Search Engine Optimization, Get Traffic Now
If you’re out there traveling, and coupling your travel with blogging, then you understand one core fact: there just isn’t enough time in the day to do everything. Sure you could spend hours tinkering with and tweaking your site, but instead you roll with what you have and focus on the fundamental core: good writing and great photos.
Good plan, that’s where you should be focusing!
That being said, as a blog, even at the beginning, you should take those small extra steps toward search engine optimization (SEO) for your travel website. SEO generally refers to the practice of tweaking your site and posts so Google and the major search engines know exactly what search keywords relate to your site and each of your posts.
Let’s set the parameters here I am talking about tweaks that are completely on the up-and-up, standard practice in the web-world and help the search engines classify your posts. As travel bloggers this is particularly important since we can be a creative bunch, and those artsy titles and colorful descriptions can mislead the search engines as to what a post is actually about.
There are four key (and easy) tasks you can implement today, from this point forward; with just 20 minutes of legwork you’ll be set to implement a new travel blogging SEO routine. Seriously, these tasks are so simple to add into your posting routine and will make a huge difference in making your blog/website/small business better optimized for the search engines. And a better optimized site means the travelers can find your recent niche post about a fantastically amazing taco-shop in Dublin when they head to Google to search for Mexican food in Dublin.
Before we get into the four simple tasks, let’s take a quick look at what a keyword is and why you should care. Keywords really refer to keyword phrases that searchers type into the search engines to find information. In the previous post example, although the arty title for the post (the one your users see at the top of your article) might be A Delectably Spicy Dublin Dinner, there is little likelihood anyone is searching that phrase. Instead, consider this as your functional title that reflects†consumer search habits: Mexican Food in Dublin, this phrase would then become your post’s primary keyword.
SEO Routine You Should be Doing
Alter Your Post’s Meta Title and Descriptions
If you’re running on WordPress (or any popular self-hosted blogging platform) then you can easily add a plugin on your site that will allow you to quickly add an SEO title and description to each and every post you write. These tags are used by the search engines and guide visitors to your site so they know exactly what content they are getting when they click a link in the search engine results pages.
For WordPress sites, WordPress SEO is a newer plugin with a lot of great functionality while All in One SEO is an old standard and will serve you well. The plugin will appear on the editing screen of every new blog post so before you publish, alter the meta title information to reflect a prominent keyword phrase from your post, while the description should be a short “pitch” for the content in your article.
Use A Short Keyword Description in Your URL
Your site should have a permalink structure that includes a unique description in the URL for each post. Before you publish the post edit the URL to reflect the most popular and likely keywords for your post. If you wrote about that taco restaurant in Mexico then update your url to something like this:
www.myawesometravelsite.com/mexican-food-in-dublin
With this structure, your most likely keywords are included in the URL and they reflect the actual content the user will find inside your post. No surprises here! Just use the first main keyword that comes to mind for what you’re talking about.
Optimize Photos in Your Post
Images are a huge part of the search engine business, as well as an integral part to any travel blog. So help travelers find your photos! Optimize them with simple keywords that precisely name what they are. To do this, name the file before you upload it to your site (I don’t want to see these: ìIMG_9987″ instead name it Mexican Taco 1, ìMexican Taco 2, etc).
Add a title and alternate description (ALT attribute) to the photo when you insert it into a post this functionality is built into WordPress, it gives you the ability to easily write keyword alternate photo descriptions right when you upload the new photo. The ALT tab is visible to the search engines and will be used if for some reason your image fails to load that means you’re helping your site navigability in addition to some savvy SEO skills.
Link Within Your Site to Your Top Content
Make your website a spider web of links and navigation. If you’re talking about an old post, link to it! Although building outside links is one type of SEO (and not a part of our quick-step plan to optimization ñ that takes a bit more effort!) you can certainly help your visitors find content on your site and share some link juice with your old and most popular posts.
This is an important step, so start right now and in each new blog post make an effort to link back to at least one highly relevant old post/category page/tag. Don’t do this arbitrarily, you want to help your reader experience, so only link to relevant items that were already a part of your travel narrative.
Conquer the SEO Hurdle
These four tasks will conquer that initial SEO hurdle: you’ve started. You are on the path to a properly search engine optimized site. There is more you could do (isn’t that the case with just about everything in life?!) but these are a start and doing them now means you won’t have to go back in a year and do it all over again once you start focusing more intently on SEO!
As a note of caution go light with the SEO keywords, you can over do it. Trust me, just a keyword tweak here and there is enough to keep you well optimized and moderation is the key. These extra tasks should be a part of every single new post, it won’t take you more than 4-5 minutes extra to run down the list and make sure each has been completed.
I know you’re busy, hey, I’m a travel blogger too, so with our lifestyle in mind, these are the four steps I never let lapse, even when I’m blogging on limited internet connections and rushing off to catch that epic 16 hour train ride.
This was a guest post by Travel Blogger Extraordinaire Shannon Odonnel of A Little Adrift. She and “That Travel Guy,” Andy Hayes have revamped and updated their DIY SEO ebook to the new and improved Get Traffic Now. We reviewed DIY SEO and it helped us immensely. Andy’s expertise in website optimization has helped us throughout our travel blogging careers. By teaming with Shannon, they have developed an excellent resource for anyone looking to get notices on the web.
Get your copy today of Get Traffic Now
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On site optimization probably is easiest part. The hard bit is link building which takes so much time.
Very true! Building incoming links is the time consuming part, but you’d be surprised by how many people overlook the basics, like keywords on a page with good content
Thanks for writing such an informative post Shannon. Your and Andy are always an amazing help to us and everyone!
Great tips but content is king, it takes time and patience to build a blog.
This is one of the most helpful posts I have read since I started blogging. I immediately installed the WordPress SEO plugin and did everything on your list to a post I was just putting up. Thanks so much for sharing this information!
Glad you found it helpful Jan! These handful of steps will definitely propel you along, that SEO plugin will do wonders for you
Good tips and good to know I’ve started off right. I started my site less than 3 months ago with one of the SEO packs mentioned. To date I haven’t even bothered to look at traffic or site numbers, because I know they’re small and I know I need a lot more content. I’ll wait until the 6-month mark to get to that.
If you started out with an SEO pack then you are ahead of many new bloggers for sure! Keep chugging along and the people will come eventually (and though it’s not included, guest posting and link building should be a focus after month 6 if it isn’t yet
Great tips! These are definitely essentials, and things I wish I knew when I was just starting out.
Great tips! I am using All in one SEO but will look into WordPress SEO. Ok, I may be a little slow but I didn’t know I could change the meta title and URL! Will definitely be doing that one.
Oh yea, thanks for putting this in a ‘language’ I can understand.
Definitely change the URLs and title! Glad the post was easy to follow and jargon-free, good luck with your SEO-ing
Thanks for the opportunity to post here and share tips with other the Planet D readers
Very much appreciate!
Thank you Shannon for sharing and answering everyone’s questions. What a super post!
This is an excellent post. Some of the points were familiar and functioned as a nice review; however, the concept of…LINK WITHIN YOUR SITE TO YOUR TOP CONTENT…is something I never considered! Thanks for all the tips.
That’s definitely an integral part! Not only does it help point out your most valuable posts, but it will help with your pageviews, and the length of time people stay on your site once they’re there!
Great tips !
I haven’t used any SEO plugin till now but I guess it’s time to do so.
So, you suggest WordPress SEO over All in one SEO?
I link to my posts within my site but not necessarily to top content. How much difference does it make?
Go with WordPress SEO because it has some built-in features that help lead you through what each section means in the SEO meta information.
As for content, link to any relevant content, that’s a solid strategy, but if you have any really helpful resource pages on your site, it helps to keep them in mind and really link to them when relevant!
I’m glad I’ve done my SEO homework since I started my blog in December, 2010. SEO work in travel blogging is really challenging and rewarding.
Great tips on the basic but Google is ever changing and content is the one thing that remains king. Alot of focus is now being but on how long people stay on your site and much much it is being liked or +1′d. The basics still help alot.
You are definitely right Kirk, nothing beats content. It is good to have the tools to help be found though as well, I think a good blend of content and knowledge goes a long way on the Interent.
So true a combination of a few different things can make a world of difference. Its like my mother always told me “never put all your eggs in on basket.” Really helpful post!
Since the Google panda update duplicate content can be damaging. Link wheels from 2.0 websites are the current trick to ranking high.
Backlinks are of course good but link wheels are better.
Also a fast loading site can help a lot also.
Thanks Shawn, I will look into that. I have know idea what a link wheel is. Yes, agreed, a fast loading site helps a lot, something we need to work on for sure.
You should be careful with link wheels – only use them if they are good quality sites, with relevant content and other (sacrificial) links to relevant sites that are not in your network. It’s generally not a good idea, especially if you do it in such a way as to contravene Google guidelines.
Site A – links to Site B and also your site
Site B – links to Site C and also your site
Site C – links to Site D and also your site
Site D – links to Site E and also your site
Site E – links to your site
People use platforms such as Squidoo, and drop in links to other appropriate sites (such tplanetd).
Any other questions, feel free to ask via my website!
SEO is BIG. Seriously, everyone with a website needs to be up on their SEO practice. I’m learning more and more about it everyday. Thanks for the link to the DIY SEO book.
Thanks Mack, you are right. If you don’t think about SEO when writing for the Internet, you will never get found by the search engines no matter how good the article. Cheers.
Our SEO and website promotion services will drive traffic to your website. We offer Meta tag and Image tag additions, alt text addition, robots, file name optimization and search engine submission. Organic way of getting your site seen on search engines