The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 123. SEO for Travel Bloggers with Nina Clapperton

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Have you ever thought about travel blogging? We have Nina Clapperton on to share more about SEO for travel bloggers. Nina is a multi-6 figure travel blogger and the founder of She Knows SEO. Using her SEO and AI skills, she grew her travel blog to $30k/mo in 13 months! She shares more about her story and how she got here. She also shares more about choosing the right niche, understanding who your audience is, and tips on content creation for a travel blogger. Nina’s story is not only inspirational, but she also shares practical tips that you aren’t going to want to miss!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsGet 20% off of Keysearch Starter Plan using this link and code: KSDISCCheck out MiloTree Cart HERE!Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode123

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Recently, we asked you what you want to learn more about here on the podcast. And an overwhelming response came back that SEO is something that you're just wanting to learn more and more about. So we've had several guests come on and talk about that. But today, we get to dive deep into a niche, which is travel SEO. And to do that, we brought on Nina Clapperton, who is a multi-six-figure travel blogger. And she's actually the founder of She Knows SEO. And so we know that Nina is going to bring all the goods today. And for you travel bloggers out there who are like, how do I grow this travel blog today? In 2024, what do I do?

Nina is here to answer that question. She uses SEO and AI skills, and she grew her travel blog to 30,000 a month in 13 months. So it is possible. We're going to hear more about Nina's story. So welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast, Nina. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Well, Nina, before we hit record, you shared your journey on how you became a blogger. And we told you it was so good that you're going to have to share it again. So will you share with our community how you ended up in the travel niche, how you ended up blogging in general? Yeah, so I started with a university project in my first year, I had a concussion,

and I couldn't participate in like the group project they needed. So my prof was like, just do something online, do a blog or something. So I published three posts that had nothing to do with anything. They were ridiculous. But I've always loved writing. So I realized I really enjoyed that. Then I put it on the back burner until I graduated from that degree, which I didn't tell you, but it was actually in medieval literature with a specialty in medieval dream poetry with talking birds, very useless degree. And so I didn't even know you could get a degree that was like that niche down. Like technically it was like a BA in literature, but you had to have a specialty. And that was unfortunate. It was that and The Hobbit. Those were my two specialties. Oh my gosh, that's so interesting. And then from there, I applied with that semi useless degree to 298 jobs and got a grand total of zero. Even the MLM turned me down, which was

quite the shock to the ego. So I decided I'd go to law school because when you Google what to do with an English degree, law school comes up. So I wrote my LSATs and you have to wait to get them. So I figured I'll just spend a year in Europe. Why not? I saved up about $3,000 and found a program where I could work abroad and get some money while I was over there and volunteer. So I did that. And then I kind of started the blog again to really show my family where the heck I was in the world. Because I would regularly get calls from my grandma like, Are you dead yet? And I was like, I answered the phone. So I can't be like, we're fine. I promise. And so that's when I started kind of semi posting again. And then in December, I got my like full ride to law school. But I have this Starbucks cookie in Berlin. And I was happier

about the cookie than I was about the full ride. And that said a lot to me about the future. So I failed on law school, found a $200 flight to New Zealand and moved to New Zealand. And that's when the blog really started in earnest. So when I was in Toronto in between getting my visa, I started it from the dog bed of my family dog. I'm sitting with him on the floor and bought the domain, did all the stuff, got it ready, moved to New Zealand. And ever since, I've been putting all my time and effort into blogging, basically, even when I had other jobs.

I was doing a lot of those like for like, comment for comment threads, which got me some traffic, but it was useless traffic. I was spending 120 hours a week on it, made no money. Even when I tried to put Google AdSense on the blog, I have $63 still locked away in a Google AdSense account. I can never access because you have to hit $100 to get it. And it took years before I even heard the term SEO. Pretty sure someone was just like, I don't know, choking on their own spit or something when they said that. I was like, what is that? And then took a course. The course was fine, but it was really generic advice. And just like you said, it is different per niche. So I started playing around with stuff, figured it out. And by December of 2021, gave myself an ultimatum that I had six months to get my site... Well, I gave myself a year. It took six months in the end, which is great to get into Mediavine, make even $1,000 with my blog,

or else I had to go back to law school. And then within six months, got into Mediavine. Spite is a very powerful motivator and a fear of law school, also very powerful motivator. And then within another year, by January 2022, no, that's wrong, 2023, pardon me, I hit $30,000 in a month, completely passive from that website. from that website. Nina, I love your story. I love that you've been brave, truly, in this and just taken risks. Because I think that when you start a blog, that's just part of it, is there are risks to be taken and you bet on yourself. And I love that you are here with us today and sharing that with people and saying, Hey, it's okay to bet on yourself and you don't have to take the common path. You can take a different path and you just never know where that could take you. So I also love that you shared the dates because this isn't like something that you did 10 or 15

years ago when blogging was... When it was, I think, quote unquote, easier to build a blog. This was in the last couple years here. So you said 2021-ish, 22 is when you kind of gave yourself that ultimatum. And by 2023, you were on Mediavine, correct? Yeah. So December 2021 was like November, I formulated the plan. In December, I sat down and I work really well with batch work. So my strategy was every month would be themed. Growing up, my mom always did that with food. She loves to cook. So we'd have like the summer of sliders, the winter of empanadas. And like you would...

I hate a lot of food now because I ate so much of it for so many months. So I figured a month would be okay. So I was like, okay, we're going to do a month of a content audit, a month of keyword research that like then obviously spilled into writing because hopefully you're not just spending a month on key search, like spinning your wheels, then like a month of back linking a month of internal links, things like that, where really like focusing on one strategy. By end of May 2022 is when I applied and I got into Mediavine took like a week to get everything sorted. So it was I think, like June 10, by the time my ads were live. And then from there,

I decided to do a summer of affiliates and a summer of affiliates and creating two $7 products really push things over the edge. I also accidentally stumbled upon the best lead magnet I've ever heard of, which is a quiz. And I get like 13 to 1500 subscribers a month passively from a quiz that has an SEO like post attached to it. And that gave me a great email list that I could then really like push affiliates towards push the $7 product. I got a couple sponsored things off of that. And yeah, that's really how the $30,000 came together. I try to like break it down because I know like everyone wants to know where the income is. And I have like, I have slide somewhere. I should have pulled it up.

But I know it was like $1,500-ish was ads because it was January. Q1 has really low ad revenue. By the summer, it was up to $7,500 a month for ads from that site. But I did switch to Raptive. So different ad network, pretty similar. Then affiliates was like $25,000, I think.

And then I think whatever the leftover was like $7,000. No, it wouldn't be $7,000. I don. And then I think whatever the leftover was like seven, that wouldn't be 7,000. I don't know. I'm not good at math. But the rest of it was definitely like some sponsored emails and a couple links and then a $7 product which sold like, I don't know, maybe 50 or so. So like not a ton of money, but something. Yeah, I'm just sitting here processing all of what you're saying. And I'm hearing you say like you really focused in on a couple of areas, you focused on SEO, and you focused on your email list. I didn't hear you talk a lot about social media or anything. Was that any part of your strategy at all when it came to growing your website? No, I hate social media. I'm really

bad at it. I'm very lucky that with SheKnowsSEO, because I can just talk about SEO and strategies and things, I find it a bit easier that way. So there's not a ton of editing and cutaways and posing. I have an old iPhone that my dog has pushed into the ocean a few times. So the camera's not good. I cannot take a photo. All my photos are crooked as well because I have this $20 tripod. My sister's dog pushed over a waterfall during the pandemic and I've never replaced it so like every photo I try to take even good ones are heavily crooked so social media is not my thing at all the site has like it has a Pinterest it has at the time like I think it had a Twitter account kind of like it was there I did not post on them at all that That was not my focus. I find having multiple

traffic sources is amazing and diversifying your traffic is so, so good and strong and safe. But I was really bad at it. And especially at that point when I was like, like you said, I focus on kind of one thing at a time and really deep dived into it. I would have been spinning my wheels trying to do all that stuff. And that was something I did early on is like, every week, I jumped from like, okay, this week is Pinterest, this week, it's TikTok, this week is this, this week is that. And I never gave anything enough time to work. And I realized, like, for me as a person, I can't split myself up that way, because I will get distracted, I will jump to something and I'll get too impatient. I'm also not a visual thinker. So any of like the visual social media make me panic because I'm like, I don't know if

this looks good. I don't actually care if it looks good. I just want to like get the information out there. So writing has always been my focus. And the email list was purely accidental, honestly. I didn't send great emails at the beginning either. But once I realized like these people are there, you there, you want to write to them because they're sitting there.

And emails are where you get to be more creative too and have more fun with your writing. So by the end of 2023, I really fell in love with email. I think there's going to be a lot of new bloggers listening to this and just being like, wow, this is refreshing. Because this simplifies things for me. Because one of the biggest obstacles is how overwhelming it is, like you said, to do all the things. So they're trying to jump from thing to thing to thing. And yes, like you said, having traffic from multiple sources is a great thing.

It's important. But you're not going to get any traffic if you try to do it all at once. So focusing on one thing at a time is just such a great way to grow. And then as you have those things nailed down and you're getting that traffic, then you can add on another thing and add on another thing when you feel like that's the right thing to do. But I like how you said, you take a month and you batch like working on keyword research and all of those things. I think for people that are thinking about becoming a travel blogger, or they're just getting started, I think one of the biggest questions that they

have is, what does this look like behind the scenes? How much traveling do I do? I think there's a perception based on what we see on social media that every week you're off to a new destination. You're getting your trips comped and you're going to all these glamorous events and all of this. But I don't think that's necessarily how travel blogging has to work. And I don't think that that's probably sustainable. Can you give us just a little peek behind the scenes of what it what it looks like to be able to create content as a travel blogger? Yeah, I fully agree with you. I think there is this perception that travel blogging is social media travel blogging. And even that, like, I have tons of friends who are big on social media, that is their bread and butter, their home most of the year,

it's just that they schedule content really well and they space things out really well. So it looks like they're abroad all the time. But for me personally, I have chronic illnesses. I have physical and mental disabilities that mean I can't be abroad all the time. I have to go to doctor's appointments and things like that. So I actually haven't been outside of North America since the pandemic. I've basically been here. I was supposed to move to Europe last year and it fell through the night before because of dog paperwork for my service dog. But even then I was planning to like live in one spot for a while and not be jumping around to a million places. So you definitely can do that. That's an option for me. When I was doing this, I was sitting in my like shared apartment or what was like a house at the time, but like a shared townhouse with my roommate in Ottawa, just working. That was what I did. And because you've been on these trips before, like everyone goes on trips, everyone has photos, everyone has experiences. And really with writing about it for travel, you might write like one post on making gluten-free bagels or something. We don't have that. If someone wants to know gluten-free restaurants in Rome, they want to know gluten-free pizza. They want to know gluten-free pasta. They want to know like places that are celiac safe versus normal gluten. I'm celiac. That's why I jumped to gluten-free. It's all of those considerations. So for us, we can't write a one-off post on a topic.

We have to deep dive. And the way I like to think of it is like, someone should be able to come to your site and plan an entire trip, like plan like the meat and bones of the trip that's relevant to this specific audience all on your site. And that takes time to write. So your three-day weekend trip to New York City,

okay, well now you you have a hotel review that you can write. You went to some restaurants. Hopefully, you ate at some point. So hopefully, you did something there. You have a three-day itinerary. You have a two-day itinerary. You have a one-day itinerary. You have how to get there. You have how to get from the airport to the city. I could rattle off 20 posts that you could write just from those three days. And without you having to do any intense fact finding or letting the keywords drive your traffic or drive your travel, because like, I don't believe in that I believe travel should be what you want it to be.

Definitely like I'll look a little bit. It's actually become part of my travel planning where I'm like, Oh, here's this cool thing like I wouldn't have known about otherwise. But it's kind of the same as looking at blogs to be like, hey, what should I do in New York City? Like, oh, there's these cool ruins of a castle. Let's go there. There's this great cookie. Let's go there. Like, same idea. But I'm not going to like go to a museum. I don't love museums. Not my thing. So I'm not going to go to a museum, just because this keyword might work for it. So yeah, really, for me, travel is very separate from travel blogging, almost. And everyone I know who is a full time traveler really struggles to write. And I actually have students as well that have said like, okay, we were traveling full time. And we decided to

like base ourselves for three months, because you just can't write and travel at the same time. It is so exhausting. Like, you're going to be dead on your feet. You're trying to enjoy it. We want to enjoy travel at the point. So you need to come home at a certain point and chill for a minute or co-living, things like that. So I think travel writing works best with either slow matting, which is where you stay in a place for a month or so, or you go home after. So you can go on a couple trips a year and then you're kind of set. So you really can have a travel blog with going on just like a handful of trips a year. Yeah. You can have a travel blog with a two-week vacation, like two weeks of vacation from your job easily. And because you also have like your day trips from your home, you have your home area,

tons of people make travel blogs about their city. I did that with a niche site that I'm like building in public to sell for $50,000 on YouTube about Ottawa. Because first of all, there weren't that many Ottawa blogs. And also I was there and I was like, I need an incentive to leave the house because COVID just ended. I need like to learn how to human again and be in society. So I started the blog to like make me go do things like found a beer festival. There were the new zip line opened across between the provinces. There were there's a new drive in I hadn't tried like all that stuff was a great way to explore my local area. And also was great content. So it's finding that balance for you of like what you like to write about and then making

what you're doing work for you. And also like, you don't need to publish every day. That's the beauty of a blog is unlike social media where you have to like, try and have at least three a week or whatever the new algorithm thing is that every week it changes. And again, the reason I don't love it for us, we can publish 100 posts, and then kind of keep updating them and you're probably fine. Now travels for Mediavine, I did a poll. On average, it takes about 140 to 160 posts to get into Mediavine. So if you plan that for yourself, like, okay, for one year, I'm going to go really hard on content. But then after that, I can let that content kind of work for me and just publish like

even one a month or something and update some old content and then just travel and have the fun and then like let the blog pay for the travel. That's great. Implementing keyword research and competition analysis into your content strategy is a surefire way to improve your chances of people finding your content. And we love how simple KeySearch makes it to find keywords we actually want to use in our posts. KeySearch is a powerful keyword research tool that makes finding relevant, low competition keywords for your blog simple and easy. If you think optimizing your blog and doing keyword research has to be hard, think again. Give this powerhouse tool a try and see how much easier it will be to create

content for your blog. Not only is it reasonably priced even for beginning bloggers, but you can use our code for 20% off your subscription. Click the link in our show notes to learn more. So something that I'm hearing that you're talking about is, it doesn't actually need to be something that you're doing full-time. So you can build this alongside what you're doing, which is honestly what a lot of people are doing when they start their blogs, is they are working a full-time job and then doing this on the side. So I found that to be really encouraging, actually,

that maybe you want to be a travel blogger, maybe you really enjoy travel, but you can do that with your family vacations a couple of times a year. So I just wanted to highlight that because I found that really encouraging. But the question I want to ask now is when it comes to niche in the travel industry, when you're sitting down and saying, okay, maybe you've already started a travel blog, or maybe you're thinking about it. What encouragement do you have in regards to niche? How niche down do you actually need to be? Can it be more broad? Does it need to be like

you are a family travel blogger or your solo travel or your only road trips? What are some encouragement that you have in that regard? Because there are a lot of travel bloggers, just like there's a lot of food bloggers. So how do you make yourself stand out in this industry? How do you make yourself stand out in this industry? That's the question. Yeah. I'll jump back to what you said before that about working. I was working a full-time job when I hit my $30,000 a month.

That's what made me quit my full-time job because I had a lot of debt from a service dog. I was working four jobs when I got into Mediavine. So I can fully say that... Also, they were part-time, but I had three part-time jobs and I got into Mediavine. So I can fully say that like, also like they were part-time, but I had like three part-time jobs and the full-time job. So fully, this is doable while you are working full-time.

I will say having a social life doing this and working full-time, not gonna happen. You have to put the social life on hold for a minute, but it's doable. As for niche, that was actually like kind of the first month of my strategy was really figuring out like, who am I and what do I have to say? And I actually had to take myself out of it. The best way to

figure out your niche is to think about your audience. So what's your audience avatar? Who are you talking to? That's something most people do when they're thinking of like a digital product or a service to offer. They're like, okay, who am I going to talk to? So I did, like at the time I was working full time, very much nepotism got me this job because I shouldn't have had it but I was a law clerk and I was working in a state firm so we did a lot of wills and like Henson trusts and things like different just nonsense trusts essentially and so because of that we were the people people went to for if their child had a disability and they needed a trust put in their will for that and that was like a big specialty of the law firm

same thing happens with your site. You want to be like, like I started my site called She Knows SEO because that's what people would talk about me in Facebook groups. They'd be like, Oh, Nina, she knows SEO. That's who you should talk to. And you want that with your blog. You want to be like, okay, this is the person who can tell you about this thing. So that's really where a niche is going to come in. Who are you helping? What are you going to be known for? Now travel is, I think, the hardest overarching niche in the blogging world. I have an SEO blog. I've had food blogs. I have a pet blog. I've helped my old roommate build a construction site. I've done so many blogs. Travel is the hardest because with blogs,

people tend to start it because it's fun. And what do people enjoy more than free travel and pets? Nothing. So those are two really hard niches. But with travel, there's so much competition. And one thing that happens a lot is people will write one post on things to do in Rome and they're like, check, done, finished Rome, we're over. And then people are like, no, but what else? What else can we do? So that's really where you want to have the niche be super specific in the sense of who are we talking to? So is it Rome for retirees? Is it Rome for couples? Is it Rome for families? Because the example I always use is like things to do in Rome at night. Okay, well, nightlife is very different for a family with kids or a 20 year old backpacker who's looking to get like blitz out of their mind. So like you need to have an idea of who we're talking to here. And that's why like the audience comes first to me, then the niche follows. So if my audience is going to be a retiree moving abroad

versus a 20-year-old moving abroad, that's going to massively shift the way that like my tone is going to be, my style, the language I use, also the posts I'm going to write. So I think you can like give yourself an overarching niche of something like solo travel. Solo travels really hard. That was my niche beforehand. And I'll talk about how I pivoted in just a second. But like, you'll you can kind of put that in your head, but then you need silos. And so people call them pillars, silos, categories, whatever you want to call them. Essentially, like the way I think of it is like your niche is the foundation of your site. And then the silos are literally like pillars.

Like think of like an old like Coliseum building. You have like each pillar is a different element of the like, that's kind of kind of the right wording, but essentially just like a different architectural element that's going to hold up whatever's happening. And so what I always give then as the next example is like in science class, we had like that, we did build a bridge out of straws and then put a book on top of it and see if it would hold it up. Well, if you had one straw, that book is going to smash it down. But if you have like 10, 20,

50 straws, that book is going to stay up. So each of those columns and content silos is what I call them. They need to be hefty enough to hold up the weight of Google's expectations. And that's where like writing around the same topic comes in. So if you want to have solo travel as like your overarching niche, you then have a silo that's more like solo travel in Italy. And then you're just going to write to death on that. And I typically say 20 to 50 posts to start. Like that's going to be the beginning of that silo.

And that's going to be everything to do with solo travel in Italy, Rome, even just general stuff of eating in Italy. Solo travelers still eat. So that still would technically be a part of it, even though it doesn't have solo travel in Italy in the title or the keyword, which is a common misconception I want to throw in. Now, I went with solo female travel as my niche because nomadic Matt is huge. I think most travel bloggers know who he is and compete with him a little bit in that sense. And I was like, cool, I'll be the female nomadic Matt. Great. Done. And then I wrote no female travel posts or solo female travel posts because they're

really hard because there are Be My Travel News, The Blonde Abroad. There's so many of them out there. And I didn't necessarily have anything new to add to the conversation. So when I like after had 180 posts when I started this journey of like to Mediavine, I sat down, I looked at my content and I was like, what are my top 10 that Google is telling me that it already likes? So I went to my Google Analytics, looked at the top 10. Now you have to go to like pages and screens in G4 and it'll show you. I have a YouTube tutorial on that if people are scared of G4

because it is very annoying. It's not the best. Microsoft Clarity is great. It's free. Also recommend that. But I looked at my top 10. I was like, what is similar about my best posts? And I had two that I'd written like kind of on a whim

about living abroad. But they got thousands of page views and my other content got like a couple hundred. And I was like, well, clearly, something is working there. So let's lean into that. And also I noticed when I would like offhandedly reference like, oh, when I was 16, I moved to Italy by myself because like Canada is boring. So like I wanted to live in Italy. People like wait tell us more about that so I leaned in I steered into the skid kind of a thing and went with the content people were asking me about and Google was asking about and then made a niche for myself but I would call it slow matting I used

that term before no one else would that's not a common term it's starting to be more so now because Rosie Bell who was the travel writer who taught it to me, I believe, like created it started like getting more acclaim. So more people are using it, but not actually a term. The terms people know are expat or like digital nomad. I don't like either of those terms. But I had to use a term that my audience are using. I wanted to make sure that my audience like we're actually searching for that term. So that's another thing with niche is so many people come up with some really complex name of like, I'm going to be a golden retriever, sensitive pod blogger. And I'm like, what? Like, what is that? No, you're not. Or like, they'll even say like, I'm solo travel for 54 year olds. And I'm like, Whoa, okay, that's way too specific. Like, definitely solo travel. And in your head,

your audience is 50. Great. But you don't want to get so specific or something non searchable. Like you want to make sure that it's something that is a term people recognize and understand, even if you don't like the term, like, I use expat all the time. I think it's a dumb term. I definitely think immigrant makes more sense because it's what you are if you move somewhere. Or slow mad. I like that better than digital nomad. But you have to go with the language your audience is using. And with the niche idea of that,

one way to validate the niche is to look for what your audience is searching for. See the kind of language that they're using around it. Also make sure it exists somewhere. Like someone else has definitely written about it before unless it's a brand new thing. You can kind of validate that people actually care about this thing by seeing if even one exists like one needs to exist somewhere. And also there needs to be a gap that like, like solo travel pretty much full unless we're looking at solo travel in a

certain place or for a certain type of person, like for me, solo travel with a service dog is really challenging. And that's definitely something people ask a lot of questions about. But solo female travel of a random Canadian girl, lots of people, like we're pretty generic, just a lot of us out there. So it's not as compelling for people. And that's something to keep in mind when you're doing that. You can look for that in Facebook groups. I love Facebook groups. I know like an old 28, like I absolutely adore Facebook groups to find some validation there. Look at keywords. My rule is kind of like, if there's a hundred keywords

that you could realistically rank for, then it's an okay niche. However, like again, solo travel, if you just search solo travel, you're not going to find anything because there's like Nomadic Mad, The Blonde Abroad, Be My Travel Muse. I've been around since like 2008 and have written all of them. So we need something newer and typically more specific. And that's again, where like this specific audience is really going to serve you.

I think that is like such great advice. I'm thinking about people that we have in our community and how that could specifically like help them just narrow it down, you know, because I think that we go into it with this idea, no matter what your niche is, you go into it thinking, okay, well, I want to write just about this. But you do have to kind of at some point after you've got content out there, take a step back and look like, what is Google liking? What is my audience liking? What is actually driving the traffic? And we often say like, you have to be willing to pivot or willing to shift and blogging. And it sounds like that's very true for you as well. But we can go into things like with an idea of what we want to do,

but we have to be a little bit more fluid and know that that might need to shift at some point. If your ultimate goal is to like build a business and like this be your full-time job. Now, if you want to do a hobby, that's on another podcast, but like building a business, like you have to have that lens. And I think just you gave us some really, really great insight, I think on the first step, which is your niche. And if you haven't quite dove into that yet and understood who are you talking to, then I want you to take what Nina said and go back and just start jotting things down. Look at what people are coming to on your site and go back to the drawing board a little bit if you don't feel like your blog is growing in the way that you want it to.

So let's say that somebody's gone through that practice. And then next, they're moving on to creating content. And they have... Let's say they have a family vacation plan for a popular travel destination. How do you know? How can you search for content using a keyword research tool

for popular travel destinations that there likely are a lot of posts written about, but maybe that's where you really want to go to? Do you recommend not doing that, going somewhere that's a little bit more off the map? Or can people still rank for keywords that are popular travel destinations? Yeah, you can definitely rank for popular travel destinations. It's just going definitely rank for popular travel destinations. It's just going to be the boring and the specific keywords. Boring keywords, pay my bills.

That's what I always say. Is Canada in America was one of my best posts for a long time pre this current update when like, or no last update when I put Reddit at the top. But like that was a big post for me because people do ask it and people don't know.

So another thing I always say with keywords is like, remember that people only know what they know. And many people with travel and geography, especially, it's not there. Like, it's not very clear. But also like with that one, I actually realized searching the question, it's more about the continent of America versus the US America, which I was like, oh, okay. So not like the dumb question I would have at first thought. But equally, I didn't know Mexico was the North America until

two years ago. And my best friend at the time ran a Mexico travel blog. So I was like, Oh, should have probably learned about that sooner. With sorry, back to your question about finding trips, like, go where you want to go. Like there's a reason that you're attracted to it. And you want to go there. And that's really where I am talking about, like, just enjoy your travel, and then find content around that thing. So that's where it's not going to be like, okay, best restaurants in Rome, it's going to be like, child friendly restaurants in Rome, restaurants that are dog friendly restaurants with outdoor seating,. You're going to look at the specifics there that are relevant for your audience. And so what I like to do for that,

honestly, my starting point, I use KeySearch as my favorite because it's the cheapest keyword research tool. I'm going to start with a seed keyword, which is also called a root keyword, but I started calling it a seed keyword for some reason. So you're going to put in Rome travel and just see what keywords come up. Then you're going to start putting like Rome travel, and just see what keywords come up,

then you're going to start putting in more specifics of like, okay, Rome restaurants, and then look for long tail keywords, you can actually filter by the word count length. So in travel, typically a long tail keyword is six or more words. In other niches, it's four. But if you think of like things to do in Rome, that's five words, that's a very basic keyword for us. And most destinations have like Rome, Italy, suddenly it's six. So we want to make sure that we're looking for longer keywords, which tend to be more specific questions. We also want to look for easy keywords. So in KeySearch, you can filter for a difficulty score of up to 39. That's when it switches from like

green to yellow. Now, difficulty scores on keyword research tools are somewhat garbage, to be honest. So like, you kind of need to ignore some of them. But this is a great starting point, especially for a beginner. So you're going to look at that and be like, okay, here is now a list of keywords that are long tailed and easy. Which ones of these are relevant to my audience? Do not just write an easy keywords because they're easy. It will not serve you if it does not serve your audience. And that's a mistake I made for the longest time. I wrote like a beach packing list or something in early 2021 or mid 2021. And I was like, I'm so smart.

I found this like easier keyword. I had no beach content, like not a single post about a beach on my website. I don't really like beach. It's like, I hate sand. So I had nothing. Why did I write that post? a beach on my website. I don't really like beach. It's like I hate sand. So I had nothing. Why did I write that post? It didn't do well. Even though it was like well written, it was SEO ish optimized. I wasn't great at SEO back then. Like it didn't do well. And largely that was because of the topical authority. I didn't have anything. I had nothing to connect

this to. So when you're looking at these keywords, I like to make a topic cluster essentially where you're going to try and almost think of it like planning a trip. You're going to try and find a keyword that kind of fits for every stage of the trip planning as best you can. Not all of them are going to be rankable for sure. Like things to do in Rome is far too generic.

But if you're running a Rome travel blog, you should have that post. That's just necessary. So like sometimes there are some common sense posts you just need. But beyond that, when you're running a Roam travel blog, you should have that post. That's just necessary. So sometimes there are some common sense posts you just need. But beyond that, when you're looking at keywords like to go to Roam, you can start looking at pet-friendly Roam, dog Roam. Use those root keywords and then filter and see what you can find. The next step is when you're looking at those,

look at the actual people ranking in the top 10 and look for lower DA sites. So those are typically newer sites, typically easier to rank against. And then put those into competitor analysis and be like, okay, for a long time, the Roman guy or the Rome guy was my example, but he's doing really well now. So now he's not easy. But his site was a DA 30 for a long time. New blogs can compete with a DA30. I actually created a DA calculator on SheKnowsSEO. But if you put in your DA, it'll tell you what DA you can approximately compete with. You can find that in the menu under everything on SheKnowsSEO.

But yeah, from there, you can put in your DA. It'll estimate what you can compete with. So go look at your competitors and be like, Okay, there's someone that's a DA 30. I have a DA zero, you're going to compete up to 30. I have a DA 30. Okay, 45 ish that you can compete with. Usually, it's about 15 over. So then I'm going to take those people and then mine them for keywords, which is essentially just looking what do they rank for already? Can I rank for it? And again, always, always, always come back to your audience. Like just because nomadic Matt ranked for something about male solo travel, I wouldn't write on that as a

female solo travel blogger. It makes no sense for my audience. Same for like, if I'm running a website about golden retrievers, I'm not going to write about pugs because that's not my people. And you really want your people on your site to like expect what you're giving them. So that's where you're also going to be able to write more on the subject, get topical authority, and then you can compete for those popular destinations. So popular destinations tend to mostly have like the generic things to do posts written. The hyper specific, you can go for. The specific to your audience, you can go for. Boring stuff, you can go for. Is there Uber in X? Can you drink the water in X? Very popular everywhere. Safety keywords, always super popular. Everyone is petrified about like leaving their house essentially, like the world was crazy. So totally great keywords for like, can, I don't know, is Marrakesh safe for solo female travelers wearing shorts? Write on that.

That is a question people have. Can I bring XYZ on a plane? There are so many weird questions about what people can bring on planes. You're like, why do you have that? But those are very common things that you would think, okay, planes have been written to death. No, there's still room there. And you'll even stumble upon what I call zero volume keywords, which are just keywords that like key search and other search engines don't know matter yet.

Because all of these tools are based on the Google AdWords API, which is ads for people buying ads on Google. And if you're going to buy an ad, you want to be guaranteed to get in front of as many people as possible. I'm not going to buy a hidden gem billboard. I'm buying the billboard like in Times Square. I couldn't because that would bankrupt me. But like in theory, you want that one. And that's the thing. So Google knows that. So they're focused on trying to find data on those keywords. So a lot of keywords like the is there Uber and X is like, can you drink the water and X? They don't care about because who's going to buy an ad for that. So we can actually write on those questions and they'll surprise you and often they can get like thousands of page views even if key search says like 10 and really you're not going to know 100%

which ones those are you can typically find them with like facebook groups like questions people are just asking and clearly there's not a good answer your own searches and seeing like do the top 10 and actually answer the question historically it was if a forum was ranking you could then be like google doesn't like forums obviously now google and reddit are the best buddies but even so people don't like reddit so i'm finding that like the keywords i wrote to compete with reddit even if i'm just beneath reddit now the click-through rate is a lot higher because the general user does not want a forum. They want something concrete.

They don't want like Joe Schmo from 2014 telling them like, is it safe to travel here, especially for women? You're like, Joe, what are you doing? They want Nina because I am a woman traveling in that place. So go for those. It's definitely doable. And yeah, that's a very long-winded answer to your question. I'm sorry. Are you looking for a simplified way to earn revenue from selling your own digital products? We have found an incredible resource for you with Milo Tree Cart. Milo Tree Cart is

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Click the link in our show notes today to sign up for Milo Tree Cart and start earning more from your digital products in 2024. It's so valuable, though. You have given them actual steps to take. And I'm speechless because it's so, so helpful. And you've answered almost every single question. I think the one question that I do have is, you know, you talked about the zero volume keywords. Is there a range of volume that you're looking for? And also, is there a way to combine keywords so that they can kind of have an idea of how much traffic they could get from a post? Yeah, so there's actually a few different ways. So with volume, most people will say like 300 minimum.

I don't have that because I don't think that's helpful, honestly. First of all, like with latent semantic indexing, which is like basically like must words, I guess is the term some people use. So, for example, if you're talking about things to do in New York, you're going to mention the Empire State Building. You're going to mention the Statue of Liberty. Then you have secondary keywords. Like you have so many extra things you're going to mention that can get picked up as keywords that you would never expect

or that you can kind of anticipate. So I have like keywords where like, yeah, the primary keyword is 10 and it actually was 10 people search it per month. But all of the extra keywords combined make it 1000 page views a month kind of keyword. And that's really great. So I don't think looking at volume is the best thing to do. Definitely, it matters to some extent, like we don't want to write, I mean, Mediavine, even like with their new journey thing, it's like 10,000 sessions, it's probably about 15,000 page views. I don't want to write 1500 posts to get there, like I'd like to write fewer. But I also want to make sure I'm being specific, I'm ranking. And I find what a lot of people don't think of is like, those posts that are 10,000 page views a month, they require like an army of the 10 page

view a month posts to kind of buoy them up with internal linking. You can connect them all together, kind of like making a family tree almost and like turning that ultimate post into like the grandfather that everything else comes down from. So we want to connect them all so Google can see that they're related.

Because like, I don't know, if you see me and my little sister in the street, you're like, they look almost the same. Are they related? But if we're like talking to each other and I call her my sister, you're like, they look almost the same. Are they related? But if we're like talking to each other, and I call her my sister, you're like, ah, they definitely are related. And that's kind of the same thing here. So yeah, for me, there's no like minimum keyword volume with zero volume keywords, literally, I've had zero volume keywords that show up as 1000 in key search that show up as zero, you don't know. And it's really

a misnomer. Essentially, they're just like keywords that Google doesn't understand yet, or that the user intent hasn't been satisfied. And you can get in there and satisfy it better. So a common example actually relates to secondary keywords, where like, maybe someone does rank for can you is it safe to solo female travel in Marrakesh in shorts, maybe someone's generic post on solo female travel safety in Marrakesh in shorts. Maybe someone's generic post on solo female travel safety in Marrakesh ranks for that, but they don't really address it or they address it in like one sentence and then no one else beneath them addresses it at all. Okay, well, you could address it. You could create a whole post around that. And now you are more of an expert on that subject than these other people. So that's kind of where you can start to spot them. Ultimately,

it's kind of a gut feeling and there is always some risk with them that like they might actually be at like 10 volume. But with Google, Google is like a full site metric, essentially, like they're evaluating your full site. So I always refer to it like as your GPA. I know I'm Canadian, so we don't really have that as much, but the US does. And I usually talk to Americans, so they seem to understand it better. But essentially, like every blog post on your site is like a course that you're taking. And whatever grade it gets in Google's eyes affects your overall GPA. So even if you take like the history of rock and roll or drumming 101, where you just bang on books in the corner, and it has nothing to do with like your major, it's not really like affecting your law school application, it still brings up your GPA overall. So having those posts that do rank, even if they

have a little bit less volume is really good. And especially at the beginning, like don't start at the 10,000 volume like posts because you're competing with the likes of nomadic math, start small and then scale. So I still write on posts that are like 10 volume because i don't mind but you're going to want to kind of slowly grow as much as you can and when you're planning a topic cluster because i do recommend like planning out your content before you write it so you can plan like well then you know okay i'm going to write these 10 posts about food and roam i know to reference all the other posts so I can internal link to it. But you can also start to kind of look at the predicted volume in key search or in Ahrefs or SEMrush or whatever tool you use. I don't care. Just stick with like be specific with

one compared to the same thing because each of them have their own volume metrics. And they're all different. They're all completely different. So with that, I would look there and be like, okay, well, this cluster, the volume combined is about 10,000. Now, if you rank number one, you typically get about 30% of the click-through rates. Right now with the current updates and the new widgets Google is adding with travel, it's lowered to about 20, 15%, which is frustrating, I know, but unfortunately the case. So you're going to reduce that. You're going to be like, okay, what's 15% of 10,000? 1,500, I think. I'm not good at math in my head, but it sounds right.

So that's 1,500 page views you can get from that cluster. That's really solid to start for sure. And you can definitely scale that with secondary keywords. Key search, my favorite thing about them, they have a content assistant area that's essentially a rank IQ, but free. So you can just like put in your keyword there and it'll suggest must words and secondary keywords

that your competitors are using. With other tools, what you can do is take your competitors, look at the top 10 for that keyword, put them into competitor analysis and mine the specific page for keywords and see what other keywords that page is ranking for. Those are your secondary keywords. Don't make them up.

They're not a made up thing. They're going to be keywords that are typically like a semantic variation of the main keyword or are kind of related, like I said, with like the shorts in Marrakesh versus like normal female safety. So you want to see what Google is already telling us that like they like and that they care about and that they think are related to each other. Another place is like the related questions. And the people also ask questions on the actual search in Google, please use incognito. Remember that like, Google is trying to essentially be a for you feed a little bit even before Google Discover. So they're really trying to like serve what they think you want. And you will have skewed that with your own searches. So use incognito. If you're not in the

US, you can actually Google like on Google, Google USA, click on it, and it'll take you to a US essentially version of Google. And since many of us want to target US traffic, because most money there, then that's a great way to see like the questions in the US versus the questions in like, like in Canada, we sometimes are a bit better geography in Canada than like a US person is. I want to see those like kind of dumb questions so that I can answer them so that I can like actually satisfy that intent. Yeah, I think that was the whole question I answered. I hope maybe I missed something. Yeah, definitely. No, I think you answered that and more. To be honest, one thing that is just I think just the theme of everything that you're saying and almost every answer has been the foundation. And I hope that that is the common thread that people get from this particular episode and from your advice is your growth is not dependent on one thing.

And your reach and your impact is dependent on all these little things and all these little keywords. So it's not that we... When we sit down and we are like, Alright, I'm going to do keyword research today. That we're looking at this one thing that we're going to rank for. And it's going to be the make or break in our business. And I think a lot of times when travel bloggers or quite frankly, any new blogger gets started, they're like, I think that this post is going to be it, you know, and we we put all of our eggs in that one basket. But I love that you have even recommended like, it's okay to shoot for like the 10 volume or the zero, like, take that with a grain of salt. And it doesn't mean that that's not going to serve your audience, that's not going to

serve your community, like, don't miss out on those things that could still help them. I just... I love the analogy of the straws with the boat. And by having that there, that's just... I don't know. That analogy is, I think, kind of... It's life-giving and it can totally change your mindset in regards to blogging, knowing that, yes, what you're working on with that specific post, it does matter. But so does every other post you're working on with that specific post, it does matter. But so does every other post that you're working on. You don't have to put so much pressure on yourself to write the perfect post. And I think oftentimes, that's what we're doing is I have to write the perfect post like, Oh my gosh, I have this killer keyword and I have to write the perfect

post. No, like how can you create more juice to that specific post? So just I think thank you for just bringing that to light. You've given like such concrete examples. And you told us before we started recording that you were going to go deep. And we said go deep. We love it because our audience wants that. And you've totally done that, which has been so helpful. I just I thank you for sharing really how you've gone about all of this. I think it's incredibly helpful for travel bloggers, but also just encouragement for all bloggers and all niches and what we're doing. So just a personal thank you for that. But I do have a question since you brought it up about the Google updates and how that has kind of shifted and changed. How do you

see this having an impact on travel blogs in particular? Yeah, there's a lot of talk about travel blogs being like Google's new worst enemy. And I do think Google has been the hardest on travel blogs for a few reasons. The helpful content update started like there was a 17% decrease in travel blogs across the board. I don't remember where I got that number. Like it's something from Lily Ray that she shared, but I can't find the graph that she shared since. But there was an actual study done that was like a 17% decrease in travel across the board. And because of that, we got a new widget on the top of most travel posts that is like kind of a things to do widget almost where Google started pulling bits of information from posts that they were actually seeing and trying to personalize it per person. And the frustrating thing is they're pulling pictures from travel

bloggers, which personally, I think is a security issue because someone might consent to be on a travel blog. They might not consent to be on the front page of Google, sort of a thing. And as a woman and a woman who has dealt with security issues online before, I wouldn't necessarily want to have my image shoved up there in the front page of Google sort of a thing. So there have been issues surrounding that. And unfortunately, we can't really change it right now. People are trying to like talk to Google about it

and Google is not very responsive. But that definitely decreased some of the click-through for travel. And I think this is something that came with AI anyway. And like, and I enjoy AI for personal use. I do think that there are a lot of issues with is something that came with AI anyway. And I enjoy AI for personal use. I do think that there are a lot of issues with the way that businesses are using AI, and especially mass bloggers who are trying to publish like 1000 posts a day with AI that like is fun nonsense. I am not for that. I think AI is an assistant that should make your life a bit

easier, but should not replace you and the content just written with AI. I think most of us have seen it and it's like, that should not be out there. That is troubling. I once read something recently actually about like female, like what to wear in Marrakesh or something. And it was like, don't wear sheer or opaque fabrics. And I was like, what other fabrics are there? At both ends of the spectrum, we have nothing else now. And it was so clearly AI that I was like, but it was ranking like three on Google. And I was like, that's a nightmare. So I think Google has to shift something.

They've had some issues with their market share. And like in terms of search, they're down 6% over last year, mostly in the US. And that's not good for their bottom line. Now with the current update, the core update isn't done rolling out at time of recording.

So I don't fully know the impact yet. And I think most SEOs don't. But the thing that I'm noticing the most of sites that are doing well during this is that SEO is not their core. So people who are just writing to fit a keyword into a box, they're the ones struggling. People who are just like checking a box

with everything that they're doing, they just want to like get the blog up, get rich, move on. They're not doing very well. The people who are going to the places or writing about places that they've been to, that's doing well. People who are like sharing helpful info, going really specific. I have a dog that we've traveled a lot recently together in Canada. And with that, I always look for dog-friendly places to eat.

He is a service dog, but he can only work for so many hours a day. And dogs, I always look for like dog friendly places to eat. He is a service dog, but like he can only work for so many hours a day and dogs. I didn't know this. They get burnt out just like we do. So you have to like actually like give them enough time off and stuff. But it was just us. So I'm like, hey, he can't sit in the car. We need to eat. So I'd look for dog friendly places. But I wanted to know, is the patio dog friendly or is the restaurant dog friendly? Like if it's raining, can I bring him inside? Is it? it no I have to sit in like the glaring heat and I am like fluorescent white so like I burn in a second I need to be inside on some of those days also sometimes like dogs in the patio aren't super well behaved so I was like I don't want

him near that but blogs wouldn't tell me so I had to go call these places and I'm a millennial I hate calling people I do not want to pick up a phone. If I could, I would disable that option on my phone entirely. But I had to go call them because none of the top 10 in any of these places told me that. So that's kind of the thing that people who are getting really specific are saying like, okay, you park around the corner here. This on the menu is best. Giving real concrete examples of their experience. And I'm not saying that people that got hit by the update... There were tons of people that got hit unfairly. However, some of them, even though I know that they experienced the thing because I've spoken to them, they did not put that in the blog post. The blog post doesn't reflect that.

And unfortunately, that means that their hard of didn't pay off because they skipped that so some things that people can do for sure like personal experience up front like your intro should immediately tell me what i'm going to learn and why you're the person to teach me and if it doesn't i'm probably gone like i don't care that doesn't help me then i also want to know like what the key takeaways are a lot of people do like a key takeaway box. I think that's a little bit lazy personally. I understand the need for it, but I would just build it into your intro. Like, yeah, for restaurants in Victoria or something that are dog friendly. Okay. We're talking about dog friendly restaurants in Victoria. These are my three favorite. This one patio only, but the other ones you can actually bring your dog inside.

They're good with dogs of all sizes, winter, rain, whatever. And this one will even bring your dog a bowl of water and like a little bowl of French fries or something. Like immediately give them what they want. People are so afraid to do that. And like they'll do top 10 lists with the best thing at the bottom. Most people are not scrolling that far. Serve your dessert first.

Put it right up front. Let people have their cake first. Give them the answer. And then anyone who wants to learn more, who wouldn't have just looked at headers, they're going to keep reading. But the header people, at least they've got the information now. And then they can leave, but they're leaving happy. So that's a big thing. I also do think that diversifying is great once you're ready. So a lot of people, the second the HCU hit, they were like, diversify today.

Like you should be on Pinterest and you should be on Facebook and you should be buying ads and all this stuff. And I was like, whoa, this is my full-time gig now. And even like, even for me, that was a lot to hear because you don't have that bandwidth at the beginning. Like you have one thing you can kind of handle. My rule, and this comes from Ron Swanson is like, full ass one thing. And then you can half ass a second thing. But like, give your all to one thing. Don't like, try to do 20 things the same time. So for me, it was SEO. And then email was kind of like, okay, I'll write a couple when I have a minute. And then I just like, schedule them for the month. It was not really a strategy to begin with. And that was okay.

It still did well for me. Like I put up the quiz freebie and it just worked. And I was like, great, that's okay. That was a surprise. Didn't expect it to do that. And that gave me the motivation to use that as my second thing. Now for other people that could be TikTok,

it could be YouTube. I'm really into YouTube right now. I don't know why. I'm just like having a moment where I'm enjoying video, which I never thought I would say I thought it was like the worst thing for a long time. But YouTube SEO is pretty similar to a blog. So I think there is a reason I like it. But it could be it could be email as long as you have a way for people to directly get to the email. So like, email should not be your first second thing until you have people in the list list sort of a thing.

So a good tip as well, if you want to get an email list to start, but you don't want to focus on it, plan like a week, write out a year's worth of emails, like whether you're going to email weekly or every other week, and schedule them into a welcome sequence so that every week they're automatically going to get the email. Set a date in your calendar though for when you turn that on. That way you know at that point, I should start sending actual emails to these people. But then if you have a list of like, 10 people, maybe by the end of the year, it's 500 people. Now it's kind of more worth your time to write to those people. Not that the first 10 don't deserve your time. But it's a lot to have to like, keep remembering to do it. So that's a way to kind of like automate it for yourself. I also automate social media a bit with Zapier. So with OpenAI's API and Zapier, you can actually have like when you publish a new WordPress post, it'll auto send it through to ChatGVT,

write like a specific, you've trained it on like a way to write whatever social post you want. And then it'll auto share it for you the second the new post goes live. That's the simplest way to kind of like have those but not really do them. And then lastly, I think the biggest thing for really like handling updates overall is treat this like a business. And most people like want to treat this like a turnkey thing like, okay, it's gonna be 100% passive once I put in like a month of work. No, it's not. It will always be semi-active.

And that's because content is a depreciating asset. After 18 months, your content is hurting you, not helping you, if you haven't updated it. And that's just because things change. Restaurants change their hours. Things close. Pandemics happen. Stuff changes in society. So you want to go fix that content.

Affiliates close. Airbnb shut down. Everyone panicked. That happens. So keep changes in society. So you want to go fix that content. Affiliates close, like Airbnb shut down, everyone panicked, like that happens. So keep those in mind. But also like having something like a product or service is a great thing that's really going to strengthen your site and make it look like a business. And Google really prefers businesses. So like getting yourself certified as a travel agent, I haven't gone that far. But like, you could definitely just offer travel planning services, You could have a $7 product like I do. I have one that's how to pick where to move. And then one about how to tell your friends and family that you're moving abroad with scripts and everything, which never occurred to me. And this is why

audience research is so key. Because I just leave leave I just don't care what my family thinks and like I fully traumatize them doing that but I just go away and I'm like I'll see you maybe bye like thank god for cell phones like they'll and that's why like I needed the blog because they genuinely didn't know where I was because I would just be like oh yeah on a whim I decided to go to Sophia and Bulgaria because my sister's name is Sophie and she hates when I call her Sophia so I wanted to take a ton of photos. My sister's name is Sophie, and she hates when I call her Sofia. So I wanted to take a ton of photos and spam her with them on Facebook for a joke, which is dumb. But I spent three days there just because of that.

And I do stuff like that. And for me, my family didn't even know where I was. So yeah, that kind of helped that. Having those services and having any sort of offer like that is really helpful to people and to Google to really trust you as an actual business. I'm not saying you need to set yourself up with an LLC day one. I don't think that has any bearing on this. But I think treating it as though it is an active income business, even if you intend for most of it to be passive, is kind of key. So yeah, pace yourself a bit, try to come

up with like diverse ways for traffic a little bit. And just give yourself some grace to like, this is hard. And I think Google, unfortunately, has like leveled us up to a new level of a video game. And the new level is the final boss is insane. And it's a lot harder now to deal with. But that's okay, because we're all at the same level together. And so it's harder for everybody. So the better you can do to put your audience first, write content for them, and then like, yeah, have a keyword in mind, have like some secondary keyword ideas. Don't just like spam it with keywords. Don't like not be helpful. And don't, yeah, don't feel like everything needs to serve seo like write some of those posts that you know are just helpful like the things to do in rome where it's like okay

obviously if you have a rome travel blog and you don't have that that'd be really weird write some of those like write it around questions people are actually asking you and yeah just like have some fun with it like i try and like like balance like Nina posts that are fun for me versus like actual posts that matter to my audience and are super relevant and traffic drivers for sure. But those posts that I write for me often build the community a bit more too. And having a diehard community,

that's the best thing you can do. I love my community so much. One of the reasons I love Facebook groups is you can like have the conversations with people. And yeah, like that's going to be really key. Being yourself, having your own tone of voice. I'm so tired of reading every blog post and they all go like, here to four, none the less. And I'm like, I don't want to talk to you. That's, that's horrible. I'm not writing. I want to like chat with y'all and like have a conversation. So like I make I use analogies. I make jokes about my mental health. I recently compared like my ADHD. I was like,

maybe it's ADHD. Maybe it's Maybelline. Like, I do weird stuff. Like, that is who I am and my personality. I throw photos of my dog and his crocs into like half of the slides I do for presentations. Like, first of all, make some attacks right off. Mostly, they're more fun than like a screenshot of Google. So a lot of stuff. And that's what I become known for. Like people can be like, she knows SEO, she has purple hair, and she has Theo. And immediately, my brand is really clear. And I did that by accident, because like, I just don't know how to not be myself. But even in your writing, like, someone should be able to read your writing and know immediately like, okay, this is Nina. This is Nina talking to me. No one else's analogies the way she does. No one makes semi inappropriate jokes that like probably should not be part of the purpose. No one like else has this dog, like these sorts of things. Those are going to keep

you safe in updates. And yeah, and I want to add like one self-serving thing. So I use a screen reader because my ADHD and my grandma's blind. So please use alt text properly as well. Like I am on a crusade to make alt text and like make all websites accessible in every way possible. I have like a free accessibility checklist on my website that like goes through all the things. Naturally, most WordPress sites are accessible. And it's the things people do that undermine it that frustrate me so much. Like many accessibility plugins, I used air quotes there, actually break my screen reader

and don't let me use my screen reader and things like that. It's really frustrating. So if you want to check out that checklist, you can. But mainly with alt text, please just like actually describe your images. Do not just keyword stuff it. It's bad for Google. Google sees that as keyword stuffing and Google's blind. So Google's actually

reading the code of the page. And so where you think, okay, well, I had a keyword stuff. I've used it three times. It's not that much. It's not a natural. Okay. But if 12 of your images just say Croatia beach, well, you've keyword stuff. So instead like make it natural my rule is like describe the image like what's physically happening in the image and then describe why it matters to the post and in the spot in particular i should be able to read that and picture in my head what the image is and understand its relevance to this place in the post i created a free gpt and chat gpt it's called she knows alt text we We've had like 5000 uses now, which I'm so happy about because people are finally caring, but go use it. Upload

your images, it'll write the alt text for you. You can also feed it a URL, and it'll write the alt text for you for any image on the page that's missing alt text. But yeah, just take the time. As a disabled user, I leave sites that aren't accessible to me. And 73% of disabled users do the same. And there's 16% of the population is disabled. So you're losing a lot of the people. And again, diehard community. I bookmark sites that have really good accessibility for myself because I'm like, I like you. Thank you. You cared about me. I'm going to care about you. Yes. I think that's really great advice. We will put a link to that as well in the show notes. That way people can take advantage of that. Because I think that just... When you put numbers

to it the way that you just did, I think that makes it much more real to understand how much of the population is consuming your content through the lens of one disability or another. And so making sure that we are creating content in the most accessible way is really important. Nina, thank you. So you've brought so much to the conversation about SEO, about, you know, accessibility, all of it. I am just really, really thankful that we are able to share you with our community because I think that they're going to want to learn a lot more from you. So can you please tell them where they can connect with you and find you? Yeah, you can find me at sheknowsseo.co. I actually have a free SEO content audit guide

that's supposed to be a checklist. It's 12 pages. I don't do anything by halves. So it's my exact process that I did in that 6 months to update my content and get it going. my exact like process that I did in that six months to update my content and get it going. So you can find that at she knows seo.co slash everything. And yeah, you can also find me at Nina Clapperton on Instagram and Twitter and at she knows seo on YouTube, where I share all sorts of tutorials. And yeah, you'll see Theo, he pops up regularly in my videos, because he believes he is the main character and thinks my mic is ASMR for himself. So yeah, most of my courses too, there's just like a head that'll just show up and he's like, hi, because he knows he is main character energy. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much,

Nina. We appreciate you. And I learned a lot and I know a lot of people who are listening are very thankful they took the time to listen to this episode today. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration.

You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the waitlist for the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.