SEO for travel blogs — here’s how to get traffic from Google
My travel blog sees consistent growth in search results in 2024. These are my key tactics.
If you want to get a lot of traffic to your travel blog, you’ll need to understand SEO. Sure, you can get some traffic from Pinterest or Facebook, but Google search is by far still the easiest way for travel blogs to be discovered by readers.
That’s even after the Google updates that have frightened bloggers so much.
A little about me; before becoming a full time travel writer, I was a content manager for Tourism New Zealand (and before that JUCY campervan rentals).
So, my background is solidly in SEO and organic content. I’ve done this on big and small scales for years now. I used all of my knowledge to grow my own website from less than 1000 views to nearly 100,000 in less than 9 months.
Is that replicable for everyone? That depends on too many factors to say.
I can’t tell you for sure that these tips for travel blog SEO will work perfectly, because search can be so unpredictable. What I can do is tell you exactly what works for me.
In short: A travel blog SEO strategy at a glance
Rule #1: Write for your readers. Always. Don’t write for Google, don’t structure your posts to feed Google, don’t keyword stuff.
Develop a keyword strategy that targets topics that get traffic, but will also hold interest (itineraries are a great example of this, as opposed to ‘can I drink the tap water in X destination).
Travel blog SEO, post Helpful Content Update
If you’re looking to start or grow a blog, you have probably picked up on a lot of the negative chatter online about the Google updates that have upended search results starting in September 2023. (In brief, there have been updates in September 2023, March 2024, and August 2024).
My view on the updates is that they were course correcting content that had honestly become too spammy and affiliate focused. Some good blogs were shot down in the process, but some were so obviously over optimised that it’s hardly any surprise Google tried to reshuffle the search results.
This might sound a little heartless considering how many blogs lost nearly all of their traffic, but there were just so many bad ones out there.
I kind of get it that Reddit started to get so much more traffic — I trust Reddit threads too when I travel, because at least I know it wasn’t written by AI.
What you need to know about SEO in 2024:
The search landscape is changing constantly.
AI overviews might reduce clickthroughs, search results are being shuffled so fewer blogs are showing up, and SEO tactics that have shot blogs to huge traffic numbers in the past no longer work (or work against you)
But — none of these things mean there’s no chance for travel blogs to win in search. The opposite might be true, in the sense that now more than ever there is a demand from people to read good content from real people (and not machines).
I do think that if you are putting out good content consistently over time, you are going to build an audience.
You should absolutely future proof your growing business against Google updates, by building an email list in particular.
SEO tools for travel bloggers
Don’t worry about paying for expensive tools. I have done all of my blog growth with free tools, so you can too if you don’t have the budget for an expensive one. Try all the free trials to get started, and once you ramp up growth you can decide whether or not to invest.
Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Do you need paid SEO tools?
I don’t think you do. To this day I don’t pay for an SEO tool, and my site continues to grow. Ultimately, tools are a starting point for research, and there are free tools available that can do the same job as the paid ones.
Free SEO tools I use almost everyday:
The Ahrefs Google chrome plug in
Ahrefs Keyword Generator
SEMRush
SEO plugins
My personal opinion is that you don’t need plugins to be successful at SEO. I think plugins can take away from good writing and distract from the main purpose of content, which is to provide real value to readers.
Developing a keyword strategy for your travel blogs
Don’t keyword stuff (it’s not worth writing in bad English for the sake of a keyword. Google is smart enough to pick up keywords that aren’t exact matches, so no need to write “Are you searching for the best things to do in Auckland, New Zealand?” Just write Auckland.
Things to do in X destination
In my experience, the most valuable keywords to target have been lower volume, long tail keywords that relate to a complex topic — for example, itineraries.
High volume keywords, like those relating to weather, get a lot of impressions, but not a lot of clickthroughs.
Understand the user journey, and where they are in that journey, for each keyword
What the keyword research tools don’t show
One post can capture many different keywords, so even if you’re targeting one keyword, say “two week Tasmania itinerary,” it’s pretty likely you’ll capture traffic from a lot of related keywords as well. This means the traffic you can to that post can be a lot higher than the volume for that one keyword.
On page SEO — simple tips for optimising each blog post
Optimising your images for SEO
Travel blogs often need strong imagery — visual inspiration plays a huge part in the travel planning process.
I resize and rename all images in Lightroom, and edit my own photos (I shoot in RAW).
Make sure your images are maximum 300kbs.
Dimensions should be large-ish — I set mine to 1020 x 800.
Vertical images work better for mobile devices, so I recommend having most of your images portrait rather than landscape.
Give the image file a descriptive name, like woman-on-a-beach-in-new-zealand.jpg
I save all my images in JPG
I use ImagOptim 2 to ‘clean’ my image files, which makes them smaller without losing any image quality.
Build up relevant landing pages
You should be building your content out around specific topics, or content clusters, that ladder up to your overarching niche.
For example, if solo hiking for women is your niche, you might have a content cluster on the topic of gear. You could have a landing page on ‘hiking gear for women’ and on that page link to all of the relevant blog posts on that topic. For example, a hiking list for overnight hikes, hiking clothes to wear in summer, what to wear hiking in cold weather.
Getting backlinks
Most of the backlinks to my travel site have come from publications I have written for as a freelance writer. This has been a boon for me, as I have backlinks from the likes of Lonely Planet and National Geographic.
Being an expert on one location or topic can help you accrue more backlinks over time. For example, journalists have come to me for quotes about van life in New Zealand, which is one of my key areas of expertise.
Showing authority (E.E.A.T)
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. It is essentially a way of signalling to both Google and readers that you know your stuff.
It’s simple, really — anyone who lands on your site should be able to quickly tell what your area of expertise is.
You can do this by:
Including an author bio at the bottom of each post.
Having a strong About Me page.
Freelance writing for other publications — there are many mentions of me across the internet, which helps build my authority.
Original photography.
Briefly summarising relevant experience in your blog intros, then referencing your experiences throughout via anecdotes and first person language.
As with most things SEO, there are no hard and fast rules for EEAT, but the clearer it is to readers why they should pay attention to you, the clearer it will be to Google.
Understand SEO, but don’t lose your mind over it
Here’s a few things I’ve never done for SEO:
Used a CDN (I don’t really even know what that is)
Used a caching plugin
Squarespace definitely helps to keep things simple in terms of SEO. The platform takes care of security elements, I don’t need to worry about plugins, and it’s always mobile optimised.
If you found this useful, you might like to check out some of my other posts:
