It’s easier to search optimise your blog to its fullest when you plan in advance and track your changes. Find out what a content schedule is, and why you need one. Click here to scroll down to the post infographic.
Why a content calendar is a key part of your blogging strategy
A content calendar falls under a variety of names; SEO editorial calendar, SEO calendar, online content schedule, et al.
All of which generally refer to the act of planning SEO content and backlinks in advance; something too few travel bloggers do.
While we do slot resources for just-in-time content to be based on up-to-the-minute trends and research, we produce a large portion of our blog content on a schedule much like any traditional marketing department would.
When we work out travel blogging strategies, we create a proper editorial calendar that reads more like a table of contents.
Yes, keywords change subtly on a regular basis, however, they can be adlibbed into content adhoc, even though its subject matter is planned in advance.
For example, our focus keywords for “top things to do in Koh Lanta” at the time of writing our SEO calendar might evolve into “best Koh Lanta activities” by the time we actually produce the said piece of content. The change has a minor effect on the content schedule as a whole.
Long sentence alert!
Je ne peux pas respirer!
Why Content Plans Benefit Freelancers, Too
As marketing freelancers, creating content calendars for each of our clients benefit us, too:
- Easier to pitch and close on projects
- Retain clients longer
- Get more referrals by satisfied clients
- Work with bigger budgets and established brands
Creating an SEO content calendar isn’t rocket science, it’s just providing as much of our strategy in advance (during planning) where our competitors tend to do so on a monthly adhoc basis. It’s just more straight forward than many of our peers.
Some of the information we present in our content calendars include:
- Content topic
- Content type
- Related content
- Which websites organic backlinks will come from (we plan in advance with Ninja Outreach)
- Whether content will be syndicated, and where
- Monthly on-site SEO tasks
We create a content calendar every 3 – 6 months depending on the competitiveness of the niche we’re working in, and how much work needs to be done.
When we rebooted Hobo with a Laptop in mid 2017, we created a 1-year flexible road map to follow.
1 year!
And it isn’t crazy. We still have a lot of products/guides/courses we’ll be dropping over the life of this website, and it’s important to make sure everything gets tied together when it’s all said and done.
8 Benefits of a Travel Blog SEO Calendar
Beyond being a simple accountability measure, there are plenty of other reasons why using a content schedule can benefit your travel blogging strategy.
1. Repurpose
Content marketing saves time –one of the top travel blog SEO benefits of a content calendar is that it makes reusing old content easy.
Older content can literally be repurposed into a table of contents for a white paper, or a series of ebooks, blogcasts (podcasts made from repurposed blog posts), slideshows, infographics, videos, FAQs, email newsletters, webinars, online courses –you get the idea.
Every tropical paradise has it’s societal, economic, and political challenges, but it doesn’t have to affect your blog traffic if your content is evergreen.
If you’ve got some great content assets laying around, this scheduling benefit is huge.
2. Cross-Linking
Greater potential for relevant cross-linking between content assets. We write content that ties into each piece in a non-linear fashion, sort of like a book’s table of contents. And of course, all content can be repurposed into ebooks, travel guides, and the like –or the other way around.More bang for your buck.
3. Shelf Life
Visitors who enjoy one post about travel information are likely to enjoy a series of related articles, which increases the shelf-life of evergreen content and boosts blog traffic –even while you’re taking a month off to go explore the Maldives before they slip under water.
4. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
Gives you more time to locate the best subject matter experts (SMEs) to write and produce your content. Travel bloggers, digital nomads, and luxury vacation experts can all add value to your travel marketing campaigns if you plan in advance and have a great “relationship broker” like Ninja Outreach to get the wheels in motion for your travel blog.
We used Ninja Outreach to help us find high ranking, diverse and influential travel bloggers for interviews on our blog. One share from them earns our blog 10, 50, or hundreds of new email subscribers in one fell swoop. Ninja Outreach pays for itself.
5. Consistency
Improves consistency; topics flow together in a linear fashion, and content is published with a reliable frequency.
6. Evolve
More time to carefully refine content themes, ideas, and strategically plan off-site content placement used to organically build backlinks based on evolving trends.
7. Leverage
Scheduling a content drip to be shared across gated “web 2.0” online communities (like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, etc) in advance can drive traffic in greater numbers to related content on your own travel blog.
8. Coordinate
Easier to coordinate serial content with other efforts being facilitated by your peers you partner up with (like a comic book crossover series –1 episode on my blog, one on yours, one on Billy’s, and another on Janet’s) –or by your virtual assistant(s).
PS. Anyone reading this interested in a crossover series, we’ll be looking to put one out in August or September 2017. We’d like to work with established bloggers on this. You can get in touch on our contact us page.
In Summary
Most travel bloggers will pick a topic, 2-3 keywords, and maybe a source URL or two for their articles –and then write them all up on-the-fly without a high level strategy.
Ensuring your travel blog SEO strategy works to an editorial calendar that is integrated with your other marketing and sales efforts will ensure greater success –instead of leaving your site traffic in a corner, hoping the gods of Google will shine brightly on on you (or you become Instagram/Pinterest/Facebook/Twitter famous).
Have any thoughts on the subject of travel blog SEO? We’d love to hear from you in the comments at the very bottom of this page.
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9 comments
That article was a great one and very impactiful. Thanks for sharing!
Look at that classy infographic! Where you and Oshin find the time to output so much great content is absolutely amazing. Great advice – I’m going to take it into consideration in 2018. This past year was the year of experimenting with new types of content and finding a focus. Next year I will strategize the production schedule a little better.
Really appreciate that, Paul. We’re still in “foundational content” mode, 5 months in –a long way to go. I really want to make this blog income passive-ish before the new year.
In the a few months I aim to have all of our content repurposed into other formats; audio blogcasts, some videos, slideshows, downloadable PDFs, you name it. Must game all the walled gardens. Once I replace my third dead laptop in a couple weeks, the gloves come off.
We’ve been keeping one eye on Travel is Life; you’ve had some serious game with Pinterest as well. Cheers to mutual success in 2018 brother, and thanks for stopping by.
The content calendar is a savior! Organization and proper planning is key to have a successful content marketing plan. It also gives our copywriters time allowance just in case a surge of needed content kicks in.
Completely agree. This was a post from our travel marketing and SEO company (Copyrise) that I migrated when this blog surpassed its income. Copyrise is going to be converted into a lead generation site for SEO companies soon.
We used to follow a content schedule religiously on this blog and will again soon –we pivot our direction often on Hobo with a Laptop as we review our analytics to serve the largest visitor pool. I long for the days when we can schedule again 😀
Sounds like you made a good leap, Michael! May you enjoy sleeping through the night now. 🙂
I think one of the biggest rewards of one’s own business (other than money) is flexibility. My main focus is Client SEO and I live in a country where face-to-face meetings are still the preferred way of doing business, so I don’t have as much of it as I’d like yet. I continue to work towards it, though and am grateful for the degree of flexibility I do have.
I look forward to your success stories with Hobo With a Laptop.
Thanks for swinging by, Karl. Yeah, not every culture is as willing to trust without a handshake and some face time. Although, if you ever made the leap into the life –you’re from a place that has some excellent time zone overlap with Asia 😉
Don’t be a stranger and thanks for your comment.
Hi Michael. What happened to Copyrise? I went in to read this post and was redirected here. Glad the post is still available. It’s good to get a refresh on the points once in a while.
That’s awesome Karl, happy you found our secret hideout!
Bit of a story there. Our side projects surpassed our day job projects by an order of magnitude. First we were toying with the idea of abandoning the Copyrise brand, now we’re just not sure.
Hobo doesn’t look like much, but I enjoy the freedom to say “no 4am calls, please!”.
We put up a quick and dirty freelance page here that you can take a look at should you ever want to connect again. And of course, there’s always Linked In. Thanks for leaving a comment Karl, have a great week.
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