5 FREE Ways How to Promote Your Blog

Promoting your blog seems daunting. But don’t overthink it. Whether you want to promote your blog in the travel niche or any other blog, just relax, and trust the process. But what is the process? Firstly, you need to know that it can take time (actually first you need to start a blog, check out how to do that in 15 minutes here). Don’t expect to make $1m from your blog overnight. It’s a labour of love, but you can get there in the end.

Who am I to give advice?

You can read more about me here. But to cut a long story short, I’m a guy with no tech background. I’m an average writer, an awful photographer. I don’t do any YouTube stuff, and I don’t sell any products. Yet, I’m made over $2m from my travel blog since I started in 2010. Blogging has made me a millionaire. And if I can do it, so can you. So check out 5 FREE ways I suggest on how you can promote your blog below:

Link Exchanges

This is a double victory! Showing people in your industry that you exist, and also building your ‘Domain Authority’.

What is a link exchange?

A link exchange is when you hyperlink to another website, and then do the same for you. For example, I can link to my non-profit adventure company here – Mudita Adventures.  And then Mudita Adventures would repay that favour by doing the same thing back. Why? First, you’re making contact with other bloggers in your industry. That’s great. It’s step 1 in your networking. You start to know who else is in your sphere, and you get the first few conversations back and forth. Great. Secondly, the link exchange increases your Domain authority. 

What is Domain Authority (DA)?

Basically, every website in the world is ranked on a scale of how trustworthy it is. The scale is 0-100. No-one is 100, but FaceBook, Google, Youtube etc are all 96,95. When you first start your blog, you will be 0. OneStep4Ward.com is 60 or 61. The higher the number, the better. And the higher the number, the more likely you are to pop up in search results when people google stuff that you have written about. For example. I wrote a great Bangkok Itinerary recently, but if you google ‘Bangkok Itinerary’ I’m only on Page 3. Why? A lot of reasons, but one of the main reasons is because other websites may have a higher domain authority. So, in brief, doing link exchanges will increase your domain authority. Which, in turn, will increase the likelihood of your articles popping up on google. 

Interviews

This works 2 ways.

First, you can reach out to bloggers who already have a large following, and even those who don’t, to participate in an interview on your blog. Pick their brain. See where they’ve been, what they like, what they didn’t, and how they continuously travel. When you feature someone in an interview they often will then promote the interview on your blog to their followers, and perhaps mention it on their blog. If you run interviews enough (say weekly or monthly) people will start contacting you to participate.

Also, find bloggers who interview other bloggers, and offer to be interviewed. You’ll get featured to their audience, and you’ll get a link from their blog. Great!

Comment on Blogs

Help out your fellow travel bloggers and they will return the favour. If you can take part on the message boards and comment sections of travel blogs people are likely to do the same. You can also create a profile to leave comments that can link back to your site. Engaging in conversations and leaving your input and opinion on articles can also help build your following. If people like what you have to say, they’ll want to hear more!

This is both a networking method and also the comments will link back to you. Double win again. Even if the process is quite boring! 

NOTE: Don’t write generic comments. Everyone hates that. Write genuine thoughts. 

Guest Posts

This is one of the best strategies for getting the word out about your blog, perhaps THE best of all.

Contact all of the blogs you come across and ask if they accept guest posts. This entails writing a post tailored for their site. Often what you will get in return is a profile on their site and a link back to your blog. This is a good way for a post you write to reach an entirely new audience. It also makes it easy for them to make their way to your blog. Writing a good, entertaining, and engaging post for someone else can result in new everyday followers for you.

It is often said for every brilliant blog post you write, you should give another one away to another blog ‘for free’. It’s not for free though, you get exposed to their audience, and you get a backlink from their blog. 

Social Media

Use all of the tools you have at your disposal to get the word out. Social media has made promoting very user friendly. Make sure you have your blog queued up to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and so on and so on to maximize your reach in the social media sphere. You need to regularly update your page and all your feeds. Stay on top of them and try to generate conversations around them. The more active you are in social media the more it will pay off. Additionally, consider hosting contests using user-friendly contest templates, which can effectively engage your audience and boost your social media presence even further. Encourage participants to share their contest entries on various platforms to expand your reach and create a buzz around your brand.

Final thoughts on how to promote your blog

5 free ways to promote your blog. Believe me. It’s time-consuming, for sure. But no-one said this would be easy, right? And now you can see why, as bloggers grow, they hire interns, virtual assistants etc. Your goal should be the same. Aim first to make $1k USD per month for your travel blogger income, whether than revenue is from page views or other sources. Then double it. Then think about staff. But don’t get ahead of yourself, first you have to put in the work!