How We Increased Traffic 1800% in 6 Months for A Travel Website

Back in 2020, we bought a domain for a website (TheRemoteTraveller.com). We have been working remotely and with globally distributed teams for years now as employees, business owners, and freelancers. So we thought it would be fun to combine a couple of our passions—remote work and travel—and instead of solely posting aspirational travel content, we would also break down how to earn a living as a digital nomad.

We put together a website using SquareSpace in two days and then began writing and publishing an article or so every other month. Considering we didn’t have a link-building budget or any serious money going into the site, as well as the fact that it was a newer domain, our expectations were pretty low.

However, after several years of letting the site sit relatively dormant, we noticed that with just a handful of articles, we began to rank for some of the keywords we had targeted, which was enough to get us our first monthly average of 100 in organic traffic. From then on, we made a deliberate effort to begin putting out new content regularly. Six months later, we had increased our organic traffic to 1800 per month.

In this article, we will explain exactly how we did it. And yes, this method can work for you, but it will take persistence, time, and an excellent strategy. Fortunately, we’ve got you covered when it comes to the strategy portion. Without further ado, let’s get into the SEO and content marketing tactics that helped us boost The Remote Traveller’s organic traffic by 1800% in half a year.

Initial Analysis and Challenges

The age and overall profile of a website have an enormous effect on how you should approach it. Of course, other factors such as the niche of the site matter, but the reason why we’ve mentioned the age of the site twice already this early in this article is that age is a ranking factor Google looks at when determining how “authoritative” your website is (we’ll get into authority in a moment). Similar to how people tend to trust people they’ve known for longer, websites have to build trust with search engines. Part of the reason for this is because of bad actors (scammers and blackhat SEOs), who have tried to game the system.

The biggest initial challenge we faced with The Remote Traveller was simply the fact that we were starting from scratch. What this ultimately meant was that we needed to begin to help Google understand what The Remote Traveller is all about. At the end of the day, Google does a great job of making sure that they are fairly transparent in regards to what they are looking for (hence why they make their guidelines public and update them regularly).

Google's E-A-T approach represents Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It serves as a framework for Google's human search quality raters to assess content quality on websites. E-A-T is particularly relevant for websites in sectors where misinformation can have significant real-world consequences, like medical, financial, or legal fields, often referred to as "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) pages.

"Expertise" evaluates the content creator's knowledge of the subject matter, ensuring they possess the necessary background or experience. "Authoritativeness" examines both the content and the hosting website, assessing their industry credibility and reputation. Lastly, "trustworthiness" verifies the legitimacy of the website, ensuring it provides accurate and verifiable information while maintaining user trust.

While E-A-T doesn't directly impact search rankings, it influences the overall quality rating of a website, which, in turn, can affect its search visibility.

So we set out to establish topical authority in the travel space. But how?

Content Strategy and SEO

As you read this story, think about how it can apply to your business. Your approach may vary, but what you always need to remember is to play to your strengths. If you’ve mastered TikTok or Instagram, that may be where you should spend the bulk of your time and energy. In our case, however, our core strengths lie in written content and search engine optimization (SEO). The best part is that these two skills happen to overlap incredibly well.

While SEO encompasses a variety of activities, we enjoy leveraging blogs to drive traffic, which is precisely what we did with The Remote Traveller.

1) Conduct Keyword Research

You can use a variety of tools for keyword research. Some of our favorites include:

• Ahrefs

• SurferSEO

• SEMRush

• Google Keyword Planner

Each of them has its own pros and cons, which we may eventually explain in another article, but for the sake of simplicity, we often gravitate towards Ahrefs.

What we tend to look for as we figure out what keywords we want to go after is a combination of volume (obviously, you need to ensure people are searching for the term in order to increase your traffic), low to moderate keyword difficulty (an estimation of how likely it is for you to rank), the value of the keyword (some of this depends on your niche), and how relevant the search intent for that keyword is to the goals of the site.

An SEO-driven content strategy is a mixture of art and science. The data and metrics give you an objective truth, but you still have to try to extract insights. Why are they searching for this? In other words, what is the search intent? Are they in the discovery phase? Or are they looking to make a purchase? If a user is closer to a purchase, that search query or keyword might be more valuable than another, even if the other keyword would theoretically drive more traffic.

Because we were living in Lebanon when we started actively writing and publishing content on The Remote Traveller, we happened to be in tune with an opportunity to cover the region aggressively. As it turns out, Lebanon-related travel topics are not nearly as competitive as writing about many of the larger, more saturated travel destinations, such as, let’s say, Italy or Greece. So in addition to posting about topics that digital nomads would find interesting, we honed in on publishing content about any places that we noticed had lower keyword difficulties.

Now, in case you are newer to the world of SEO, you may or may not have heard of the phrase long-tail keywords, but these are queries that generally consist of multiple keywords, allowing you to really niche down. For example, a keyword like “Lebanon” that is broader is going to be much more competitive than the longtail keyword “rooftop restaurants in Beirut Lebanon.” The added bonus is that it’s also harder to decipher the intent of someone searching for “Lebanon.” Are they looking to travel to Lebanon? Are they trying to learn about the country? Your guess is as good as mine. However, a user searching for “rooftop restaurants in Beirut Lebanon” is most likely trying to find, well, a rooftop restaurant in Beirut Lebanon. In other words, their intent is clear, so the byproduct of longtail keywords is that you often get higher intent and more relevance, and your visitors will be more engaged because they are rewarded with the precise information they want.

Now, let’s say your website is not new, like The Remote Traveller. This means Google has most likely crawled your content and, over time, determined what topics your site is a good authority on. For example, if you run a sports site and have posted sports blogs consistently over the course of many years, you will probably rank for other sports content. However, if you suddenly try to start giving medical advice on your sports site, you will have a much harder time ranking because you have no topical authority in that area. Be sure to factor this in as you conduct your keyword research and consider what keywords to target. Your website’s past can give you clues into what you should do in the future.

Another tactic for coming up with strong keywords is to look at your competitors and see what’s working well for them. Why is it working? Why are they targeting those keywords? Again, the data is scientific. Your interpretation is where you can get especially creative.

2) Create A Content Calendar

After we developed a good initial batch of keywords to target (keywords are pretty much endless, so set a goal for your first batch and get started), we created a content calendar.

Typically, we like to include the following in our content calendars:

• Core keyword

• Headline

• Content brief (essentially, a link to the outline of the article)

• Link for the final draft

• Author

• Uploader (the person responsible for uploading and formatting the article on your website)

• Softwares used (whether you’ve used AI or anything else, so you can A/B test and try to observe patterns)

• Results / rankings

• Rationale (the purpose of writing that particular article)

Of course, you can add a litany of other elements to your content calendar. These are just some of the main components we feel are vital. Now, let’s take a step back. After we got our keywords ready, we used them to inform our headlines and the articles themselves.

Writing SEO-optimized headlines is not quite the same as writing a general headline. However, these days, you should try to optimize just about anything online, and as it happens, headlines (H1s) are weighted heavily when it comes to indicating to Google what your content is about.

Your core keyword (for example: rooftops in Beirut) should always be in your headline. Your headline needs to be relevant to your content instead of purely clickbait, so we like to see the types of blogs that are ranking on the first page of Google for that particular query. For the keyword we’re using in this example, the average user is probably looking for something like the “best,” “beautiful,” “romantic,” etc. “rooftop bars in Beirut.” This adjective is what’s called a modifier. If the article is a listicle (a numbered list), we often like to include a number. Numbers have been shown to increase the click-through rate (CTR = the percentage of clicks to impressions).

Example: 10 Best Rooftop Bars in Beirut

You could add an additional modifier or an element to make it more interesting. For example, “10 Best Rooftop Bars in Beirut for A Date.” Remember, you increase your odds of ranking by going more long-tail and you often match your content to a more direct need.

We included headlines in this section because headlines are one of those vital components for a content calendar. Now, we’re going to show you how we put our headlines into action and use them to inform the rest of the article.

3) Content Briefs and Content Structure

Content briefs are essentially outlines to help the writer know exactly what you want. As you scale your content, one often overlooked aspect of content management is how to outsource it successfully. There’s a good chance that as a business owner, your time is better spent on operations and higher leverage activities, rather than spending hours working on blogs.

Where a content brief differs from a traditional outline is that a brief account for the way that Google and other search engines like to see the content structured. Structure is crucial for SEO and for the modern reader.

A content brief includes the headline (H1) at the top of the document, an introduction (we often like to include a stat or standout quote in the intro if it is a long one), any H2s (essentially, the primary subheaders), any other CTAs or elements that the writer needs to be aware of, a conclusion, FAQs at the bottom, or anything else that gives value to the reader.

With a content brief in hand, whoever is writing the content can focus fully on how they execute their task without doubting the overall structure and the hierarchy of how the information is presented. As you think about the next step, the actual writing, consider this:

Google's main objective is to deliver the most relevant and valuable information to users in response to their search queries. By prioritizing user-friendly and captivating content, Google ensures a positive user experience and efficient answers. Engaging content of high quality tends to keep users engaged for longer, reducing bounce rates and signaling to Google that the content is valuable and aligned with user intent. This user behavior, along with other metrics, informs Google's algorithms, leading to improved rankings for pages that effectively meet user needs. As a result, higher rankings increase visibility in search results, driving more organic traffic to well-optimized, user-centric content.

Let’s rewind for just a second. As you are doing your keyword research, preparing your content briefs, and really, every other step we will get into, take a look at your competitors. These don’t necessarily have to be direct business competitors. We’re talking about anyone who is taking up the search result space you want to get ahold of. Reverse engineer why they are succeeding and find a way to do add additional value. This is one of the best ways to ensure your content ranks.

In fact, this is known as the Skyscraper Method in SEO content writing. It involves identifying popular and high-performing content in a specific niche. In our case, specifically for the Lebanon-related keywords, we looked at what was working for a great Lebanese website called The 961.

The next step is to create a piece that goes above and beyond, being more comprehensive, valuable, and engaging than the original. After producing this superior content, outreach efforts are made to gain backlinks, especially from sites that already link to the original content. Coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko, this approach is like constructing a taller "skyscraper" next to existing structures. By offering more depth, updated information, or an enhanced user experience, the new content aims to attract greater attention and links, ultimately improving its search engine ranking.

4) Content Writing and Keyword Optimization

Before we go too deep into what we did to produce articles for The Remote Traveller or what your options are, here’s a reminder of what generally makes your written content rank on Google:

Creating content that ranks prominently on Google requires a careful balance of quality, relevance, and SEO optimization. At its core, the content should be well-researched and accurate and provide genuine value to readers by addressing their questions or concerns comprehensively. It is essential to align the content with specific keywords that users are searching for, without compromising readability or context. Additionally, the structure of the content plays a crucial role; using clear headings, bullet points, and concise paragraphs enhances the user experience. Ensuring that the content is mobile-friendly, combined with a website that loads quickly and is easy to navigate, further enhances its potential to rank well. Lastly, acquiring reputable backlinks to the content can significantly boost its authority and improve its ranking prospects in the eyes of Google.

When we first started writing content for The Remote Traveller, we did everything manually. ChatGPT and other generative writing software (we’ll get into what some of those are in a moment) were not mainstream yet. However, last year we began to play around with AI and now take a hybrid approach depending on what we are working on and why.

When speed, scalability, and data-driven precision are crucial, AI becomes an optimal choice. For example, businesses seeking to generate large volumes of product descriptions, stock market reports, or data summaries can greatly benefit from the efficiency and consistency offered by AI tools. When utilized effectively, AI can swiftly produce content, analyze extensive datasets, and even optimize for SEO purposes. We also like using AI for listicles and content that falls outside of the "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) pages mentioned earlier in the article. In other words, content that can’t be less than 100% accurate.

There are instances and industries where the human touch remains irreplaceable. Sectors that heavily rely on trust, emotion, and personal connection, such as healthcare, mental wellness, or personal advisory services, prioritize human expertise and empathy. Readers seeking advice, comfort, or personal insights inevitably gravitate towards genuine human experiences and the nuanced understanding that accompanies them. Personal essays recounting poignant life events, narratives describing transformative journeys, or op-ed pieces presenting unique perspectives—these domains give human authors a competitive edge. Their lived experiences, emotions, and reflections infuse content with depth and authenticity that AI, at present, cannot replicate.

Moreover, trust plays a pivotal role. People still prefer people, so it can also be a value add for your brand to build out human personalities behind the content,

In essence, while AI offers incredible advantages in terms of efficiency, scalability, and data analysis, there remains a profound need for the human touch in content creation. The authenticity, emotion, and trust associated with human-generated content can forge connections and resonate with readers in ways that AI, despite its strengths, has yet to achieve. In strategic content planning, discerning when to leverage the power of AI and when to harness human emotion and expertise is crucial for meaningful engagement. For these reasons, we do like taking a mixed approach and leveraging the strengths of humans and AI alike.

In our experience, strictly speaking on the basis of ranking in search engines, AI content is effective. There were concerns for a while that websites might be penalized for AI-generated content, however, earlier this year Google made it clear that as long as the content serves the end user, it does not matter how it is created. Having said that, you still have to produce original, unplagiarised content.

When it comes to SEO writing, volume does play a role, which is another thing to consider that works in favor of AI. Additionally, one of the shifts we’ve already witnessed happening is that teams of content writers are essentially evolving into a couple of content managers, who use AI to produce content at scale and serve as more like SEO-centric editors-in-chiefs. Also, remember that AI is not meant to completely replace the human touch. It still requires polishing, fact-checking, and improvements, but it can get many types of content about 80% of the way.

Some of our favorite tools for AI writing are:

• Jasper

• Koala Writer

• Chat GPT

For plagiarism checking we like Originality AI and to use Jasper to rewrite any generative content so that it reduces the amount of detectable AI. We do this perhaps out of some paranoia that if AI ever does get harder pushback, our pages won’t be penalized.

Once the content is written, we go through and optimize it for keywords. In our case, we like using Clearscope because you can generate keyword reports that serve as a checklist, which you can then run your blog through. We did not do this for every single article on The Remote Traveller because it was more of an experiment rather than serious business; however, we would recommend always optimizing for keywords.

5) Uploading Blogs and Publishing Content

Uploading blogs and publishing content involves more than just clicking the 'publish' button. It's a comprehensive process that, when executed correctly, can greatly enhance user experience and improve search engine visibility. One crucial step in this process is ensuring optimal on-page SEO practices. This includes crafting compelling meta tags — both titles and descriptions — that not only capture the essence of the content but also align with users' search queries. These meta-elements guide search engine crawlers and inform potential readers about the content's focus. Furthermore, internal linking plays a pivotal role; by linking to relevant content within the same domain, you can guide readers to more of your valuable content, improve site navigation, and even boost the SEO value of the linked pages.

However, visuals also play a significant role in capturing attention and enhancing understanding within a blog post or article. Incorporating high-quality visuals, such as photographs, illustrations, or graphics, can effectively break up lengthy text and provide visual context to the written content. Infographics, in particular, are powerful tools that distill complex information into easily digestible and visually appealing formats. They often gain significant traction on social media and can be readily shared, thereby amplifying the reach of your content.

With any visuals and other imagery, you need to be sure to either credit the original source or create original visuals. We typically prefer to create original content using Canva and Shutterstock. However, we also like using MidJourney, a text-to-image generative AI program. For example, in the case of The Remote Traveller, we might prefer to use MidJourney if we were writing an article in which we were showing what a destination would look like in ancient times.

A MidJourney image we generated

Additionally, the modern audience craves engagement. Interactive elements, such as polls, quizzes, or even interactive infographics, have the ability to transform passive reading into an immersive and engaging experience. By allowing readers to interact with the content, you not only increase their time spent on the page but also deepen their understanding and connection to the material.

In conclusion, while the content itself serves as the backbone of any blog or article, the manner in which it's optimized and presented significantly impacts its overall success. Meticulous attention to on-page SEO practices, combined with a keen eye for visuals and engagement, can elevate the appeal and reach of your content.

A Final Breakdown of The Content Strategy and SEO Tactics That Worked for Us

At the time of writing this article, The Remote Traveller now ranks for about 900 keywords, which we fully expect will be over 1000 keywords by the end of the year by publishing just a few articles per month. Ultimately, you can add your own touch and changes to the process we’ve gone over in this blog. However, in addition to a keyword-driven content strategy, one of the other reasons why The Remote Traveller has grown in traffic so quickly is because of the frequency of content.

Truthfully, that frequency could be much higher, but even at the current rate of a few blogs a month, it will continue to grow. Frequency matters simply because it leads to volume and one underestimated aspect of SEO is the fact that it’s at least partly a numbers game. Keyword research, perfectly structured content, keyword-optimized content — all of it increases your odds of ranking, but you still have to be patient, persistent, and most importantly, consistent. And once you observe trends and patterns, double down on what is working.

If you would like to learn more about how our team of content whisperers can help you create and publish high-quality content that attracts and engages the right people, contact us here. We can handle everything from keyword research to content creation and consulting.