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How to: Google + and Your Travel Blog

September 29, 2011 By 8 Comments

How to Use Google Plus to Increase Blog TrafficThis is a guest post by David Billa of David + World, Ogijima fame. Yes, it is long, but useful posts usually are.

Google+ has been released a little more than 2 months ago now. I was lucky enough to get an invite pretty early (I know people ;-) ) and I must admit that I have spent a big chunk of the past two months playing with it (is that why I’ve been blogging less than usual this summer?). Now that Google+ is available to all the regular folks it’s time to see if it benefits bloggers or is just another distraction.

Is Google+ Right for your Blogging Business?

Despite the incredible growth of the network in just over a month, I’ve heard many people saying that they were not interested in joining in. Some people think that it is one more social network too many. Some people think that it’s just like Facebook so why bother. And some unlucky people would like to join, but haven’t been invited yet by anybody – after all and despite its 25 million users, Google+ still hasn’t been “officially” released yet. [Update: it is now officially released to the general public]

I thought that now was about the right time to tell you a little about it, with the obvious goal to convince you to join (and Google is not even paying me, sometimes, I think I’m just not a good businessman).

First, let me tell you about the basic features you need to know. Then we’ll see how this can be useful for travel bloggers.

Caveat: There will be a lot of comparisons with Facebook and Twitter in this post. While it has been said a lot that Google+ will (or will not) replace Facebook and Twitter, I believe that the three of them can coexist more or less peacefully. The way you use each of them and what you do on them is slightly different. However, to make things easier to understand, especially if you’ve never used Google+, I thought that comparisons with tools you’re already familiar with can help.

Main Features of Google+

Circles

The first thing you’ll notice when you join Google+ are the circles. It may have been the most discussed feature (because it’s the one that everyone saw, even people who didn’t spend more than 5 minutes on the site), but I’ll explain how they work anyway, just in case.

On Facebook, you have friends. You see pretty much everything they post, and they see pretty much everything you post (unless you block some people, types of news, etc.).

On Twitter, you follow people. You can read all what they write. When people follow you, they can read all what you write. You don’t have to follow people who follow you (and vice-versa) and anyone can read your tweets, even if they don’t follow you (following just publishes people’s tweets in your timeline and make them easier to… well… follow.)

On Google+, you circle people! That is, you select what circles people belong to. Friends, family, travel bloggers, you decide. You can create as many circles as you want and include as many people as you want in them (well, you can circle a maximum of 5,000 people, I don’t think any of you is there yet). You can put people in one or several circles. People will know you “circled” them, but they won’t know what circle(s) they’re in.

Circles have a double function, as they both determine what will appear in your streams and what you’ll share with whom. You need to be mindful of that when you create your circles. A good thing to do is to create circles for reading (bloggers, techies, news, specific countries, etc.) and circles for sharing things (buddies, close friends, family, vague acquaintances, etc.).

By default, your stream includes all the people that you circled, but then you can filter it by circle.

When you post something, you can select who can read it; from everyone (public) to a single individual. In between, you can pick various options such as all of your circles, just one, or a few. Note that selecting whom you share with is a inclusive process and not an exclusive one. You can’t decide to share with all your circles except one. If you want to do that, you’ll have to manually select all your circles but the ones you want to exclude.

An “exclude” feature may be implemented in the future. Remember that Google+ is just starting and its features will obviously evolve with time (not mentioning the ones that are already ready to be launched and will show up be little by little).

Hangouts

I admit that it’s a feature I haven’t used (I’m not a big fan of chatrooms and I don’t even own a webcam). A hangout can be public or private (you decide who gets invited the same way you decide who can read a post you write), and then it’s like a video conference, where you’ll hang out with whoever shows up. [Todd here: I think this has huge potential for running webinars and travel chats]

Photos

Well, I don’t think I need to explain in details here. You can upload pictures. You can group them in albums, and once again decide who gets to see them or not. You can also, edit them (just slightly of course, this is not photoshop), comment on them, etc.

Note that pictures will be uploaded to your Picasa account (if you don’t already have one, one will be created for this occasion). Also, you may choose to make your pictures already on Picasa visible on Google+ if that’s your wish.

Sparks

It’s a feature that I almost never see mentioned. Yet, it is one of my favorite. Sparks are more or less Google searches that you can save. They allow you to create new streams about topics you care about from various sources. It’s not exactly like a Google search in the sense that only a handful of results will show up (usually the most recent news and blog posts), but it’s a great tool to discover new sites and blogs talking about topics and keywords that you care about.

Games

Yes, games have just arrived on Google+. You can now play Angry Birds and Bewejeled and compare your scores with people in your circles.

Privacy

Privacy is a big concern in social media, and Google+ is doing both quite a good job and a not-so-good job with this.

The good: You can easily and clearly select a different level of privacy for any part of your profile; who’s in your circles, your “+1”, your location, your job, your education and whatnot.

The bad: I guess I’m getting spoiled with all of those privacy options, but I wish it went even further. What if I want a photo-album to be public except for that one picture? What if I want some of the links to my websites on my profile to be public and some private? Well, I can’t do that, at least not for now.

The ugly: You may have already heard about the “real name controversy.” Google+ wants you to use your real name on your profile. No nickname, no brand name, just your real name. A lot of people are unhappy about that, understandably so. However, I don’t think it’s all bad. Google says they want only real names to avoid spam and abuse, and they are right somehow. A good way to limit spam and abuse, as well as set a certain tone, is by having “real” people on the network.

I don’t know if you remember, but when the war was on between MySpace and Facebook, I’m convinced that one of the main reasons Facebook came out victorious is that it was “cleaner” than Myspace which had become a big mess at that time (for example, I was friends with Albert Einstein and Voltaire on Myspace). It’s understandable that Google wants to avoid its new network to become a big mess right from the start.

That being said, the way this policy is being implemented is not the best. For example, there have been some cases of people whose real name were unusual who got their account shut down. Apparently Google now leaves you a four day period to change your name and/or appeal before shutting down the profile.

Personally, while I understand that some people can be unhappy, I also think that making a big fuss about it is being a bit over-dramatic. After all, if you want to connect with people who know you, you may want them to be able to find and recognize you, don’t you?

Are you concerned that people may find things about you that don’t want them to find?

I have a rule of thumb as far as privacy on the web is concerned. If I put something online, it means that I’m willing to accept that it goes public, even if I posted it privately. If I’m not ready for this, the thing stays offline.

If you’re a blogger, I suspect that you already have a public page for your blog on Facebook and you want to do the same thing on Google+, right?

Well, you can’t do it just yet, but this brings us to the second part of this post:

How to use Google+ for your Travel Blog?

Of course, Google+ being brand new, there are still many options to explore as far as using it for/with your blog is concerned. Actually, it is one of the things I love with social media, especially new ones; you create its usefulness, you invent the ways a social media is useful for you.

So what did I find useful about Google+ in terms of using it in association to my blog?

Let’s start with the obvious:

Sharing

Just like with any other social media, the base of the whole thing is sharing information and links with other people, including links to your blog posts.

Socializing

I don’t know about you, but I rarely become friends on Facebook with my readers. It can happen, but Facebook is a tool I’m using more and more with people who are actual friends offline. It’s not completely true, but while a lot of people say that they can’t wait for Google+ to take off so that they can close their Facebook account, I’m more along the lines of “I can’t wait for Google+ to take off so that I can remove anyone who’s not a close friend on my Facebook account”.

Some will say that there’s Twitter to socialize with people you don’t actually know too well (including your readers). While it’s true, I could never really get into Twitter much. While it’s great to socialize with your readers and your niche blogosphere, this 140 characters limit really annoys me and is too limitative. I like to be able to develop my ideas, just throwing in my two cents in form of a few words is not my thing, and if you follow me on Twitter (@Ogijima), you’ll see that I mostly use it to share links, not much more.

In terms of socializing, Google+ is Twitter on massive steroids, not only is there no character limit (maybe there’s one, but I haven’t met it yet), but discussions take the form of threads, a little bit like what you’ll find in forums and on Facebook.

In other words, it has both the spontaneity and openness of Twitter and the threaded format of forums and Facebook. The best of both worlds.

Of course, Hangouts are also a great tool for socializing. I won’t go into details, not having used it, I’m not in a position of give you advice, but I think it’s self-explanatory. For example, I know there are a few fans of #TOTT (Travel Talk on Twitter) reading this. Imagine what you could do with a TTOGH (Travel Talk on Google Hangouts).

Also, in the past few weeks, I’ve noticed – having in my circles people I only knew from Twitter (and their blog) before – that, because we don’t only talk about our niche on Google+ but also about many other topics, we get to know each other better as people, not just bloggers, much better than we’d ever do on Twitter.

Games can play a very positive role in that domain too. After all this is what games were invented for in the first place, as a social activity (we sometimes forget about it, used that we now are playing alone on our computers and smartphones)

Sparks

As previously mentioned, Sparks are a great tool for finding new sites and blogs dealing with topics you care about. It allows me to expand my reading list as well as my backlink building (i.e. new places to comment on)

For example, if you’ve ever read my blog, Ogijima, you know that I mostly talk about this region of Japan that is full of amazing islands. The other day, thanks to Sparks, I found an architecture website mentioning a museum that was recently built on one of these islands. I would have never found it without Sparks (except though lengthy Google searches). Will I never go back to this blog? Probably not, I’m not well-versed enough in architecture. However, I had an interesting read and I didn’t leave without writing a (I hope) useful comment giving some insight about the island and a link to my blog.

 “Public pages” or lack of thereof on Google+.

I am sure that some people jumped in on Google+ and instead (or in addition) of creating a personal account, they created an account for their blog. The Google+ equivalent to Facebook public pages if you want. Chances are the page was closed by Google or that you quickly had to change it back into your personal account. I know I did it. As soon as I received my first invite for Google+ I created my personal account, and the second thing I did was to send invites to all of my other gmail accounts in order to create a Google+ account for each one of my blogs (I tend to have one gmail account per blog for various reasons).

And even before Google started to close down accounts with fake or brand names, I realized that most were quite redundant. Sure, I had to close one account (created under a pseudonym for a blog written under that pseudonym) with great regret, but concerning my main blogs (written under my real name) it was the logical thing to do. To the point I’m not even sure I will create a “brand page” for them when those will be implemented.

Of course, I have no idea how those pages will work. Maybe they’ll be very different from Facebook pages, and will end up being indispensable for your blog (in this case, I’ll come back to tell you why if Todd allows me to). However, if they’re anything like Facebook public pages, I don’t see the point.

After all Facebook pages are only useful if you don’t friend your readers, and even though, I always found communication to be poor on them.

As a page owner, I’ve never found much interest beyond posting links to my blogs and other blogs related to my niche so that they appear in my “likes” newsfeed.

As a page “liker”, except for liking posts and status updates, I never really use them. I know some of you love having discussions on them, but personally, I always find that these discussions are not “real” discussions. Sure everyone responds to the page owner, but no one really talks to each other beyond that.

What I’ve seen on Google+ so far, because of all the factors I’ve mentioned are real discussions among people, and not only on niche topics, but about many things. Maybe I’m just discovering personal branding, but I suddenly find myself talking with my readers and other bloggers about various topics not necessarily related to our blogs. I find this network of people much stronger than networks of people on Twitter for example.

Years ago, before the age of social media, I was an avid forum user. I was a regular of a few forums, which were mostly populated of regulars, and we created strong bonds over time. Some of them became some of my best offline friends. I even know some people who got married and who met on these forums.

It may be too early to tell, but I see some of that on Google+ already. In a more open and more “2.0” way of course.

Actually I’ve been thinking about creating a new blog for a little while, and the fear of having to start over in terms of networking was the main reason why I haven’t yet (I don’t see myself using my Twitter account and Facebook pages devoted to Japan for this blog that will have nothing to do with Japan). In just a month, on Google+, I built an existing network of people that is both loose enough to not be just a bunch of friends, and tight enough to be a good ground to build this new blog on. I may not even need a “brand page” when they come out.

In other words, I think that Google+ is very powerful thing in terms of developing your name online, and I’m very excited about what the future holds.

What did I miss? How are you using to Google+ to grow your blog? Is it working?

You can connect with David on Google+, on Twitter @davidplusworld, and even on Facebook

Filed Under: Build a Better Blog Tagged With: , ,

Anyone Can Monetize A Blog – How Much You’ll Make Is A Different Story

May 2, 2011 By 26 Comments

Create Blog Plan to Make MoneyTodd here. Before we get to Anil’s great post, I want to have my say on this topic. Yes, I’m entitled to! It’s my blog after all! What you are about to read is really true. There are a lot of people peddling the “get paid to travel” line but not everyone comes and tells you how hard it is, how you need to have a plan, how you actually need to work at it. No one is going to throw money at you in real life, so why would they in the blogging world. You need to EARN your money. I hope it’s possible to earn that money doing what I love, sipping cocktails on the beach, and dodging bullets and clingy groupies.

Here at the TBC we are trying one of these unique ways to add value (i.e. $$$, fame, world domination) collectively to our travel blogs. It takes creativity, and a willingness to work hard when you’re not on the beach. No one ever said doing what you love is not hard work. It just doesn’t feel like work.

Ok, now without further ado here is our great guest post by Anil.

How Much Money?

There isn’t a single blog or blogger out there that can’t make money by the end of this week with their site. Making money with a blog is easy, but if that’s where your goal stops you won’t be able to pay for a beer in Thailand, let alone your travels.

Without goals and a plan to achieve them, you’ll fail. There is no single way to make money with a blog just as there’s no single way to make money from a business. Henry Ford didn’t wake up one day and say “I want to make money, let me figure out how.” The idea came first. He monetized a dream and wasn’t dreaming about monetizing.

Those of you serious about making money from your travel blog need to have some idea of how much you want to make…and how often. Monetizing isn’t just turning your blog into a cash machine, in reality it’s converting it into a business. You need to treat it as such.

Have A Travel Blog Plan

There are two ways to go about making money online; either try and make a million dollars out of one thing, or make 1 dollar a million ways. Somewhere in between the two you need to diversify your income. Experiment, and keep track of where your money comes from and how. Talk to businesses in your field (aka. other specific travel blogs you’ve singled out) and see what’s working for them and how.

Starting to sound like a business? Remember, it is – if you have a figure in your head you want to make. Otherwise it’s just a hobby, and that’s fine too. The biggest mistake you can make is getting caught somewhere in the hazy gray area of the two and end up frustrated with the goals you never created, realized, or achieved.

Wear Your Business Hat

While I can’t make a business plan for you, I can help you get started but asking you, “why should anyone give you money”? Ask yourself (and your travel blog) the same question. (Don’t worry, I won’t look as you talk to your computer screen.)

You may have an audience that others would like to advertise to, an expertise others are willing to pay and learn from, or travel photography worthy of posting on living room walls. And probably many other things nobody has thought about or done in the same way before.

Blogs don’t make money, everything associated with them does, indirectly. How much they’ll make on the other hand is mostly up to you. Remember that you can’t financially succeed or fail if you don’t have goals to measure that success against.

What are your strategies or your Business Plan?

Anil Polat is a digital nomad traveling the world indefinitely. A former computer hacker he travels and blogs full-time at foXnoMad and offers blogging advice at Travel Blog Advice, making his way to every country on Earth. You can catch up with Anil on twitter @foxnomad or on Facebook.

Photo Credit

Filed Under: Business of Blogging Tagged With: ,

The Power of Building Relationships

April 11, 2011 By 9 Comments

How to network the right wayThis is a guest post by Caz and Craig Makepeace.

One of the most overlooked parts to your success, not just online, but in any field is networking.

Like it or not, “It’s not what you know, but who you know” is a very real reality.

Some people think that this is not fair and spend forever moaning and griping about it. For me, I’d rather just understand the reality of this, become an entrepreneur, and do what successful people do.

Networking is the fun part to your business. It is the part that I find is the easiest and can produce the greatest rewards.

Networking is simply building relationships. Relationships cannot just be beneficial to you from a business perspective, but from a personal perspective as well.

Networking Purpose

There are two very important points I want to make before I go any further. What I am outlining are strategies specifically to address how building relationships can benefit your businesses. We never ever build relationships with people purely for personal or financial gain. The rewards that come from networking are a side bonus. We build relationships with others because we love meeting and interacting with people. We always bring the attitude with us that we have the opportunity and ability to offer something of value as well.

The second important thing is these networking strategies apply just as much to the online world as it does to the physical world. Don’t believe for a second you can hide behind your avatar on the computer. Everything you do must be backed by authenticity and sincerity or else your success with networking will be short-lived. If you are networking in the online world, these strategies will be applied through your online communication.

Get to know the other Person

After spending a whole day listening to entrepreneurs talk at a conference, we worked up the courage to approach our favourite speaker for the day after the seminar. We introduced ourselves, asked him if we could buy him a drink and then proceeded to talk about surfing, Australia, the US and travel. We spent the remainder of the evening into the early hours having a blast with him. Not once did we ask him anything business related or pester him for his million dollar secrets. The next day he found us to say goodbye, and spoke of the fantastic time he had with us. He gave us his personal details and said, “If you need any help with anything, give me a call.” That was a solid relationship building evening.

If you are meeting someone who you look up to in your chosen field for the first time, make sure you do not bombard them with questions as to how they can help you. First, get to know the real person. Make general conversation. They will appreciate it so much as they are used to so many people wanting to learn their magic secrets.

Make people remember you

In business, people are interacting and networking all the time. How is someone going to remember who you are? One of the best things you can do is have your photograph on your business card. This makes it so much easier for the person who is sifting through hundreds of them to remember you. Carry your business card everywhere and hand it to each new person you meet. Let them know how you can connect again and that you would love share ideas sometime. Make it casual.

Be bright, happy and positive. Smile lots, make jokes and light-hearted conversation. This is really the best way to ensure someone remembers you. In reality there really aren’t a lot of happy friendly people around so if you can be this way you will stand out.

Don’t be afraid to share your story with others. There is a very fine line here between bragging and sharing. Speak confidently about what you do, allow your passion for it to shine through.

Let the person know you, know something about them and appreciate what they do. Without sounding stalkerish, mention a recent post of theirs you read, or tell them how helpful you found their latest book. Make it short and sweet.

Lose your arrogance

I’m sure we have all met the person who thinks they are so far above you that you are not even worthy a look down their nose. These people stink and have no idea about building relationships. When their walls come tumbling down they will find no one around to help build them back up.

I don’t care how big or how successful you are there is no one who is not worthy of your time. Besides, how do you know the success these people may have in the future?

The more success you have the harder it is to devote enough time with others who want to get to know you. It is like when you get married, the evening finishes and you feel really rude because you did not get a chance to speak to your hundreds of guest. Do the best you can. Always offer a smile at least, and a nice to meet you. People will understand you are busy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t treat them with respect and leave a good impression.

When talking with others always ensure that you spend time getting to know them. Ask them about their life and what they do. Do not spend the whole time talking about how wonderful you and your product, website or blog is.

Follow Up

The fortune is in the follow up. Allocate time in your busy schedule to follow up with those you have recently met and would like to build a relationship with. Send them a quick email, facebook status update or even a tweet.

Let them know how much you enjoyed meeting them and you look forward to meeting them in the future. If you spoke about any particular topic, mention it with perhaps an answer, a website, or a link you can send their way with helpful information.

Always be sure to pass on your gratitude and appreciation for anything that people have taken the time to help you with. I know it is easy to forget sometimes, but you must make this a habit. I have had people contact me via email for help before, and I have taken time out of my busy schedule to help them out. Sometimes I never hear from these people again, not even a one sentence thank you. It always amazes me as that is a prime opportunity for relationship building lost. I’m less likely to help that person in the future.

Start connecting with your new friends online. Join their social communities, comment on their work and share it. This all helps to cement a deeper relationship with these people.

Entrepreneurs are always happy to network and share. They understand the power that comes from building relationships. You just never know where that relationship may lead.

Never be afraid to approach people. You are worthy of their time and you have a lot to offer. If you approach your networking from this perspective, with an open mind for learning and sharing you will build strong and positive relationships with others.

People help open up doors that you never had the clear vision to see. You also have the ability to help open these doors for others.

Caz and Craig Makepeace have been living and travelling the globe since 97, both solo and as a couple and now with a three year old. They believe life is all about the memories and their travel tips and stories at yTravel blog and their fanpage aim to inspire and teach others how to make their life a story to tell.

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Filed Under: branding, Build Traffic, Marketing Tagged With: ,

Buisness Model and Site Structure for Niche Travel Site

March 29, 2011 By 13 Comments

This is a guest post by Mike and is an update on his area of the war for Niche Travel Site Battle. I usually just add these updates to the Niche Travel Site Battle War Room but as always Mike has produced a very nice post and I wanted to get it in front of as many people as possible.

Building niche sites is not new to me, but I saw this challenge as a great opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and try out a completely different business model. With the changes going on in Google there were several strategies I wanted to test. Before I even thought of a niche I put together a business model.

Niche Site Structure

  • Low maintenance
  • Low setup cost
  • Google Adsense revenue stream
  • Information resource site
  • One day setup
  • Forced funneled income (will explain below)

Once I knew what type of site I wanted to create I decided on a style.

Niche Site Design

  • Clean and stylish
  • No ads other than Google Adsense
  • Structured navigation
  • Short and descriptive posts/pages
  • Visually appealing

Each of the design features and site structures were decided upon solely for the purpose of the business strategy.

Business Model Strategy

I wanted 100% organic search traffic so that each visitor was looking for specific information. The site would provide a general overview of information that would entice the visitor to continue their search. The only way to continue with their search on the site would be through a profitable link. No outgoing links for more information, free resources or external navigation in any form.  This would create a forced funnel, whereby the visitor would be inclined to click on a Google Ad to move on, thus resulting in a high click through rate and ultimately revenue.

Choosing the Niche

The easiest information niche for the travel industry is a “Destination” niche.  I needed a mildly popular destination that did not have too much competition. After some keyword research I chose a few spots and did a domain name keyword match to narrow it down. I chose http://cheapmalta.net

I purchased the domain at 9 AM on February 28th and by noon I was finished with the site minus the content.  (due to time constraints on other projects the content was outsourced for $75) I had planned to write all of the content myself but I was needed on another project.

I used Market Samurai for my keyword research and settled on 15 keywords I felt I could rank number one in Google for. This would bring an average of 1800 visitors per day (in a perfect world) exceeding my goal of 50k visitors per month with an average click through rate of 28% and an average click rate of $0.63. This left me with a maximum potential income of $10,280 per month. Realistically it would reach 50% of that within six months to a year.

I made one modification to the Google Adsense revenue by adding an affiliate page for Expedia http://cheapmalta.net/check-malta-hotels/ This page was designed with no navigation so the visitor could do one of three things;   book a hotel, click the back button or click a Google Ad. I did not want this page to be an exit from the site.

Getting Traffic

The only thing left to do was get traffic. I built, and still are building, link wheels to each of the pages for the various keywords. I use SENuke (Todd here: I’m not a user of SENuke, and am just investigating it now with the free trial, but it seems expensive) for building linkwheels. In addition to that I create various Squidoo lenses, post comments on blogs, educational sites, government sites and other high page rank blogs.  The main techniques I use for link building are:

  • Linkwheels
  • Web 2.0 individual posts
  • Article marketing
  • RSS Aggregators
  • Video marketing
  • Blog Comments

I cannot use link exchange or blog rolls because I do not want any external links. This part is tricky because external links are important for SERP’s. To fix this problem I am making a list of information sites that rank high such as Wikipedia, Malta government sites etc…. No sites that have any sort of monetization. I also will be putting these links set to open in a new window so that the visitor does not leave the site when clicking.

This is a new strategy so I have no idea how it will play out. I guess we will see.

You can get all updates on each of the Niche Site Battlers over at the Niche Site Battle War Room.

Filed Under: Make Money Blogging, Niche Travel Site Battle Tagged With: ,

Adam’s Niche Travel Site Battle: And So it Begins

March 21, 2011 By 1 Comment

This is a guest post by Adam and is an update on his area of the war for Niche Travel Site Battle.

Many great resources have come from Todd’s Travel Blog Challenge site thus far, but this could be the best.  The TBC is hosting a niche blog challenge, where five of us are competing to build the most profitable niche site.  Of course there’s me from World Travel for Couples, Todd of the TBC and Todd’s Wanderings, Mike from Exotic Visitors, Kieron from Don’t Ever Look Back, and Norton from Globotreks all taking part in this challenge.  And while it may be a bit of a competition, we are all helping each other out, and the goal is for all of us to build a niche site that becomes profitable.

Luckily for me, I have been pondering a niche site since last summer, so it’s been in the back of my mind for some time now.  There are several reasons why I hadn’t done it until now, but the main one is that I simply didn’t quite know what I was doing.

There’s a lot that goes into building a niche site that is going to be profitable, and it’s not easy.  If it was, everyone would be doing it. Like I said, this had been in my head for months, and I started my research back in early February, about a week before Todd announced the niche blog challenge.  It was pure coincidence this happened.

So I thought to myself, “What is going to be my niche, my topic?”

The first of many mistakes

I know I’m going to make tons of mistakes during this whole venture, but I managed to start off on the wrong foot.  I wanted something popular, right?  Something that a lot of people search for all the time.  So I started plugging in travel related search terms on Google.  I wanted high traffic search terms.  Ones that everyone searches for.  So I came up with the idea to start a site based on the best US cities to travel in.  Great idea, right?  Everyone is always searching for travel related sites on New York City, Vegas, Miami, Chicago, and LA.  Perfect!

So I started building the site.  I even wrote a few pages.  I was on my way, right?

It was about this time that I read about the challenge.  Perfect!  Not only was I a bit ahead of the game, but now I had a support network to help.  This couldn’t have worked out any better.  Or so I thought.

Once the challenge got underway, more resources became available to me.  I had been ignorantly ignoring the importance of keywords since I built my first site about 10 months ago.  Why?  I’m not sure, but I did.  Keywords seemed to be the word of the day when it came to building a niche site, though, so I figured I should start learning about them.

I took the advice of Mike from Exotic Travelers, an established writer and web developer who knew what he was talking about.  I downloaded the free trial of Market Samurai and started learning about keyword research.  I watched literally hours of video tutorials on the Market Samurai site before I even touched the software.  I learned a ton not only about the program but keyword research in general.

A Realization

As I was watching these tutorials, I came to the realization that I may have made a bad decision in choosing my niche topic.  Turns out that this niche is probably going to be highly competitive without a very good chance of ranking highly for the right keyword search terms.

But I tried anyway.  I began using Market Samurai to try to find the perfect keyword search terms related to my niche.  I was pulling my hair out after a few hours because I was not finding much.  It became beyond frustrating after a while.

After wasting the better part of a day searching for relevant, low competitive, somewhat high paying keyword terms and coming up blank, I decided that I should switch my topic.  I know I already spent quite a bit of time building a new site, but I wanted to do this the right way.  Besides, I own the domain name for 2 years and have some content up already, so I can keep that site on the backburner while I hopefully learn how to do this the right way.

The first step you should take

If starting a niche site like this, the very first thing you should do is keyword research.  I can’t stress how important that is.  You won’t make progress by just blindly jumping into a niche without doing any research.  That’s one of the main reasons why the vast majority of websites fail.  They don’t properly research their competition.  How is little old me going to compete with Travelocity, Wikipedia, and Lonely Planet?  I’m probably not.

So it was back to square one.  I began searching all types of different things. I  began with my favorite countries and activities.  I tried a lot of different places and terms.  Colombia beaches.  Hiking Torres del Paine.  Hiking the Inca Trail.  Hiking Patagonia.  Traveling in Patagonia.  Buenos Aires attractions.  And variations of all of them.

I didn’t have much luck until I got to Vietnam.  After hundreds of searches, I plugged in cheap Vietnam travel.  Analyzing the data is a whole different challenge, but after looking it over, I thought this could be a good one.  I next checked domain names and found that cheapvietnamtravel.com was not taken.  That pretty much sold it for me.

The new plan

Vietnam was one of our absolute favorite countries, and we traveled very cheaply there, so this became a no brainer.  So I bought the domain name and started building the site.  This entire process of researching keywords, deciding to switch sites, finding a new one, and building the new site all happened within two days.  But it was about all I did for those two days.

The base of my new site is set up, but I have since been spending my time researching more keywords for my various pages.  This is what’s been giving me the most trouble thus far. I still don’t know that I have a firm grasp on analyzing the data in Market Samurai when searching keywords.  I kind of feel like I’m doing too much guesswork, but I guess we’ll have to see.

What’s next?

At this point I’m still researching keywords before I add more content and start thinking about link building, another thing I will have to learn about.  For me, this whole thing is a big learning process, and it will be slow going as I want to do it the right way.  My weeks get busier and busier with other work obligations as we approach the end of March, but I am hoping to have my site built with all content and start working on link building by the end of the month.

This is a guest post by Adam from World Travel for Couples as a part of the Niche Travel Site Battle.

Filed Under: Business of Blogging, Case Studies, guest challenger, Make Money Blogging, Niche Travel Site Battle, Nuts and Bolts Tagged With: , ,

Blog Advertising Exposed: An Anonymous Interview with an Ad Rep

March 14, 2011 By 50 Comments

How blog advertisers really find and value blogsThis is a guest post by Mike Collins. If you are looking for a great new way to attract advertisers see the end where I have TBC special deal that Mike hooked us up with.

From Hobby to Money

For many, Travel Blogging starts out as a way to update family and friends on their experiences abroad. As natural progression takes place the blog often evolves into a much wider readership and a considerable amount of time and effort is applied. As we learn the ins and outs of travel blogging through communities of other bloggers and reading other blogs, a love affair blossoms and what started as a creative outlet is now a part of our everyday life. We tweak, we polish we experiment to make our blogs shine.

One day we get that first email that reads “Hello Blogger, I have viewed your site and would be interested in a sponsored post. If you offer this service please reply with your rates…” . The eyes widen and a smile develops when it hits us that someone wants to actually pay us to write on our own blog: What could be better than that?

Welcome to the wonderful world of Blog Monetization and Advertising. Now we are hit with a whole new set of worries and questions. What do I charge? What do I write? How do I get more of these crazy people to pay me to write on my own blog? Our only source of information is other bloggers; what do they charge, how do they attract advertisers, and what do they provide for service? Chances are that most of the other bloggers are winging it just like you.

A few days ago I had the wonderful opportunity to interview an advertising representative over lunch and get the inside scoop. What’s the skinny on this whole ad game? Let’s take a look.

Insider interview with a Ad Rep

The representative wants to stay anonymous as this information is a well kept secret.

Mike: I guess the first question which I am really wondering about is how you find us in the first place?

AdRep: By any and all means. Google (generic and advanced search queries), directories, Twitter, Facebook, Blogrolls, Top 10/20/50/100 lists – anything that comes our way. We are ALWAYS looking for blogs, and not just in one niche.

 

Mike: Once you find the blogs, what makes you choose a certain one?

AdRep: Quality is key – we can’t associate clients with a questionable site. Relevance is the most important thing for us. If we have a travel client, it really should be a travel blog, or have some element of travel to it. It has to have unique content, be updated fairly regularly, be cached, and be written in human English (i.e. not spun content). It helps a lot if the layout looks nice as well. It doesn’t have to be amazingly well designed, but if we can’t figure out how your site works – our clients won’t be able to either, and that doesn’t help.

 

Mike: There is so much debate as to what is important and what is not. Is Google PageRank important for advertisers?

AdRep: Yes and no. We know the Google toolbar PageRank is very out of date, so we don’t place too much importance on it. However, it can help us justify more of our advertising costs if the site in question has a reasonably high PageRank. We can’t justify expensive prices on sites with no PageRank.

 

Mike: How about Alexa Rank?

AdRep:   No, not at all. We do not care about it because it is an obsolete ranking system.  Obviously, it helps to know that a site has decent traffic, but even that  is really only important for advertising that relies on CTR (click-through rates).

 

Mike: Does the age of a blog matter to advertisers?

AdRep: Yes and no. Again, if we’re looking to advertise on a newish blog, that’s placing a pretty trusting investment in a blog that might not go the distance. So many people start blogging, and then just abandon their sites a few months later for whatever reason. So we can’t justify expensive advertising on new blogs – they haven’t built up the authority, and haven’t proven that they can go ‘the distance’. The blogger might own a series of sites, some successful and quite old, and some brand new – we have to judge each blog on its own merit – if the metrics (PageRank, mozrank, domain authority, content quality, backlinks – number and quality) don’t qualify a blog as being a solid investment, we’re only going to be able to spend a certain amount to advertise on it. Who owns it is really a moot point.

 

Mike: Can a brand new blog get paid advertising?

AdRep: It depends how ‘brand new’ we’re talking. Generally yes, but they’d need to have a reasonable amount of content, and at least a few backlinks. We’ll say around 50 backlinks, for argument’s sake. If they’re new, have around 30-100 backlinks, and have a bit of mozrank and domain authority, we’d consider them. Having said that, there are exceptions to every case. We rarely pass sites over instantaneously, unless they’re spammy.

 

Mike: What aspects of a blog will make an advertiser skip over it and go to the next one?

AdRep: Too many popups (we HATE it – and so do your readers, just FYI! One is ok, but if you do it too many times, we’ll skip it) or questionable (adults-only, or spammy) content, if the site uses duplicate content or looks really low-quality we may also skip it. Any sites with questionable outbound links on them (adult content, online casinos, etc, as well as irrelevant links – if it’s not related to your blog’s topic, it looks suspicious) are out of the running, and so are blogs that clearly exist to only sell links. Sites that don’t own their own domain name are also passed over a lot of the time as well (e.g. .blogspot and .wordpress domains) – not only because they’re essentially subdomains of wordpress and blogspot, but because advertising on these blogs – I believe – is against the terms and conditions of these free domains. At any moment if you sell advertising on one of these free domains, you have to be aware your blog may be shut down for violating these terms and conditions. So we always try to stick to sites that have a domain name registered. Also, and this is a bit of a controversial point, we will not use blogs if they nofollow their outbound links.

Mike: How much should a blogger charge for a post and is it broken down by blog qualities and characteristics ie. age, PR etc ?

AdRep: Tricky one. It varies hugely, but obviously agency workers and bloggers have competing interests in this area. Bloggers want to make as much money as possible, whereas agencies have to keep their costs as low as possible. We factor in many things when assessing a blog’s quality – age, PR, mozrank, domain authority, whether it’s a dropped domain, quality of content, number and quality of backlinks, number of outbound links, etc. The higher your PageRank, the more you can charge – generally. If you’re charging above $200 for a blog post however, expect to be turned down or negotiated way down, unless your blog is spectacular (as assessed by others, not you). We can usually justify costs up to $150 for a blog post – anything higher, and there better be a damn good reason for it. But every niche is different. In niches where there is a lot of competition amongst bloggers (e.g. travel), the prices have to be more competitive because there are hundreds of other sites, just like yours, who’ll probably be willing to offer a better price. It’s about being flexible, but not underselling yourself. Tailor your content to make it work better for you. Don’t offer someone a comprehensive 400 word blog post with additional front page exposure if they’re not able to meet your standard post costs. Maybe offer them 200 words instead – if you want the advertising, offer them an alternative they can afford.

 

Mike: Should the blogger contact you again for potential paid posts?

AdRep: Yes. Our needs are always changing. Sometimes we won’t be able to use a site again for various reasons, but it’s nice and easy to work with someone you’ve already developed a relationship with. Plus, we can’t always find the time to go back to sites and contact them again – sometimes it’s like Christmas for us if we get a little prompt.

 

Mike: Some bloggers charge a monthly or annual fee after a certain time to keep a link live. What is acceptable?

AdRep: For a blog post? We see this as unacceptable, sorry. Blog posts should be permanent. Homepage or site-wide banner/link advertising – that’s fair enough, but not for blog posts, and it’ll be very rare that we pay for this to happen. Quite frankly, changing them after a certain period of time has passed just looks dodgy. Regardless, for a site owner, some blog post you did a year ago isn’t going to leech much off of your site anyway in terms of lessening your overall quality. If it turns out that that particular post gets a bit of PageRank, etc – it means that people are linking to it. This is a good thing. Also, you should have far more organic/unique content than you do a sponsored. Unless your site is stuffed with paid posts, you don’t have anything to worry about.

 

Mike: Advertisers often negotiate for a lower fee. How much room is there for negotiations?

AdRep: Not a lot. We get given a tiny chunk of our clients’ online marketing budgets, and you’d be surprised how little we actually have to work with. The company we represent is irrelevant – it doesn’t matter if it’s a small-medium business or a massive corporation – we all have roughly the same budget to work with. If we quote you a low price – don’t feel insulted, we’re not in any way trying to tell you that your site isn’t worth more. If your site is good, trust us, we know, and we’re sorry we can’t offer more. But we have to start low, because we’re expecting you to negotiate up. Same applies in reverse – if you quote us a price, and we offer you a much lower price, it’s because that’s what we can realistically afford to pay. Of course some sites just aren’t worth the cost – if the site looks amazing, and has great potential, but has very little to offer in terms of PageRank, backlinks, etc – then you can’t expect to charge high prices until your site can deliver ROI. We have to adjust our budgets according to what your site is worth RIGHT NOW. Not in 3 months or 6 months time.

 

Mike: What can a blogger offer to make the advertiser want to use them again?

AdRep: Refer us to your friends who’re interested in advertising opportunities, package deals on advertising, etc. Sometimes we won’t be able to advertise with you again, but in many cases, we will. Also, be nice – there is actually a human on the other end of that email you’ve received. We’ll be much more willing to send more business your way if you treat us as though we are business associates. We’re just doing our jobs, but not often treated that way.

 

Mike: Thanks for your time. I know your explanations have enlightened me as I hope they will others.

AdRep: You are very welcome.

What do you think? Will this information change the way you negotiate with advertisers?

Mike Collins is a freelance travel journalist and the editor of  Exotic Visitors Travel Blog

Help Advertisers Find You

Todd Here:
A new opportunity has just popped up to help connect advertisers to your blog called the Blog Advertising Network. The site is designed to connect bloggers looking for advertisers and advertisers looking for quality travel blogs. Mike is the mastermind behind this new platform. Basically, travel bloggers (well any type of bloggers) will be able to sign up and have their own “page” on this new site. He is working closely with a bunch of advertisers and there has already been a huge response to his pre-launch site: http://prelaunch.blogadvertisingnetwork.org/
The plan for this new site is to bring us all together in one place. If you have any niche/static sites, you can put those up as well. The site is already gaining a ton of traction but Mike has made a special offer to TBC members who sign up and use the Special Code: TRAVEL. They will be put into the featured blog rotation and will gain a ton more exposure. This is free to TBC Readers who use the code but will cost others $100 in the future to be in the featured list.

I’m an affiliate for this and thus get a small commission if you decide to use the code above AND you decide to stay on the site.  It’s completely free to sign up, but will cost $25/month after the first month, but ONLY if you get an ad. If you don’t get any advertising money then you don’t pay and Mike will not show up in his sail boat trying to collect! Mike is projecting that 95% of us will get something that first month. So it will pay for itself and will help get you closer
to the 1000-1000 Challenge.

Filed Under: Make Money Blogging

Win Traffic: Write Better

February 28, 2011 By 22 Comments

how to edit your blog postsThis is a guest post by Theodora Sutcliffe.

One of the things that many bloggers struggle with is, well, the word stuff. Y’know.

There’s something you’re burning to write. It’s original, topical, on the nail. You can see it already. Stumbled and retweeted to oblivion, popping up on Facebook pages around the globe…

But, somehow, as you sit staring at the screen, the words that are on there don’t seem… Well…They’re just not the post you’d imagined.

Not by a long shot.

In fact, editing text is one of the harder tasks any blogger has to face.

Here’s four tips that can help you clear up the structure of a post.

1: Write a List Post

When your thoughts seem woolly and a post feels like its going nowhere, turn it into a list post.

Break down each point you’re making into a headline. Write a couple of paragraphs about it, no more. Then cut, cut and cut again.

2: Begin with the End in Mind

Whether you’re starting with a funny observation, a general truth, a piece of dialogue, a description or advice, think of your ending line when you open the post.

All you need do then, is fill in the middle. And you’re there.

3: Use Dialogue to Structure the Post

In travel writing, dialogue can make a great, grabby entry point. You can digress wherever you want from that opening conversation, just as you might pan out in a film.

To wrap the post up? Just dive back into the conversation from the beginning. Try it. It works.

4: Research the Subject

Sometimes a post feels thin because it, erm, is. Research around your subject. Find facts your readers will not have heard of, things you didn’t know yourself. Use them to enliven the copy. And you’ll most likely find your opening line right there.

Once the structure’s finished? The editing begins. Here are four more tips:

Once You’re Finished Drafting, Cut the Word Count by a Third

Yes, really. One-third. Be brutal. Kill the adverbs. Massacre redundant adjectives. And, if you find yourself even thinking about whether to cut a paragraph or not, it’s time to cut that paragraph.

Cut Out –Ing Words

Why? They’re weak. They’re dull. They clog your copy. And who wants to read sentences that begin “Having boarded the train, we…”? Not me.

Dump the Passive Voice

Now, if you’re writing in Word, and haven’t switched off the grammar check, there’ll probably be an annoying little green line that appears when you use the passive voice.

It’s the difference between, “The priest cut the buffalo’s throat” and “the buffalo’s throat was cut”. AKA the difference between accountancy and drama.

Consider Splitting Any Sentence Longer Than 17 Words

There’s nothing like varying the length of your sentences. Though if you want to roll out expansive clauses of classical Victorian prose in high Dickensian style, the web is probably not your medium.

Generally, if a sentence is longer than 17 words, it will read better as two sentences. Or just a shorter sentence.

The shortest sentence in the world? I am.

Y’know?

Do you Edit? What are you own tips for crafting gripping travel prose and then cutting it away so that your reader stays longer than your own mother?

Theodora Sutcliffe has traveled independently in more than 40 countries since 1996 and has been travelling long term with her son since January 2010. She blogs at www.travelswithanineyearold.com. You can find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter: @mummy_t.

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Filed Under: Build Traffic Tagged With: ,

How to Score a Press Trip

February 14, 2011 By 60 Comments

How to Score a Press Trip with your BlogThis is a guest post by Christy and Scott.

We have been getting this question from many bloggers since recently securing our first press trip.  I know this is high on many travel writers/bloggers list of things to accomplish, so I’ve written down the steps I take when requesting a press trip.

First thing to keep in mind about press trips is that you can’t be afraid to market yourself. Nine times out of ten, the press trips won’t come to you. You need to actively seek them out.

Put together a form letter to have ready to send to PR agencies.

For Ordinary Traveler, our letter includes:

1. Traffic Stats (Numbers from Google Analytics)

2. Alexa Score

3. RSS/Email Subscribers

4. Recognition Around the Web

5. Twitter Follower and Facebook Fan Numbers

Introduce your blog and let them know you have a loyal readership and specify what your readers are primarily interested in (ie: travel, photography, etc.). Even if your traffic stats are not high, it’s still possible to get a press trip if you show the company they can benefit from your blog promoting the destination.

Get creative and find a unique angle in which your blog can help bring tourism to that area. It is best to approach them with a way in which you can benefit them, rather than just asking for a freebie.  Depending on who I’m contacting, I don’t always ask for a freebie. Sometimes I will just ask if they offer a media rate or a discount in exchange for a review or to promote an area.

We have had PR reps reply to our request by thanking us for such a thoughtful email. If you put time into drafting your letters/emails, you will come across as looking professional and as if you have done this before (even if you haven’t).

Find a place you either want to go or already have plans to visit.

My suggestion would be to approach PR reps during the area’s off-season. For instance, if you are looking to visit a National Park, plan on going in the winter months. This is their slow season and they are more likely to grant a press trip during winter than in the summer months when everyone and their mother wants to go.

After I have figured out the destination I want to go, I send out the form email, tailoring it to that specific area. For Scott and I, if we are going to a place that has waves, then I mention that we are surfers and our blog has a following of people interested in surfing.

There are a couple of different ways you can go about securing a press trip.

The first one is to contact tourism Bureaus for a country you want to visit. Sometimes they will pay for your flight (in our case they did, however I’ve been told this is not common). Other times they expect you to pay for your own flight, but they will pay (or give a discount) for your lodging and tours.

The second way is to contact hotels and tour companies directly and ask them if they would be interested in providing a discount in exchange for a review.  This type of press trip is more common since you have a lot more options of hotels and tour companies to contact, rather than just one tourism bureau for an entire country.

Follow Through

This may be the most important part of going on a press trip. After the trip, follow through with what you told them you would do. If you said you would write 5 blog posts, then do it. Send them an email with the links and stats from each of those posts.

This is important not only for your blog’s reputation, but for travel bloggers as a whole. You don’t want to ruin the next bloggers chance at securing a press trip with the same company. Keep in mind that press trips are a great way to supplement your travel fund, but it should also be treated like any other job. In the end, you want the company to be happy they decided to sponsor you and your blog.

Have you been on Press Trip? Do you have any other tips for scoring free travel and swag?

Ordinary TravelerChristy and Scott are two surfers riding waves around the world and sharing their experiences along with budget tips and unique photography. You can follow their adventures at www.ordinarytraveler.com or on their Facebook fan page http://www.facebook.com/OrdinaryTraveler.

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Filed Under: Business of Blogging, Marketing Tagged With: , ,

How to Spend Less Time Blogging and More Time Traveling

February 7, 2011 By 70 Comments

How to balance blogging and travelThis is a guest post by Dave and Deb from the ThePlanetD.

One of the most important aspects of running a travel blog is being able to travel.  This can be a difficult task.  While many travelers start up a travel blog at the beginning of their first around the world trip, many fail or lose interest part way through their travels.

Running a successful travel blog takes a full time commitment and this can really cut into your quality time seeing the world.

How can a person travel and enjoy their time exploring the earth while running a successful travel blog?

It is much easier to keep up to date with everything when you are at home in the comforts of your living room, but on the road any situation can pop up.  You may be in the middle of the jungle for several days or climbing a mountain without Internet access. Many countries have terrible and slow connections and you may find that you cannot upload photos or even get into your site.

You have to be prepared for any situation and you never want to have a blog that hasn’t been updated for long periods of time.

We have developed a system that not only allows us to travel, but to go on multiday adventures without even looking at the Internet while still managing to post content 7 days a week.   While things are easier when we are not travelling, we have our greatest increase in traffic and interest when we are out exploring the world. So our goal is to be on the road as much as we can each year.

Here are the ways that we manage to stay on top of social media, post content regularly and manage to contribute to other blogs through guest posts and interviews regularly.

1. Schedule Posts

Before leaving on a trip, we have two weeks of blog posts already scheduled.  We stay two weeks ahead on our blog at all times. This gives us a cushion if we find ourselves in a situation where we can’t get to an Internet.  Even though we are not in the location that we are writing about at the time, nobody knows it.  Only our core group of friends and fellow bloggers know the truth about where we are, but they are not the audience we are writing for. We write for people searching for information on a location or people that are interested in our adventures and don’t know us personally. They still get the story, just two weeks later than when we were there.

2. Schedule Social Bookmarking Sites

It is extremely important not to fall out of the loop of social networks.  We receive a lot of our traffic from twitter, facebook and StumbleUpon. We learned early in our travels that if we didn’t tweet and share other people’s content, they would forget about us. We use a combination of Hootesuite and  su.pr to schedule tweets.  Bloggers that we know who put out good solid content regularly are tweeted automatically from Hootesuite using their RSS/Atom application.   In doing so, we can instantly share their content and not even be online.

Su.pr is another great way to spread out our tweets and to post on facebook. We will spend a day scheduling people’s content to be tweeted and shared at different times throughout the week.  This allows us to add a human element to our scheduled tweets.  Autotweeting doesn’t allow any personality, but when scheduling tweets with your own little comments it allows you to engage with your audience.

We also use su.pr because it gives people an easy option to submit our posts to StumbleUpon.  It must work because we receive a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon.

Use Facebook Effectively – Start a fan page and use networked blogs to syndicate your content on facebook. It will automatically pull your feed from your blog and post your content onto facebook as soon as it is published.  This lets your fans instantly know when your new post is up.  You can also schedule facebook status updates through Hootesuite.

3. Photos

We host our photos on SmugMug and Flickr. This allows us to mass upload photos to be used on the website.  SmugMug houses our more professional travel photos while Flickr hosts our snapshots. Both types of photos are just as important to further the story of a post.  These sites are useful because it is quick and easy to upload several photos at once rather than inserting one photo at a time to the blog.  All we have to do once we write the article is to link the photos to the post where we want them. This saves valuable time online.

4. Write posts ahead of time

There is a lot of down time when traveling. You can spend hours on a bus or sitting in an airport. Use that time to do work.  Pre write your post on your laptop and sort and choose your photos for uploading. When you have an Internet connection all you have to do is copy and paste your content into the site. And when it comes to your photos, all you have to do is upload the album that you have already made.

I even pre write my tags and the excerpt for my post so that I don’t waste time having to think about anything at the Internet.  The less time I have to spend online, the more time I have to enjoy my travels.

5. Keep a Journal

When you are out on a tour jot down some notes. This will help you write a post faster than trying to remember details or having to look up information.  I brainstorm ideas all the time in my journal and keep it close by for quick reference.

6. Buy an iPhone or Blackberry

We always carry an iPhone to answer emails.  Advertisers contact us daily and we would hate to miss out on a business opportunity because we can’t get on the Internet.  We buy a SIM card and data plan in each country as soon as we enter. Our iPhone has become one of our most important items because its an excellent way to stay connected.   We can send out tweets and facebook updates and moderate comments on our blog all while stuck in transit.

7. Enjoy your travels

We travel hard and then we work hard. We will go for several days at a time unplugged but nobody knows it. By doing all the legwork, we stay connected and have posts coming out regularly while we are off enjoying the adventure of a lifetime.  Once we are finished our adventure, we then settle in for a couple of days to catch up on our work and write our next round of posts.

Take advantage of the many times that you will be stuck waiting for boats, trains, planes and buses to get your work done. There is nothing else to do in a waiting area but wait; you might as well do your blogging so that you don’t have to work when you arrive at your destination.

We like to immerse ourselves in our travels.  We aren’t a type of traveler that sits in one place for months on end. We take part in adventures; we go on treks and move around a lot.  The last thing we want to do is spend too much time on the Internet.

Do you have any time saving ideas that help you to spend more time enjoying your travels and less time sitting at the computer?

Dave and Deb are a Canadian blogging couple who have been married for 13 years. In that time they have managed to hike, bike, paddle and climb their way across 5 continents. They have built a large following at their adventure travel website ThePlanetD. They have taken part in successful media campaigns such as the Rocky Mountain Adventure Drive with General Motors, the Princess Cruises “Follow Me At Sea” Twitter Cruise, and most recently joined Fiji’s Influencer tour as a part of their FijiMe Campaign. Dave and Deb consistently rank highly as the one of the world’s most influential travel bloggers and websites.

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Filed Under: Business of Blogging, Nuts and Bolts Tagged With: , , ,

10 ways SEO can make your travel posts – and blog – Better

January 31, 2011 By 42 Comments

SEO tips and tricks

This is a guest post by David Robert Hogg.

Many things are said about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a good many of them wrong and misinformed. The most common of the critiques is that there is a trade-off between writing for your readers and “writing for Google”. A compromise between having a blog focused on content, readability and character, and a blog that is optimized to be scanned, indexed and searched.

Not only is this untrue, but more often that not good white-hat SEO tactics will make your blog better. Better for your readers, better for you, and better for the people that want to find what you’re producing – be it a product, information, or entertainment.

Good SEO tactics – the kind of SEO that you could proudly append to the bottom of any post, describing to your readers what you did and why you did it – can make your blog more readable, accessible, and just plain better.

Here’s how.

1. Focus.

Write posts that are detailed and thorough yet sharp and well defined. Posts that could be mistaken for entries in the encyclopedia. Great stories that have a distinct theme and subject. This is what readers want and it’s also what search engines want.

Search engines don’t like long unfocused and rambling posts (they don’t know how to index them) and neither do your readers (they find them vague and usually boring). And even you – the blogger – benefit on this one. One of the biggest challenges bloggers face is thinking up enough interesting topics to write about. When you go throwing 3 or 4 different subjects into a blog post, not only are you confusing your readers, but you’re also blowing off what could have been 3 or 4 different posts. Stay focused and everyone wins.

2. Conciseness

Similar to focus but more concerned with word choice as opposed to themes and topics. Trim the extra words from your posts and make sentences crisp, clear, and streamlined. Computers are not as smart as people when it comes to deciphering meaning so if your readers are having trouble with passages then so is Google. Make sentences short, easy to understand and memorable.

Also watch your use of pronouns, hackneyed phrases, and generic verbs.

Let’s look at 2 example sentences:

A. “When we got there everyone was waiting impatiently.”

B. “When we got to the hotel all the other guests were waiting to check-in.”

They’re both describing the same scene but the first one assumes the reader knows what you’re talking about (and some might not). The 2nd one is not only more clear but also has a number of keywords that people might actually be searching for. Hotel, guests, and check-in are certainly much more commonly searched than everyone and impatiently.

This might seem like writing for Google, but it will often make your writing more clear and easy to read. Remember as well: not everyone reading a travel blog has English as their first language.

3. Use headings and sub-headings within a post

Common SEO advice is to use keywords and keyphrases in headings and subheadings; and bold them in a couple of key sections throughout the text. Sounds like common tactics in the print industry long before Google was founded.

Headings, blockquotes, and bolded text grab peoples eyes and arrest their movement down the page when they’re starting to scan. They also make it easier for search engines to determine the main topics of a post or page.

4. Use a diverse array of media

People love posts with images, charts, and videos – and so do search engines – so use them. If you make videos embed them on their own page within your website and be sure to transcribe the audio into text that will appear below the video. This is good for Google and Bing – it tells them what this video post is about – but also good for readers. It allows them to quickly scan the content to see if they want to watch it, and also allows visitors with a slower connection to consume this information even if they’re not able to stream the video.

5. Post ideas

Do you want to know what topics search engines are interested in? Use a keyword tool to find out what words and phrases are being searched for.

Do you want to know what topics people – and your potential readers – are interested in? Use a keyword tool to find out what words and phrases are being searched for.

These are not separate ideas. As a blogger you should be interested in solving some demand – an answer to a question, a desire to be entertained, a need to feel motivated and inspired – and search engines are in the business of solving these demands by finding you.

Obviously you’re doing your readers a disservice if you’re writing posts just because they appear in a keyword tool. So stick to what you know.

But using a keyword tool is akin to emailing your friends and asking – “If you were writing a post on mountain climbing what topics would you want covered?” Keyword research tells you what the answer would be if you had 2 billion friends.

6. Load Time

Google has stated clearly that load times are one of the signals they use to determine quality of a page. Readers undoubtedly like fast loading pages as well. [Todd here, we have a very helpful discussion in the forums on how to increase the speed of your site with some simple WordPress plugins]

7. Use descriptive names and tags for images

Though search engines have made huge strides with image recognition software they most definitely are not using it on all images on the web. By using keyword rich file names, employing descriptive alt and title tags, and making smart use of captions search engines will have a pretty good idea what the image is about. Clearly humans are not as dependent on these hints but a good caption and title tag (the text that shows when you mouse-over an image) will give readers a much richer understanding about the context, location, and details of an image.

8. Use a descriptive URL and directory structure

Google likely uses URLs and directory structure to attempt to understand the subject of a post and so do readers. The URL string can often be the link text for a post and the only thing a reader sees when making a guess regarding a post’s subject.

9. Have an easy to navigate website

Google doesn’t index everything on a site so attempting to have the majority of your posts 1 to 3 clicks away from your homepage can make it more likely that all of your posts will be found by search engines. Readers like this too, and few things are more annoying – or will have users clicking away from your site faster – than making content hard to find.

10. Make awesome resource pages.

Google and people both love resources pages. If you’re planning a trip to India there’s nothing better than a list of high quality links to good information. The trouble is, resource pages are hard to do well. To the uninitiated resource pages can seem an easy and thoughtless attempt at attracting links – but they’re not. To do them well requires a lot of legwork, regular updating, and a keen eye for knowing what people are interested in.

What SEO tactics do you use that also benefit your readers? Are there any SEO tactics that you think come at the expense of readers?

David Robert Hogg blogs about traveling the world with kids at My Little Nomads and does blog design and SEO at Rocket Blog Design. You should follow him on Twitter here.

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