When you’re growing an online travel writing business you’ll want to optimize your site to perform best for meeting your goals and objectives.
To that end, here are nine tips for ramping up your site’s impact and performance.
- Spend the extra money to lose the “yoursite.hostprovider.com” when you register your site. A clean URL looks more professional.
- Build a mailing list. Collecting emails from subscribers lets you connect with them directly over time via a push marketing channel. If they opt in for your list, chances are they won’t opt out if you deliver a quality newsletter that they’d value.
- Post with regularity. Establish days when readers can expect the next piece, eg “Weekend Wednesday”. An editorial calendar can help build user loyalty by creating a structure for delivering content to readers on a routine schedule.
- Spur commenting. Engage with readers and use calls to action, even as simple as ending posts with “What do you guys think?” Provide quality comments on other sites in your fields of interests, with a link to your site in your signature.
- Build a resources page, with links to product and services you genuinely recommend. With affiliate marketing partnerships, you can generate passive income from purchases made off these links.
- Use video. Start a Youtube channel. Include a video biography on your site. Buy a GoPro camera and shoot your local trips. Since video dovetails so easily with travel, implement it into your site early. People stream and share video all day.
- Hit the road and live tweet your experiences, with pictures.
- Use Google Analytics to see what headlines resonate with readers, and optimize your follow-up content appropriately. Keep keywords in mind when brainstorming story ideas.
- Split-test headlines on your site and go with the winners in follow-up posts, tweets and email newsletter headlines