Are you a wanderlust, particularly in Europe? Whether travelling around Europe is your passion or hobby, starting a travel blog is something that anyone can do! It is pretty simple to get started, all you need is hard work, patience, and dedication. Here are 6 steps to start a successful Europe-based travel blog:
Step 1: Choose your blog name
This is possibly one of the hardest steps. Coming up with a name can be tricky, especially when you might have several ideas and find it difficult to choose just one, or you can’t think of one at all.
These are some tips to make it easier when it comes to choosing a name:
- Decide what kind of niche you’re more interested in
- Identify your target audience
- Find out what makes your blog special
With so many travel blogs out there catered to Europe content, it is better to follow these tips in order to come up with an identity for your blog and eventually the name will naturally pop up.
Step 2: Sign up with a hosting company
After you’ve decided on a name, you need to set up your domain and hosting. Most of the web hosting companies have a package that sells both a domain and hosting together. First and foremost, you must understand the difference between the two. The URL of your website is called a domain. For example, travellust.com is a domain name. Web hosting is similar to renting space online to host your website.
We recommend going for SEO hosting by HostStage. They’re an extremely reliable hosting company that provides one of the best customer services as well. Whenever you’re having trouble with your blog, you can always reach out to them and get help. Aside from that, they also offer a few services in their package, which is a much affordable option compared to other web hosting companies such as BlueHost or SiteGround.
Step 3: Installing your CMS
There are several types of content management systems (CMS) such as Wix, WordPress and Blogger. WordPress is one of the most popular CMS most bloggers would go for. Hence, we recommend installing WordPress. You don’t have to worry too much about this as once you’ve paid for your hosting, it will automatically come with it. You just need to purchase the web hosting that comes along with WordPress, or simply approach the hosting company and get them to install it for you.
Step 4: Set up your blog
A few things to get started with is to have a basic structure of your blog. What kind of categories will you include? What are some of the pages you would like to display on your blog? Since you’re starting a Europe-based travel blog, you can consider dividing your pages into the different countries and states. A few examples you could get inspiration from our Girl’s Gotta Drink, Girl in Florence and Driftwood Journals. You can also separate your blog into food, places to go, and so on. Once you get this done, it will be much easier for you to start writing as well.
Step 5: Picking your theme
What makes readers keep coming back to a particular blog? Good design is one of them! The theme you choose should be user-friendly, easy to read, and attractive. Play around with a couple of themes before settling with one that you really like. You must also get your logo designed for your blog too. You can simply use Canva or hire a freelancer designer to do it for you, depending on how much free time you have. One tip is to choose a premium theme as they usually come with customer support so when you’re having trouble with the theme, you can reach out to them for help. There are free WordPress themes around but they are not as attractive as the ones you have to pay for.
Step 6: Start writing!
Now your website ‘skeleton’ is done. Yay! What’s next? Writing, of course! Plan out your topics accordingly. Without a doubt, you have to learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to get your blog posts ranking on the first page of search engines. This is a skill that most bloggers have to know to gain more traffic. Not to worry, mastering SEO isn’t that difficult – you just have to put in the time to learn it. Set a schedule to follow and figure out how many times a week you are able to publish a blog post.
