want to aim for in terms of the life of your posts. But hey, the post really stands out just because of the imagery. And it also covers the topic in depth. So, it's talking about the islands of Croatia and it just talks about different islands in depth. And so, when you read this post, you get a very good sense of where you should go in Croatia, what islands you should

go to, and it's kind of a one-stop resource for you. If you're planning to go to go Island hopping in Croatia, for example. And then another example Epic Content is this post that went viral a couple of years ago. It was about, 25 Reasons Why Women Should Never Travel Solo. Now, this post is only about a thousand words, it's by a solo female traveler called Be My Travel Muse. And what she does in this post is that she challenges the misconceptions about solo female travel. She stirs up con

versation. So, the title is misleading. You think that you're going to read about reasons why you should not travel solo, but instead she flips that. And she talks about, why this idea that women shouldn't travel solo is so flawed because if you travel solo, you might become independent. You might start to think for yourself. You might become more empowered. You might do things for yourself and become more independent and become more confident. And she kind of flips the title on its head a

nd goes in a completely different direction. And she talks a lot. It's 25 reasons. So, it's a list post, which tends to do really well because people like lists and like to jump from one list item to the next, and it helps you organize your posts. So lists post tend to do really well. And this post generated a lot of conversation on Facebook when it was first shared and it's been shared in 4,000 times, which has quite a lot. And so that's another example of how you can use controversy and o

pinions to really attract readers to your site and also establish your brand as someone who stands for something. So, Kristin, from Be My Travel Muse is standing up for solo female travelers, she's showing what she's about. She's telling you that she believes that women should be able to travel solo and not be judged for it. And so, if I'm a solo female traveler and I hear someone saying that like, hey, I'm going to become a fan of hers now because she stands up for solo female travelers li

ke myself. She's telling people that, hey, you shouldn't judge female solo travelers because they're taking, you shouldn't say that they're taking a risk and they're being reckless. No, that's not fair to solo female travelers. And so, I become a fan of hers just because of this 1000-word posts that she wrote. So that's another example of how you can use your opinion and your unpopular stances to stir up conversation and drive readers to your site. And so lastly, we want to talk about some r

ookie mistakes to avoid when starting a travel blog. And this is something I see all the time. So, one big mistake is writing for yourself instead of your audience. So, I see people writing about things like, how I traveled to Barbados and met my boyfriend. No one really cares about that kind of topic. People are really going to travel blogs to figure out how they can plan their own trips. What tips do they need to know? What flights can they take? What hotel should they stay in? Travelers

are looking for solutions to their own problems. They don't really care as much about your own personal, what you discovered in Barbados or what you did in Barbados. They're only interested in that as much as it helps them plan their own trips. So be careful not to write about your own personal experiences, just for the sake of sharing your thoughts on your opinions. Keep your readers in mind. Like how does this help my reader? How does me sharing this post help my reader, plan a better trip

, or improve their lives? So, you can share information about yourself, but as long as it benefits your reader in some ways. So, don't write a diary style blog, just talking about your thoughts and feelings and your opinions about what you saw in the Caribbean or what you did in South America. Typically, travelers don't care about that. They care about how you can solve their problems, how you can help them travel better. Second mistake is ignoring SEO. I already mentioned that, SEO is a bi

g part of how you get traffic to your site. It's a long-term game. And so, while I don't think that you should necessarily building links to your site, in the first month or two, I do think you need to focus on at least on-page SEO. So on-page SEO refers to optimizing your blog posts for specific keywords. And then we have off-page SEO, which refers to building links to your site and increasing the authority of your site. So, at any point in your blogging journey, you should be focused on s

ome sort of SEO. In the beginning, you can start with on-page SEO, with just getting familiar with Keyword Research and how to optimize your posts for keywords, but you should never ignore SEO, because SEO is so important. You might be able to show, you can use Pinterest to drive traffic to your site, but Pinterest is not as consistent as Google in terms of sending you traffic. And with Pinterest, you always have to create new pinnable images, to drive traffic to your site. With SEO, you do

the work upfront, and it rewards you for years to come. So, SEO is far more powerful for traffic in the long-term. So, you should definitely do not ignore SEO. The third mistake is focusing on quantity instead of quality. You probably hear that when you started blogging you should write a ton of content to get people to your site, you should just write, write, write, and write. And I think there is some truth to that. You don't want to just write content for the sake of writing content. Yo

u also want to focus on the quality. It's better to write two posts a week that are 1200 words each, and really go in depth on a topic than to write five 400-word posts that are not quality and not really solving anyone's problems. So, you should always focus on quality as well as quantity. Do not sacrifice quality for quantity. It's better to write fewer posts that are in-depth and long and useful than to write a ton of short posts. Just for the sake of publishing content. Publishing conten

t isn't going to help you if that content isn't any good. So, you also want to pay attention to the quality of your content. How long is it? Does it ask the questions? Does it meet user So, intent? Does it use keywords properly? So those are things you have to also consider when writing content. Another big mistake is trying to build a presence on different social media platforms at the same time. So, for instance, people, when they started blogging hey, I have a new blog, so I need to hav

e it. I need to make sure I'm on Facebook. I'm on Twitter. I'm on, I'm on Pinterest. I'm on Instagram. I want all the social media sites at the same time to get as much exposure as possible for my blog. This is the wrong way to go about it. You're going to get burnt out and you're not going to really establish a presence on any site because you're trying to do too many things at once. I recommend that you start with one platform, build that up and then move on to the next one. It's complete

ly okay to not have an Instagram account in the beginning. It's completely okay to not have a Facebook page. It's okay to not have a Twitter account. Just choose one platform. For example, let's say you choose Pinterest, you just focus on building up your Pinterest accounts and building traffic for Pinterest. And then once you have that going, then you can move on to creating an Instagram account and building that up. You don't have to have all these platforms ready to go at the same time.

Unless maybe you have a team in place that can help you manage all of that. But if you're starting your blog, I'm assuming that you're starting by yourself. So, it's really difficult to keep all those different platforms going at the same time, I tried that in the beginning and it did not work. So, I just eventually started focusing on the Pinterest, and then from Pinterest, I focused on Instagram and then from there focus on other different platforms. So just focus on one, build that up,

and then going to the next one. You do not have to be on all these platforms at the same time. And the fifth mistake that I see a lot is trying to do everything by yourself. Kind of being an Island and being in isolation from the rest of the world. As you try to build up your blog, it's far more effective to build relationships with other bloggers. You can join a Facebook groups, you can join different blogs or forums, and connect with other people. Because if you build relationships with ot

her bloggers, they're willing to help you out. They're willing to do a guest post for you. They're willing to allow you to do a guest post for them. You can do a joint webinar, or you can do a joint giveaway. You can do so many different things with other bloggers that can help you grow faster than you trying to do everything alone. I've been able to meet other bloggers at conferences. I've been able to meet other bloggers through Facebook groups. Just find different ways to connect with oth

er people in your niche and also outside of your niche, because you never know what opportunities may come up. You never know what they could have that could benefit you. You never know, what resources that you can tap into from other people. So, don't try to do this alone. It's a long djourney, and you're better off trying to connect with other people who can help you grow. And you can keep each other accountable, keep each other motivated. It's much more fun to have other people to help y

ou grow in this journey.