SEO for travel blogs — here’s what work for my website
My travel blog sees consistent growth in search results in 2024. These are my key tactics.
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.
Before I get into the travel blog SEO tips, I want to start with a few caveats.
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 want to start by telling you what not to do
Because there is a lot of outdated advice floating around the internet.
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.
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.
Free SEO tools I use almost everyday:
The Ahrefs Google chrome plug in
Ahrefs Keyword Generator
SEMRush
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 plug in
If you found this useful, you might like to check out some of my other posts:
