Keyword Research Guide For Travel Bloggers {Improve SEO Rankings}

Like any other niche blog, starting a travel blog isn’t hard these days. But, before you start your travel blog, identify which areas to target since the travel industry is big and highly-competitive.

The travel blogging will become an overwhelming chore when you want to gain a huge audience, and monetize it. It’s about the topic you write and the travel keywords you pick that have good traffic potential.

However, the content topic may be either your latest travel experience or list of destinations, or anything. To help you out on content, recently, I have published the content writing guide for travel bloggers, refer to it.

The next big thing is the keywords to target that respond to what your audiences look for. Don’t argue the toss. Comprehensive keyword research using any powerful keyword research tools is the only way.

You agree?

So, how to get started with the keyword research for travel websites or blogs? If you struggle in keyword research for travel websites, you are not alone. Let’s together do it with this keyword research guide for travel bloggers.

Keyword Research For Travel Blog

What is keyword research for travel blogs? It is all about discovering the travel keywords or phrases that your target audience uses searching for your product or service. If you fail to do proper keyword research before bringing your content to live, then you will fall short of ranking online. Indeed, it doesn’t matter how valuable your content is unless users can find through search engines.

Proper keyword research will help you to –

How smart you approach keyword research? There’s so much in keyword research than just finding keywords that drive traffic.

So, there is no other perfect day to spend some time (when you are not traveling) to master in keyword research. Usually, I spend so much attention and time on keyword research since it can make or break the success of the content and, ultimately, travel site.

Ultimate Keyword Research Guide For Travel Bloggers

Keyword research is the preliminary but the most significant thing in SEO for any niche. Through this keyword research guide, I will help you discover low-competition travel keywords easily or with little effort.

With proper keyword research and right keywords you can –

I often use SEO or keyword tools like SEMRush or LongTailPro for my keyword research for various niche blogs and competitor analysis. Today, for this keyword research tutorial for travel bloggers, I prefer SEMRush to find the best potential travel keywords.

While there are plenty of other reliable keyword tools available, why SEMRush? What’s so special about it? How can it help travel SEO? Does it get me a bunch of SEO travel blog keywords?

Though there are tons of keyword research tools for travel agencies, each has its own ups and downs, and I highly recommend SEMRush.

Some of the reasons, but not all –

And even more. Let me stop this for now. You will realize its superpower; continue reading this keyword research guide for travel bloggers.

Keyword Research For Travel Bloggers With SEMRush

As you are likely to research for the profitable SEO keywords for a travel blog, I focus on researching for travel keywords for SEO. The same keyword strategy you can use to fetch keywords for your ad campaigns. Indeed, the SEMRush keyword tool is popular for both SEO and PPC keyword analysis.

Let’s rollout. By the way, if you want to try SEMRush in real-time while reading this guide (side-by-side), then try its 7-day free trial now. You will master keyword research after completing this guide. Indeed, you will have a bunch of lucrative long-tail keywords for your next travel blog posts.

Why Long-tail Keywords For Travel Websites?

Long-tail keywords usually have three or more words. The big thing about long-tail keywords is – it greatly helps you to understand the user search intent better.

Look at these examples. Search queries – ‘travel backpack’ and ‘best selling travel backpack for trekking.’ Here, the first search term leaves you blank with no idea about user intent. But, the latter gives you an idea about the intent that the user is planning to buy travel backpacks for trekking. So, knowing the user intent, you can produce valuable content that serves them and, indeed, that Google loves.

How To Find Long-tail Keywords Using SEMRush?

So, let’s fire up the SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool to discover more long-tail keywords.

Indeed, in SEMRush, almost all the keyword-related tools and features are found under Keyword Analytics (except a very few like Keyword Gap, Domain vs. Domain, etc.)

Click on the Keyword Magic Tool and feed your seed keyword (broad term). Let’s take ‘travel backpacks’ for now. The tool can get you a wealthy list of keyword ideas or suggestions.

You can also specify the location if your travel website targets audiences from a specific country i.e., to find the most potential geo-specific keywords.

It’s really magic. You can see a huge list of related and pertinent keywords. And, your seed keyword receives 60,500 searches monthly. The results also display its trend, keyword difficulty, CPC value, etc.

But, that doesn’t the right keyword for you since it is too short and highly competitive. Let’s play around with the filters to sort the best long-tail keyword that are easy to rank. From the results page, click on Advanced filters drop-down.

As we have seen above, the long-tail keywords or phrase will have three or more terms. So, let’s keep the Word count field – 3 (from) leave ‘to’ blank.

Then, set the monthly search volume from 100. Doing so, the tool will fetch you ultra-low competitive keywords (that have average monthly search volume and low Keyword Difficulty).

Note: It’s a misconception that targeting a keyword that has 1000’s of monthly searches will drive massive traffic. Yes, it may be true. But, ranking (compete against other big brands) for such competitive keywords is hard, though.

So, as a start-up travel blogger, its diligent targeting keywords that receive a moderate monthly search (100 searches). Once you start building authority, you can target keywords that will have more search volumes.

There is no hard rule to set this filter option. It can vary based on how authority your domain or brand or web pages online.

That’s all ok. What is Keyword Difficulty (KD) in this Keyword Magic Tool keyword suggestions list?

The most powerful keyword metric that SEMRush measures (from 0 to 100) to let us know how hard or easy the particular keyword is for ranking (with valuable content, proper SEO and backlinks altogether).

As a start-up blogger targeting a keyword that medium (50 to 80) or high (above 80), keyword difficulty is non-sense. Obviously, the keyword that shows KD below 50 is suitable if you are just starting.

So, let’s again use the filter options to single-out the keywords that are easy to rank with fewer efforts.

Let’s leave other filter options blank for now. For an idea – here are a few words about those other filters.

Back again, applying the filters, you will have wealthy insights of keywords that are trendy and long-tail, with low keyword difficulty scores.

Indeed, if you more concerned about conversions and make money through your travel blog, then you should target certain keywords that are buying intent.

So, you have more space for improvement, especially when you aim to get more conversions. We should check whether particular keywords can meet the user’s search intent.

Understanding user intent – basically, there are three types of search intents: informational, navigational, and transactional.

So, the long-tail keywords you choose must be transactional. That is the search term with purchase intent. To help you out, usually, these transactional queries will have ‘buying intent’ words like buy, best, price, discount, offers, deals, etc.

Again, SEMRush filters can help you out to sort those buyer keywords too.

We have already expanded our seed keyword ‘travel backpack’ and have got a good volume of long-tail keywords (applying filters).

Now, in advanced filters, type the words ‘best’ or ‘buy’ in the ‘Include keywords’ field.

Doing so, you will get a curated list of long-tail keywords that comes with buying intent.

But, we don’t have proper data for these sorted keywords. Let’s do some alterations in our filtering values. Indeed, with so much filtering options and flexibility, SEMRush is such a user-friendly keyword research tool for travel bloggers.

Let’s increase the keyword difficulty to 70. Now, you have got some handful of buyer keywords.

From the keyword results, there are chances to have branded keywords like ‘Tumi travel backpacks for hiking.’ Simply weed-out mentioning the brand names ‘Tumi’ in exclude keywords.

Doing all such filtering, now you have a mine of the most potential and profitable keywords.

Now sort the listed keywords based on Keyword Difficulty (since it is always advisable to target low KD keywords, as a start-up travel blogger). Indeed, you can sort any fields from the results.

Now, you have 11 long-tail keyword ideas. Most importantly, those are highly potential and easy to rank and win organic traffic.

Still, which one to choose primarily?

Almost all the keyword ideas here are the potential to target.

So, pick any topic that inspired you the most.

For this today’s keyword research guide for travel bloggers, let’s take ‘best backpack for traveling moms.’ Let it be the primary long-tail keyword.

Click on it; you can explore more about the particular keyword.

Finding related keywords from SEMRush

You have the primary keyword handy. By the way, writing descriptive content more than 3k words, you will have to optimize it with more related or LSI keywords. Experts would suggest to target at least or up to 5 keywords through a page.

Let’s further move the needle closer, expanding the primary term to get more related keywords.

Either click on the ‘Related’ tab (to the left of Advanced filters).

You will get access to more keywords that are related to the seed keyword ‘travel backpack.

Alternatively, as we have chosen the primary term as ‘best travel backpack for traveling mom,’ we should discover keywords related to this specific term.

For that, click on the particular keyword. You will be provided with a more detailed review of the certain keyword.

Luckily, we have got exact 5 keyword suggestions that are closely related to the above said primary long-tail keyword idea.

The Exact Match Keywords are those five; you are likely to focus. The total search volume for all those keywords sums around 120. That’s good.

Otherwise, if you find still it is adequate, then expand your SEO benefits or maximize the search results, then go for related keywords.

Even though those keywords are not an exact phrase to the term ‘best backpack for traveling moms,’ still including more LSI keywords have significant benefits. Indeed, optimizing your content with related keywords helps –

Most importantly, based on the domains that are ranking for your chosen keyword, you can go ahead or withdraw targeting that particular keyword.

The real game!

Competitor Keyword Analysis: Keyword Research Strategy For Travel Website

From the list, let’s take the biggest competitor, the one who ranks #1 for the aforesaid target keyword ‘best backpack for traveling moms.’

Head over to SEO Toolkit –> Competitive Research –> Organic Research. Copy the competitor’s specific URL and feed it for the keyword analysis. Make sure to choose ‘subfolder’ in the drop-down before clicking on ‘search.’

On search demand, you will get a list of ‘Top Organic Keywords’ for which the particular page is performing well on the search engines.

Expand the report (click on ‘view all’ button) to view all the potential keywords.

You have got another set of proven keywords that are ranking already.

Compare it with your list of chosen keywords. Take a few if something inspired, but you don’t have in your previously prepared list.

Or, if you want to spy competing domain’s entire keyword profile, then just feed the domain URL here: SEO Toolkit –> Competitive Research –> Domain Overview.

Scroll down and check the Top organic keywords to get some budding keyword ideas and keywords that your competitor is ranking for.

Again, expand the list to get awesome long-tail keywords for your forthcoming articles.

Don’t you think SEMRush is a gift for SEO, bloggers, and online marketers?

Discovering More Potential Keywords using SEMRush Keyword Gap Feature

Not just one competitor, you can also compare keywords of two or more competitor sites. SEMRush Keyword Gap tool made this possible hassle-free.

You compare your domain with four other competitors.

You can choose between the tabs like shared, missing, weak, unique, etc. Clicking on ‘Unique,’ within no time, the tool will fetch you keywords that your competitor ranks, but you don’t.

If your domain doesn’t have a decent volume of published articles and ranking keywords, then the tool will pull almost entire keywords of your competitors as unique.

Check out the common keywords that your competitor ranks on the 1st page, but you lag (maybe on the 2nd page). Put some extra efforts on those particular keywords and bring it to the top to drive the majority of organic traffic to your travel website.

So, master in keyword research for your travel websites using SEMRush keyword research features.

Finally, you have a primary keyword ‘best backpack for traveling moms, five related keywords, and unlimited keyword ideas from competitive research. What else? Start writing amazing content that your audiences look for.

Final Words – Keyword Research Tips For Travel Bloggers

With proper keyword research to pick the right keyword that targets user search intent, you will win the organic traffic. Keep travel audience in mind, think like a traveler, and address their problems with awesome content.

Ultimately, you need to produce strategic content and make it keyword optimized. Draw in the right traffic, engage them, and promote your travel business.