Sustainable Travel Blogging: A Path to Eco-Friendly Tourism
Photo by Avi Richards
Sustainable tourism is a great way to see the world while doing good. Sustainable travel practices can protect local ecology and preserve pre-existing cultural heritage. Eco-friendly travel can even boost the green economy by choosing environmentally conscious brands while preparing for your big trip.
You can maximize the impact of your travels by creating a sustainable travel blog. A sustainable travel blog gives you a chance to share your thoughts and can spread the word about eco-friendly travel to others.
You can even make a little extra income while blogging. High-performing personal blogs bring in $500 to $2,000 a month that you can reinvest in the local economies you choose to visit.
Advocacy
The recent rise in sustainable tourism has already made a meaningful difference to the global ecology. Sea Going Green has hosted 30+ cleanups, removed 4242 kgs of trash from beaches, and picked up nearly 700,000 cigarette butts that littered natural ecosystems.
However, many people still don’t understand the importance of sustainable tourism and how the everyday traveler can get involved. You can use your blog to advocate for more eco-friendly travel by highlighting key green research while discussing issues that people care about.
For example, if you live in an urban area, consider blogging about the impact of pollution on our health. Plastic pollution and microplastic consumption can increase the risk of cancer, cause birth defects, and increase the risk of fertility difficulties, which is a very real issue in vulnerable, high-tourism areas where plastic washes up. You can use your blog to advocate for recycling programs and waste reduction to lower the impact of pollution on the environment and surrounding communities.
Tips
Most of your blog readers will be keen to reduce their footprint and embrace eco-friendly tourism practices. However, some may be confused about how to become sustainable.
As an experienced sustainable tourist, use your insights to educate well-meaning travelers. For example, if you’ve been a part of volunteer operations, consider writing a blog themed around sustainable volunteering overseas. This will help people pick an organization that aligns with their values and find a location that is ready to receive help.
Consider platforming community discussions if you’re new to sustainable travel yourself. Insights from your community members can be extremely valuable and help you generate new ideas for blog posts. You may even encourage some folks to guest blog, as people love sharing their thoughts with others online.
Highlighting Heritage
Sustainable travel is about more than low-waste living and net-zero travel. Sustainable tourism also champions local culture and supports efforts to preserve heritage. You can use your blog to highlight the importance of heritage by featuring posts based on your travels.
When traveling, be sure to visit local museums and try to speak with experts in your area. This will give you an authentic perspective that others may not have heard before. You’ll also learn plenty about local laws and customs, which may help others travel with cultural preservation in mind.
Consider giving a voice to local experts on your blog and give them space to speak for themselves and ensures that you don’t fall into the trap of saviourism. If you do decide to feature local historians and writers, consider paying them for their services based on the income that your blog generates.
Increasing Traffic
Your sustainable travel blog is almost certain to generate traffic. People care more about sustainability today than ever before and are always looking for fresh insights on the web.
You can increase the traffic that your site generates and make a living from blogging by honing in on a niche and optimizing your website. Start by creating a consistent design throughout, as this will build brand awareness. Once you’ve created your site, submit your sitemap to Google Search Console. This will index your site and boost your traffic.
Stay consistent and try to post a few articles per week. This will yield reliable metrics that you can use to tweak your approach. Start simple, and keep a tab on key performance indicators (KPIs) like total clicks, total impressions, top queries, and click-through rate. This will help you identify the themes, keywords, and topics that perform best on your site.
Optimizing your sustainable travel blog for SEO is important. However, you’ll still need to post plenty of high-quality content if you want to generate enough traffic to fund your travels. Rather than hyper-focusing on technical SEO, spend most of your time drafting posts that add meaningful value to your reader’s lives. This will naturally boost your traffic and lead to repeat views.
Conclusion
Sustainable travel blogging is a great way to fund your travels and share your experiences. Try to post at least once a month and focus on topics like heritage and travel tips. This will build a buzz in your community and generate more traffic. You can also use your blog to connect with the sustainable travel community by hosting guest writers. Just be sure to pay any local experts who contribute to your site, as this can support the local economy and increase the quality of your content.
Sea Going Green is a sustainable tourism consultancy working to enable the tourism industry’s green transformation by spreading the word on how everyone (from bloggers to businesses) can play a role!