Travel Blog Advice

StumbleUpon and it’s cousin su.pr are great ways to generate additional traffic to your travel blog but often those impressive SU numbers don’t match up with what you see in the ultimate stat tracker, Google Analytics. It can be confusing and discouraging until you understand the process and shift your expectations.

What Stumble Is And Isn’t

StumbleUpon’s about page clearly states their primary mission is to,

• …help you discover and share great websites.

I was told as much when I contacted StumbleUpon for more information about this question. Their response was that Stumble isn’t about generating traffic for websites but a way to enhance browsing for their readers. In fact, as I mentioned in a basic guide to StumbleUpon, you’ll be penalized if your activity seems only to benefit specific websites (aka. your own blog). The only way to get more detailed analytics from StumbleUpon is to sign up for their ads program.

Google Analytics Is The Baseline

In my opinion, Google Analytics is the best (free) way to track just about any information about traffic to your travel blog. Google Analytics does do some filtering however, to give you accurate numbers of actual people who are visiting pages on your travel blog. For example, Google Analytics doesn’t count the following types of clicks:

• Browsers with cookies disabled.
• Browsers with Javascript disabled.
• Bots.

That last one, bots is a big reason. Basically, bots are automated clicks that come from computers trolling the Internet to do all sorts of things like leave comment spam. Many of these bot clicks aren’t counted by Google (in part due to a lack of cookie and Javascript use) and it would seem StumbleUpon isn’t as picky about them.

Not All Clicks Are Made Counted The Same

There is no one standard for a “click”. They are all counted by differently by the various software that specializes in that sort of thing like AwStats, Google Analytics, and so on. StumbleUpon creators didn’t create the site purely to drive traffic to your travel blog and aren’t as concerned about providing accurate statistics about clicks.

• On top of that I’m sure it doesn’t hurt them for users to see numbers that might be slightly inflated due to less scrutiny by their algorithm.

That’s not to say that many of those clicks aren’t counted or don’t help your blog but that you’ll likely see less in Google Analytics than you will in StumbleUpon on a regular basis. Go by Analytics or your preferred specialized software to track valid clicks and use StumbleUpon to rate, recommend, and discover new sites while working with others to benefit your own.

[photos by: B Tal (confused couple), Bekah Stargazing (waving finger)]

Many of you track the number of RSS readers to your blog daily and others have it posted somewhere on their blog. You’ll notice that the number varies a bit from day to day, although this past week the fluctuations have been much wider. That’s because Google (who owns FeedBurner) is changing how it calculates subscribers (don’t worry though, in the meantime all of your subscribers are still receiving you feeds).

• But what about on a daily basis; why does your subscriber count vary from day to day?

There’s a good rundown of why it happens by Rick Klau on Problogger but the basic answer is that it comes down to people using stand-alone readers. Many of you keep up with your RSS feeds using some online service like Google Reader, yet there is a segment of your readers who use applications running on their local computer to check those feeds. When those machines aren’t turned on and the application doesn’t go out to fetch the feed, it’s not counted by Feedburner.

• Since most people get online and read blogs from work, you’ll see the biggest drops on typically on the weekends.

What Can You Do About It?

Not much honestly except for developing your email subscriptions. I’ll be talking more about how you can do that next week but the basic premise is that email subscriber counts don’t fluctuate unless people actively unsubscribe. It can help stabilize the numbers which will still vary from day to day. At least you don’t have to worry about droves of people unsubscribing on the weekends, only to subscribe again.

[photo by: ScoobyFoo (up and down sign)]

When it comes down to managing your travel blog over the long haul, you need a good schedule. It’s much easier to maintain and motivate yourself with a weekly posting schedule but the problem is that even the best posting schedule can be disrupted, by everything else that comes along with travel blogging. Staying on top of Twitter, email, your RSS reader, and keeping the blog itself up to date can overwhelm you to the point of blogger burnout.

You can break down what seems like a mammoth undertaking (at least after a while) by prioritizing and tackling your travel blogging duties using a 5-pronged approach.

1. Your Content Is Priority

Whenever you’re scheduling out your week or day, make writing blog posts the priority. It lifts a large weight off of your shoulders to do other things once you know your blog is ready. I’d recommend doing a weeks worth of blog posts in a sitting or two, getting them all out of the way to free up the rest of your time to travel or do other work. All of your ideas are out at once and blog posts tend to flow better this way. If you get bored of typing a series of longer posts your readers probably will feel the same way when reading.

• When writing you should turn off your email, lay off the Twitter, and force yourself to write and get a post done.

Of all the 5 prongs, this is the most important one and should come before anything else.

2. Blog Feedback

This is a second priority, more than marketing or promoting, to nurture your travel blog. Respond to comments to generate discussion, reply to emails, and add that new about page you’ve been holding off on. Focus on your blog and create your community there; social media is important but the most important social network for your travel blog is the blog itself.

3. Social Networking (Twitter)

Now that you’ve got your blog squared away you can dive into social networking, which really encompasses a lot of things. Spend a few minutes throughout the day on Twitter, which if you aren’t using you need to be. You can use Twitter to jump start your travel blog and don’t need to over-complicate the process. Put out some tweets about what you’re doing but make them interesting. Connect with people and engage in conversation, tweet some of your posts and retweet other posts you find useful or worth reading.

4. Use Your RSS Reader

Twitter isn’t the only way to engage with other travel bloggers and readers – meet them on their blog as well. The easiest way to keep track of them is to use RSS (here’s what that is) and get a feel for what your peers are writing. There are so many good travel blogs out there, each with their own style and niches that can enrich you with writing and travel ideas. It’s also important to interact with the travel blogs you’re reading. If you have an opinion on a particular post, leave a comment to that effect; offer suggestions about the topic, or answer the questions the author has posed.

• Blogs are personal and one of the best ways to make a connection with other travel bloggers.

You can combine reading and commenting on other blogs through an RSS reader with another important aspect of social networking, StumbleUpon.

5. Get Stumbling

If you’re still confused by StumbleUpon (SU) – don’t worry, many of us were at first – check out a very basic travel blogger’s guide to StumbleUpon. Once you’ve got a grasp of SU, you can begin stumbling some of the posts you like as they pop up in your RSS reader. Along with the stumbling you can even incorporate #3 on this list and tweet some of those posts using http://su.pr to drive some additional traffic to a given post.

Open Up The Time

These are some pillars to incorporate into your weekly blogging schedule and can also be broken down into daily increments. Either way it’s best to force yourself to sit down and get a blog post done, as difficult as it can be, it will really free you up mentally for everything else. You can of course add other tasks to this approach or combine some to keep it to 5 major tasks. Splitting up your travel blogging duties too much will just make it more difficult to do several things well. Focus on the things that bear the most fruit which is much easier if you schedule it that way.

I’m curious, what’s your blogging schedule like or do you have one at all? I’d love to hear about how you manage your blogging time and would appreciate your comments.

[photos by: svenwerk (number 5), Eduardo Deboni (helping hand)]

Traveler bloggers tend to go crazy with plugins, those little add-ons to WordPress, when first setting up their blogs. Plugins are easy to install and there are thousands of them out there. It can be difficult to choose which ones are worth the installation and hassle of configuration. These are some of my recommended plugins for your travel blog and why.

• All In One SEO Pack – A highly configurable plugin designed to tweak your website, pages, and individual posts for search engine optimization (SEO). If you aren’t running this plugin and Google PageRank and traffic numbers are important to you, it’s an essential add-on. To further improve your site’s SEO optimization, change your permalinks. (Download All In One SEO Pack)

• Google Analytics – There are many WordPress plugins designed to give you a variety of statistics about your readers but in my experience Google does it the best. You’ll need a Google Analytics account setup for this plugin to work, and it removes the need for you to tweak any code. If you’re obsessed with statistics, you can also try the Popularity Contest plugin. (Download Google Analytics)

• Google XML Sitemaps – Creates an XML-sitemap compliant sitemap which makes it easier for Google, Yahoo, and Bing to ‘read’ your entire blog. It updates automatically and submits the sitemaps to each search engine for you. (Download Google XML Sitemaps)

• Login Lockdown – By default it locks out any IP address from where 3 bad login attempts are tried within 15 minutes. The lockout lasts 1 hour and makes it much more difficult for someone to try and ‘brute force’ your blog password. Use this plugin as one of the ways to keep your travel blog safe. (Download Login Lockdown)

• Maintenance Mode – This plugin creates a nice little ‘Under Construction’ page for your site when you need to take it down for an update or make some coding changes to your blog. It’s very customizable and easy to use. (Download Maintenance Mode)

• Spam Karma – Although it’s no longer officially supported, this spam filter adapts and learns based on each comment and those you flag. It can be set for a number of levels to be more or less skeptical depending on the volume of comment spam you get. (Download Spam Karma)

• Subscribe To Comments – One of my favorite plugins, it emails people who leave a comment of any follow up comments. It’s a great way to generate discussion and comments on your travel blog since most people who leave a comment don’t come back to look for replies. (Download Subscribe To Comments)

• TinyMCE Advanced – Adds a number of icons to your post editing screen that were lost a few WordPress updates ago. It makes it easier to insert video, adjust pictures, and change font sizes. (Download TinyMCE)

• Whydowork Adsense – If you use Google’s Adsense to make some money with your travel blog, this plugin makes it easier to put ads within posts. You can even configure it to show ads X number of days after a post is published or in random spots. (Download Whydowork Adsense)

• WP-ContactForm – I’ve been coming across a number of travel blogs lately where getting in touch with the author has been difficult. Even though you’re on Twitter or Facebook, email is still the most common way people will want to get in touch with you. Use WP-ContactForm to create a contact page like this and place the ‘Contact page’ somewhere visible on your travel blog. It also comes with a built-in spam filter. (Download WP-ContactForm)

• WP-DBManager – Although WordPress comes with a built in database backup utility, this plugin lets you create backups at intervals of your choice and can be configured to automatically optimize your database every month. Extremely versitile and yet another good way to backup your blog database. (Download WP-DBManager)

• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) – Adds a number of related posts to the bottom of each post and in your RSS feed. (Download YARPP)

• Yoast Breadcrumbs – Allows search engines and readers to more easily navigate your site. (Download Yoast Breadcrumbs)

There are a number of other plugins that I use across my blogs but are specific to certain functions wouldn’t apply to many of you. One thing you should do as your blog grows is monitor the plugins you install, keep them updated, and deactivate any you stop using. Running plugins takes resources and can each one can slightly slowdown the loading time of your blog pages. Use the ones you need and do some spring cleaning on the others.

I’d be very interested to hear from you – what are your favorite WordPress plugins and what do they do? Are you using any from this list above? Feel free to leave your recommendations in the comments and subscribe to them as well.

[photos by: Craig A Rodway (legos), Bill Gracey (padlock), bengrey (kid emailing)]

Dave Fox is the founder of Globejotter Tours, and the author of Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad and Globejotting: How to Write Extraordinary Travel Journals (and still have time to enjoy your trip!) He lives in Seattle, Washington. Dave took a few minutes to answer a some questions about Globejotter’s tours which incorporate writing into each trip in Part 1 on foXnoMad, below is Part 2 of the interview.

Also, if you’d like to join Dave on his next tour to Vietnam and happen to mention you heard about it from Travel Blog Advice or foXnoMad, you’ll receive a $200 discount.

Where do the tours go?

Our next trip is to southern Vietnam in October. I first went there a couple of years ago and instantly fell in love with the country. The people are wonderful, the scenery’s incredible, and the food is scrumptious. I’ve been back several times since then and I’ve got close friends there now, including my pal, Phúc, who’s a locally licensed guide and will be co-guiding the trip with me. (Yeah, I know. People giggle at his name. It rhymes with “book,” not “buck,” and it’s as common a name in Vietnam as Dave is in America.) We’ll start and finish in Ho Chi Minh City. We’re also going to spend three days in the Mekong Delta, and four days in Mui Ne on the South China Sea coast.

Our other big destination so far has been Botswana. I partnered on that trip with Bill Given, an African wildlife specialist. We visited the Okavango Delta and Kalahari Desert and had an amazing time. We’re talking about another Botswana trip sometime next year, and possibly something in East Africa as well.

We can also do private tours elsewhere if there’s a small group of people with a particular destination in mind. And, I’m hoping to do some short trip weekend writing getaways in the United States starting in 2011.

How do you think people can be motivated to write during their journey in general?

That’s one of the biggest challenges people face; in fact, in my book, Globejotting: How to Write Extraordinary Travel Journals, I dedicate an entire chapter to finding time to write and staying motivated.

I think the thing that bogs people down is perfectionism. They try to create their best writing in the middle of their trips. When beautiful prose doesn’t flow effortlessly from their pens, they feel like they’re wasting precious vacation time, and they give up. I encourage people to use their journals not as the place where they’ll create their best, most polished writing, but instead as a place to splash as many details onto their pages as quickly as possible and collect material for more polished writing later. If they’re only journaling for themselves and don’t plan on doing any rewriting, their journals have a lot more memory triggers to help them recall their trips later on. If they want to write more polished travel stories, their journals serve as rough drafts, with lots of details to work with.

Some people are reluctant to write because they’re “terrible” at it or feel self-conscious about their ability. What is your advice for them?

I’m not sure where it came from, but there’s a myth that you are either born a “gifted” writer or you’re not. That’s just not true. You don’t become a talented writer overnight, anymore than you would become a talented violinist or a skilled brain surgeon overnight. The more you practice, the better you get.

So I encourage people to create the writing they think is “terrible” and give themselves a break when they’re starting out. Understand that nobody creates great writing in their first draft. So write a bad first draft. Then start shaping it into something better. Find your favorite professional writers, pay attention to how they write, and ask yourself what they’re doing differently from you. And seek help from other writers. Don’t be afraid to share your work with more experienced writers. We all started out “terrible” and most professional writers who are decent human beings understand that beginning writers are going to have habits they need help breaking. Whether you learn from classes, books, writers’ groups, or one-on-one mentoring, there are all kinds of basic techniques that will help you become a better writer. So, write as much as possible, rewrite and improve things, learn techniques, seek feedback, and welcome that feedback even when it stings a little. Writing well isn’t rocket science. You just have to learn how to do it and practice as much as possible. (I guess you could say that about rocket science too, but you get the point.)

And remember – when you read a great book or story, it wasn’t composed as effortlessly as you are reading it. Before our work is fit for public consumption, most of us who write professionally spend plenty of time writing “terrible” first drafts, whacking ourselves on the head, swearing at our computers, toiling over details and descriptions that aren’t quite right, and eventually, with a lot of trial and error, finding the right words to craft a great story.

What is your writing background?

I’ve loved writing as long as I can remember. I got started in travel journaling at a young age. I was born and raised in America, but my family moved to England for a year when I was eight, and we traveled all over Europe and northern Africa that year. I’d write little stories about our adventures, and nearly 30 years later, I published my first travel humor book (which even includes a few stories from my childhood year in England.)

I wrote for my high school newspaper. In college, I majored in journalism. I worked in newspapers and radio for a while, and for an educational publishing company before I got serious about travel and humor writing. Along with writing, foreign travel has always been my other passion. Travel to me is really about collecting stories as I cross paths with people who are different from me. I started writing those stories down, and they eventually evolved into my travel writing and tour guiding career.

Any advice for travel bloggers or folks wants to start a travel blog as a journal?

Blogging is different from traditional travel journaling in a couple of ways. For starters, it’s read by others, not just ourselves, so we tend to censor our thoughts more. In addition, it’s instant, which I love. I was in Saigon one time, having a beer at a streetside bar around at 2 a.m., when a group of ladies showed up across the street carrying a stack of little plastic tables and chairs and two huge pots of food. In minutes, they set up a makeshift restaurant on the street and were open for business. I thought this was so cool. Thirty minutes later, back at my hotel, I blogged about it before going to bed. Minutes later, my friends at work back in America were right there with me.

The best advice I can offer about creating a travel blog that others will want to read is it shouldn’t sound like a traditional travel diary. Step-by-step accounts of your day aren’t so interesting. Instead, pick specific stories, insights, or personal encounters, and write each one as a separate blog entry.

Something else I do when travel blogging – I think this is really important – is I always carry a pocket-sized notepad to scribble things down throughout my day. I make quick notes or lists of topics to blog about later. Occasionally, I write entire blog entries in my notepad so I can type them quickly later. When we travel in unfamiliar places, we’re hit with so many impressions, we can’t remember them all, nor do we have time to blog about all of them. Jotting a few quick notes about the ideas that flit through your brain will help you remember your best ideas when you can find time at a computer.

Any upcoming travel plans?

My next big trip is to exotic Dayton, Ohio, for the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop. It’s a fantastic writing workshop with an emphasis on humor writing. It’s where I landed my first book deal, so I always love going back there. (Erma Bombeck was an American newspaper columnist who was born in Dayton, which is why they always have the conference there. My one complaint, with all due respect to the good people of Dayton, Ohio, is I wish she had been born in Hawaii.)

Beyond that, my next overseas travels are to Europe from June through August. In addition to my own tours, I work in the summer for European travel expert Rick Steves, and guide his Scandinavia and “Best of Europe” tours. Then I’ve got my Globejotter writing tour in Vietnam in October.

Dave, thank you very much for the wonderful interview and the great advice on writing, blogging, and journaling. You can find out more about Dave Fox on his website Globejotter Tours, and check out his two books, Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad and Globejotting: How to Write Extraordinary Travel Journals.

Changing the structure of your permalinks is probably one of the easiest and most effective things you can do to improve the search engine optimization (SEO) of your travel blog right away. Permalinks are basically the URL or web address of a give blog page or post. Here’s an example:

• http://travelblogadvice.com/travel-blogging/dealing-with-travel-blogger-burnout/

Most WordPress blogs are configured with a default structure though that looks like this:

• http://travelblogadvice.com/?p=445

Do You See The Difference?

Based on the links themselves you can see from the first one what the post is about and not much from the second one. Aside from the obvious, permalinks and the keywords contained in them are also used by Google and other search engines to ‘read’ what your post is about. These days I typically see most travel bloggers have made this change but if you haven’t, here’s how to do it in WordPress.

1. In your WordPress admin panel (http://yoursite/wp-admin) look on the left hand side, under “Settings” click “Permalinks”.
2. From there you can select a structure that includes the post date and name, or a custom structure. For example, if you want your urls to include your category name and post title by default add “/%category%/%postname%/”. You can really begin to customize your links by checking out these WordPress tags. Some common ones you may be interested in are tags (%tags%) or author (%author%).
3. Click “Save Changes”. If you get a warning that you’re .htaccess file is not writable by the server you’ll need to create one. (More information at the bottom of this article.)

Custom Permalinks For Individual Posts

You can also work on your permalinks to improve them for SEO purposes on each individual post. For example you may have a post titled “My Trip To Mexico’s Beaches With Family” which would give you a permalink something like:

• http://yoursite.com/my-trip-to-mexicos-beaches-with-family

That’s better than the default WordPress ugly links but there are a few junk words in there. You can adjust the permalink when scheduling your travel blog posts in WordPress easily to optimize a bit for SEO.

• Right under your post titles in the Edit Post screen, there’s an “Edit” button next to the permalink WordPress has created automatically.

Using the permalink editing feature you could optimize your url to something like “mexico-beaches” or “family-mexican-beaches”. There’s a lot more that goes into SEO and if you really want to refine your site I recommend you read DIY SEO which is very specific.

Don’t Use Ugly URLs

There is no reason to use the default WordPress ugly permalinks. This post is specific to WordPress but you can edit urls using Google’s Blogger and the other blogging platforms as well. While you don’t have to customize your permalinks for each post, you’ll do yourself and travel blog a huge favor by not using ugly links. Pretty urls and permalinks translate into better search engine results (relative to ugly links) and can mean more traffic and exposure for your travel blog.

[photos by: hyper123 (WordPress dashboard), k.landerholm (chisel)]

There is quite a bit of confusion over the topic of text link ads, what they are, how much to sell them for, and what Google says about them. I’ve received quite a few questions about it lately and decided to give you some basic guidelines so you know how to handle those requests and make sales if you wish.

What Are Text Links?

Text links (or text link ads) are basically links to keywords people want to buy from your [Google] ranked pages. They’re not looking to convert sales from the link and any they do is a bonus to them. Websites want to rank highly for certain keywords in search engine results. Typically on travel websites those keywords look like “travel to Mexico” or something along those lines.

• Google PageRank is an important aspect of text link sales. Advertisers want text links on pages of your with high PageRank like your homepage and perhaps some of your individual blog posts.
• You can easily check the PageRank of any webpage using the Search Status Firefox plugin.
• There are sites like Text Link Ads where companies come to you – this post isn’t about those sites. It’s about individual offers you may receive.

You links page won’t cut it for most people willing to pay for text links unless that links page has earned some Google PageRank, read last week’s post (The Benefits Of Having A Links Page) to find out how you might be able to do that.

Important Things To Know About Text Links

Certain types of paid links violate Google’s policy on the matter. As far as I know Google doesn’t set up stings or traps to catch those who are selling text links but if you sell too many links they’ll likely penalize you with a lower PageRank.

• Don’t bother with links irrelevant to your blog topic, spammy links, or ones that just don’t “feel right” or legitimate.
• Don’t sell too many text links (4-8) on a single page.
• Don’t sacrifice the look of your travel blog for text links.

Also, be careful with corporate guest posts, people demanding to be on your sidebar (as opposed to links page), or product review offers with link stipulations attached. Companies often look for free ways to get keyword text links – look out for them. Counter these offers by letting them know you have text link advertising opportunities available if you do.

Pricing And Valuable Resources

Typically text link offers pop up in your inbox unannounced and often right after a Google PageRank update. Be prepared with rates when these offers come. It will save you time, help you maintain consistency, and give you a reference point for bargaining. When you’re coming up with your pricing consider where you can sell text links, below are a few options.

• Sidebar – Probably the most valuable place since it appears on your homepage (highest PageRank usually) and all the pages on your travel blog. You can charge the most for sidebar slots.
• Contextual – In or below a single post that may have PageRank or be at the top of search engine results for a particular set of keywords. Often not worth as much depending on the page’s rank and popularity but you’ve got many more pages to sell on.

What To Base Your Pricing On

Start with your PageRank and add on a bit for page views, search engine results, and other criteria you think it valuable for a perspective advertiser. Remember the higher the PageRank, the more room you have to negotiate and charge since you’ve got less competition.

• You can learn how to increase your PageRank and learn about the fine details of SEO by reading the DIY SEO Guide (my review).
• Feel free to say “no” if you think a price is too low. There are lots of people looking for text links and you’re site is unique, isn’t it?

Remember that any text link offer you receive was probably sent to other travel blogs with similar rankings so reply quickly and be sure to know who else is in your niche. It doesn’t hurt to talk to other travel bloggers you know to find out what they might charge, although many may not wish to disclose the information.

Price References

It’s difficult to set prices in stone since every negotiation is different. You are often at an advantage if you decide to contact a potential advertiser or have a high number of readers. You can also provide discounts for multiple purchases. Below are some of the best resources for learning about and sharing text link rates with your fellow travel bloggers.

• How To Make Money With Your Travel Blog by Matt Kepnes – You want my thoughts? I’ve reviewed it here and here and yes – I still think Nomadic Matt’s eBook is worth the price.
• Travel Blog Success (My review)- The forum alone is worth the price of admission.
• Other Travel Bloggers – Who do you know well? Ask them.

I could list a set of prices here but that wouldn’t help much since others may take them only to low ball you out of a sale. The resources above are excellent and are great guides. If you have specific questions though you can email me.

Not Only Text Links

They aren’t the only way to make money with your travel blog and there are other simple ways to earn revenue from your travel blog. It’s true that more than banners or other forms of advertising, text link offers are probably the most common you’ll encounter. They also tend to pay the most. If you decide you’ll be selling text links, come up with rates, a short policy, and make sure you’ve got a Paypal account and factor in any Paypal fees you’ll incur in your prices.

[photos by: japi14 (sale sign), Crystal Jingsr (prohibited sign), sharpstick’s photos (price tag)]

Many new travel bloggers don’t bother with a links page until a few weeks or months after their blogs have been in existence. Having a links page provides you with several benefits including the space to add many links, a cleaner homepage, and advertising opportunities. It’s not in your best interests to stick with that long sidebar you’ve got and you can set up a links page in no time.

You Need The Space

Exchanging links with other travel bloggers (or relevant blogs) benefits your site by increasing the number of inbound links to your blog and increases your visibility. Your sidebar will get too long and look ugly after many link exchanges so create the space to add as many links as you want. Having a links page is also a good way of saying you’re happy to exchange links with other people who visit your site.

Meeting Other Bloggers

I’m not a big fan of links pages where users can add comments for their own links – it’s rather impersonal and you can’t control the content well, giving the page a very disorderly look. Rather, have a links page and at the top let other travel bloggers know you’re opening to exchanging links. It’s a good way to meet others in the community and get to know them, as well as exchange links.

Create Categories, Avoid The Long List

Something I haven’t quite implemented yet, but once you get you links page up create some categories on separate pages. The longer your links list grows the less that page will be valued by search engines and read by human beings. Shorter links pages or those broken up into categories on separate pages (i.e. travel resources) may also build Pagerank. It’s controversial, and I’ll be talking about text link ads this week, but if a links page has some sort of Pagerank you may be able to sell text ads there.

• On top of that, some sites really only want to exchange links with your ranked pages (which in most cases is just your sidebar). They’ll offer a link  from a high Pageranked site of theirs in return for a ranked link from you. Again, having ranked links pages can give you more space to make these kinds of exchanges.
• Typically the websites (not travel blogs) that really want to be in your sidebar or on a ranked page will be willing to pay for it if you ask. You can tell that when your links page doesn’t cut it for someone.

I’d also recommend having a link to your links page at the top of your site or prominently on the sidebar. When other bloggers visiting your site don’t see it, they probably won’t get in touch for an exchange.

Some Other Benefits Of A Links Page

There are a few other good reasons to have a links page on your travel blog.

• It can show some ‘blog clout’ as your lists grow and is evidence you’re connected in the travel blogging community.
• Makes your sidebar a bit more special and a place where you can highlight some of your favorite sites and blogs.
• It doesn’t hurt to have one.

That last one is important – it doesn’t hurt your travel blog to have a links page. They are very easy to set up, just add the page and a way to contact you, and you’re set to go.

Do You Have A Links Page?

Once you get your page set up, use these good ways to get links for your travel blog now. You can also leave your information in the comments below to exchange with my sites and other Travel Blog Advice readers – feel free to leave your links in the comments below to exchange.

[photos by: Terwilliger911, oskay, Jason-Morrison]

This is a guest post by Amar Hussain from GapYearEscape.com. He is a freelance writer currently traveling round the world documenting his experiences. GapYearEscape’s aim is to inform, inspire and entertain. Amar is currently a STA Explorer for STA Travelbuzz.

When I first heard about STA Travelbuzz I actually thought it was too good to be true. I remember thinking there has to be some sort of catch. What’s the deal here? I’ve been an STA Explorer for six months under the name Gap Year Go Getter. I still have both my kidneys and my soul is still my own (I think). Let me fill you in.

STA Travelbuzz is a tribe of travelers ranging from college graduates to career-gappers. It’s a friendly community centered on what we all know and love; travel.

You are probably wondering what a STA Explorer actually does. Nothing. If you have your own travel blog anyone can become an STA Explorer. It’s free and you continue blogging like you normally would. The writers over at STA Travelbuzz will then subscribe to your blog and post about individual posts on the Travelbuzz blog.

So as a travel blogger how does this help you? The perks to becoming an STA Explorer are enormous. The biggest perk of all is that you will become affiliated with one of the biggest global travel brands: STA Travel. Other perks include; a bigger online presence, increased readership and subscriber base and additional backlinks. The good people over at STA Travelbuzz also happen to be word of mouth, social media and viral marketing experts. You will be in good hands.

Finally, STA Travelbuzz is a great platform for launching a new or undiscovered websites into the blogosphere. There are some very talented writers and STA Explorers. Check out the STA Explorer section for undiscovered talent. If you want to know more or become a STA Explorer head over to STA Travelbuzz.

STA Travelbuzz basically writes posts about your travel blog posts and asks you to put a link or place a widget back to their site, but it’s not required. I haven’t tried the program myself but the links come from a PageRank 5 site which can be hard to come by. If you’ve tried or have any information about the program, I’d like to hear your thoughts as well.

[photos by: rubybgold]