With the new year comes new goals. Many (including myself) love to search for new hobbies or streams of income when planning their new year's resolutions. A great way for us globetrotters to both have fun and make a side-income around our passion is travel blogging! I started blogging 2 summers ago and have since learned so much while constantly growing within the travel blogging realm. A common misconception is that the blogging world revolving around travel is over-saturated. However, this could not be more untrue.
In this article, you will learn about the #1 way to make your new travel blog succeed-- by building quality links.
Do Follow vs. No Follow Links
Building backlinks pointing to your blog and its articles will increase your ranking in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. In order to observe organic search traffic, you must seek out link building either on your own or through a paid link building service (see http://www.rexoriginals.com/).
There are two types of links possible to be pointing towards your website: do and no follow. The one you will be wanting to build is do-follow links. These links to your travel blog will be acknowledged by search engines and incorporated into the ranking algorithm. When a link has a no-follow attribute, Google and other search engines will disregard any authority this link would have otherwise gave you as a do-follow link.
Therefore, it is important, when seeking out links, to focus on do-follow link opportunities.
Free Link Building
Practically the only way to build links for free is through outreach within the travel industry. This can be quite tedious, thus, it may be worthwhile to pay this service out to an SEO expert. However, if you are like me and have the time to build links, you will need to start reaching out to fellow travel bloggers. I recommend beginning by joining Facebook groups that focus on travel link building.
When reaching out to travel bloggers, they will typically either want your to do a guest post or a roundup post. A guest post will be 100% written by you. While this may seem tedious at first, the links coming from this post will have a lot more power and authority than those coming from round up posts. For round up posts, you will typically need to provide between 100 and 300 words about a destination, task, or item to be included in a list of destinations, tasks, or items. Both of these types of posts can be found within these Facebook groups. Alternatively, you can reach out to your favorite bloggers and request a guest post. However, I have not found as great of a response to these requests.
Another great, and free, way to build do-follow links is through HARO, Help A Reporter Out. By signing up for an email list, you will be alerted in the morning, afternoon, and evening a list of requested testimonies from reporters for various outlets to contribute information. Most of these opportunities will provide backlinks in exchange for your expertise.
Local SEO and Backlinks
If your website is specific to a destination, you may want to focus on local SEO efforts. This may be reaching out to local restaurants or excursions to feature on both your and their website. For example, if you are a Australia-based travel blogger, you may want to build backlinks from excursion websites based in Sydney.
If you do not want to build these do-follow backlinks on your own, you may be able to hire a SEO backlink builder for your travel blog. For example, this website is perfect for any travel blogger based in Los Angeles, California to build their online presence through quality SEO optimization of their website.
If you do not live in the area where your website is based on, no worries. While it isn't a bad idea to move their to fully emulate the vibe and feeling of being in that particular destination (see this website for Tampa, Florida), through diligent research and outreach, you can build local backlinks for most any destination.