Owning a travel blog has been challenging in the past weeks. Traffic has plummeted to a level I haven’t seen in a long time, readership has become more inconsistent and ad revenue is pretty much non-existent.
But like everything else in life, negatives go hand in hand with positives and we should try to make the best of the situation, now more than ever.
I have come up with five different steps I’ll be taking in order to grow my blogging business, or at least set it up for success once the travel industry starts running again.
1. Writing more than usual, as I have more time
Since being off my normal job and having to spend my whole time at home, I have more time than ever to work on my blogging goals.
For the past two years, I considered myself lucky if I managed to come out with an article every 2 weeks. My blog posts are usually 2000+ words and include a lot of factual information, which needs to be researched, hence why they would always take me so long to write.
Recently I created a schedule, according to which I should aim to post 5 articles per month. All of these articles should be focused on previously researched keywords, which my blog has a potential to rank for, in order to increase Google search traffic.
Hopefully these blog posts would have already ranked well once borders are open and travel is possible again.
2. Translate my blog into my native language
The second measurement I am taking is something I have been planning on doing for months. Even though I have been blogging in English, my native language is actually Bulgarian. Through some keyword research I found that the competition vs demand ratio in Bulgarian is extremely favourable for bloggers at the moment. It would be an absolute waste of opportunity if I didn’t make my blog bilingual.
The plan is to translate at least three old blog posts/month into Bulgarian, and for now I will be focusing on those articles with the highest potential to rank well on Google.
So if we sum up the first two steps of the plan, I should be publishing at least 8 new blog posts on my blog per month.
3. Focus on writing about my own country
This third step goes hand in hand with the previous one, or at least to a certain extent.
As bloggers, we have the opportunity, as well as the responsibility, to ‘guide’ people to different destinations around the world and inspire their upcoming adventures.
I believe that once the lockdown is over, people should and will focus on more inland travelling, as opposed to going abroad. This will also be a great way to boost the local economy, which might soon hit rock bottom, especially in countries like my own. Bulgaria is the poorest country in the EU, and it breaks my heart thinking of how much more crashed our economy will be after all of this.
This is why I am taking it very much to heart to focus my future writing on destinations within my own country. Since these articles will be both in English and in Bulgarian, they will serve firstly as a reminder to all Bulgarians to discover the beauty of their own country and invest here before going anywhere else. And secondly, as a way to draw more foreign visitors to visit our country once it is possible – for the purpose of helping the economy and the tourism industry.
I will be taking this step not so much for the sake of my blog, but more so to support local tourism. I do still hope that people will actually be searching for more places to visit within Bulgaria, and these articles will be beneficial for the blog in the long run.
4. Work on growing my back links and site authority
As I haven’t done much to grow the amount of back links to my site in the last year, I have decided to now take my time and participate in as many collaborations and guest posts as possible. Even though not proven to be the most important factor, domain authority is still something I’d like to work on. There is no better time than now, since I have all the time in the world.
5. Start a new blog
Last but not least, my final step is to start a new blog in a completely different niche. As a matter of fact, I just bought a new domain and I can’t wait to build my second website.
This is again something I have been planning on doing for awhile now, and I am so happy I finally have more time to focus on it.
I wouldn’t want to talk too much about it, as things don’t always turn out as planned, but I am hoping to create a podcast to go alongside this new blog. I have not included this as a separate step as it’s still in the process of planning figuring out, but it would be a great fit with the topic of the website.
These are the five steps I am currently working on to grow my blogging business, and I hope we all get to reap the fruits of our efforts as soon as possible.
Lyubomira is the creator and author behind Bulgarian On The Go. With a background in journalism and experience in the field of tourism and marketing, her mission is to show travellers many beautiful places they might have never thought of visiting or even knew existed.
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