How Technical SEO Helps Monetise a Travel Blog
Because affiliate links and lead magnets mean nothing if Google can’t find you.
The Backstory
So… it’s day two of hiring someone to clean up our blog’s backend. I log into Ahrefs expecting chaos.
Instead? A 98% site health score.
As a family travel blog still finding our footing, this feels like catching a direct flight with two kids and no meltdowns. Not common. Definitely worth talking about.
What Is Technical SEO (And Why Should You Care)?
If you’ve ever heard “SEO” and tuned out, I get it. But this isn’t about stuffing keywords or chasing traffic, this is the stuff under the hood.
Technical SEO = making sure search engines can actually access, crawl, and understand your site.
Think:
Fixing broken links
Optimising load speed
Making sure mobile visitors don’t get a weird version of your homepage
Setting up a clean site structure so your content doesn’t get buried
It’s not glamorous. But it’s what makes blog monetisation possible.
What a 98% Health Score Means
Here’s what our Ahrefs audit showed:
📍 1,039 URLs crawled
📍 Only 24 actual errors (out of over 1,000 URLs!)
📍 848 warnings and 312 notices — minor stuff like image sizes, meta tag lengths, or internal linking tweaks
📍 Only 18 URLs with real problems
Translation? We’ve got a solid foundation to build on.
How This Impacts Monetisation
We’re not trying to be full-time marketers (Even that was my 9-5 job role) We’re just looking to build income streams that support our travels. But technical SEO plays a direct role in that.
Here’s how:
More content gets indexed → More blog traffic → More affiliate clicks
Better structure = better UX → People stay longer → Higher conversions
Clean site = higher credibility → Better chance of landing sponsors/partnerships
When we share things like:
Our family packing checklist made using Kit (also affiliate link)
…it all depends on the site being healthy, fast, and accessible.
What We Did (or Rather, What We Paid For)
We’re not developers. We hired someone for a technical SEO gig on Fiverr and they:
Audited crawl errors
Removed duplicate pages
Fixed internal redirects
Cleaned up our sitemap and robots.txt
Helped improve mobile speed
We also installed Ahrefs for site monitoring, and made sure we had:
Google Search Console verified
Clear categories and slugs
No sneaky broken links hiding in old drafts
Our Current Tech Stack
For anyone trying to do the same, here’s what we’re using:
Platform: WordPress (with a clean, fast theme)
Email/Lead Magnets: Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
SEO Monitoring: Ahrefs
Support: Freelance SEO pro (via Fiverr/Upwork)
Simple, affordable, and scalable all stuff we can grow with as our blog (and travels) expand.
Want the Real-Time Wins & Fails?
We share updates like this in our monthly Dispatch raw, real behind-the-scenes stuff. No fake filters or “we made $5k in our sleep” energy.
Final Thought
You don’t need to become an SEO expert. But if you’re serious about monetizing your blog, especially as a travel family trying to build income on the move, don’t ignore the tech side.
Fix the foundation. Then grow.
