Are you looking to start blogging? Interested in how to start a blog and make money? Do you want to take an online blogging course or learn SEO to help your blogging journey?
Choosing to create a blog and launching The Traveling Something was an exciting time for me. I hope you’re feeling that excitement as well. I was certainly ready to learn how to create a blog website but needed some guidance to do things well.
This post will share 3 blogging courses and SEO courses I found invaluable to create The Traveling Something and start blogging. Hopefully, you find them valuable too!
Who am I and why would you take my advice to start blogging?
I’m Ryan, the creator and author of The Traveling Something. For better or worse, all the posts and website designs you see here came from me. The pictures are a joint effort. I’m very proud of it!
My blogging process with AsciiDoc is something that I enjoy too.
In 2023, I left a corporate job in software development to travel and focus on other pursuits like snorkeling, skiing, hiking, writing, etc.
The Traveling Something was started as a way to share these pursuits in a way that could hopefully generate an income stream in the future (it’s a trickle right now, but more than $0!)
As a part of creating a blog website, I dove into a bunch of information. My hope is that y’all can benefit from some of the same sources I did.
I’m not compensated by any of these course providers, though I won’t necessarily say no if they reach out to contact@thetravelingsomething.com 😄 These were just courses that I worked through. I feel they provided great value.
Goats on the Road Start a Blog course
If you’ve been around the travel blogging scene or read some articles about remote work, you may have come across Goats on the Road. They have a very popular travel blog and produce a lot of content about blogging, remote work, and more.
They have a course to help you start blogging. This was my gateway into actually doing to start blogging. The course is great for beginner blogging information.
The course starts by getting you set up with a domain name and website with the hosting provider Bluehost for a pretty reasonable cost. If you create a blog with Bluehost, access to the course is free. I presume there’s an affiliate relationship there.
After the course, you actually have a WordPress blog and can write posts! It was so great following this course while getting started blogging. It got me right into making a blog.
What did I think about the Goats on the Road course to start blogging?
Honestly, their course is the reason that I took the concrete step to create this site and get the ball rolling. I’m forever grateful for having worked through it!
Beyond the initial setup, the course includes a lot more information including work on styling, mechanics of posting, some intro SEO material, and a ton of email and download follow-ups. The Facebook group also was quite useful on multiple occasions.
At one point, I told someone that the Goats and their campaign were going to drag me to success! It was very valuable early on in my journey.
I should note that I’m looking for new web hosting to get some improvements beyond what I see with Bluehost. It was perfectly fine to get things going. However, I think others may grow better with the site.
If I hadn’t set up my site through Bluehost for free course access, I’m not sure that paying for the course would have been worth it.
Note too that there were a few attempts to upsell to other Goats on the Road paid courses like their advanced course to learn SEO. This is certainly expected with such a free initial set of material. The selling attempts never felt overly pushy to me.
How do people find your site after you start blogging? Time to learn SEO
You’ve got a blog, great! Now, you want people to actually find it and read it, right? I did.
The Goats on the Road SEO intro was great to start blogging, but I had to go off and dive deeper to learn SEO and how to get people to find the site!
Let’s look at a few SEO classes and SEO trainings that I found helpful.
ahrefs Beginner’s Guide to SEO
The ahrefs Beginner’s Guide to SEO is a set of detailed blog posts going through many SEO basics, practical advice like keyword research, and theory of how things work.
The material had a good mix of theory and practice that helped me learn SEO. At the time of writing, it has 7 modules
- How Search Engines Work
- SEO Basics
- Keyword Research
- SEO Content
- On-Page SEO
- Link Building
- Technical SEO
What did I think about the ahrefs Beginner’s Guide to SEO?
Overall, I found the content easy to follow and at the right level. It felt like I was learning enough without being overwhelmed.
The authors, Tim, and others, are clearly experts in the field. Beyond that, I felt like they were very effective communicators and conveyed the information well.
Having written information is a big plus for me compared to videos. I can easily skim over the posts to refresh some info rather than searching through a video.
I came away from reading the material with a much deeper understanding of the SEO space and a lot of practical day-to-day information that I could use. All for free!
Note that this guide recommends many tools sold by ahrefs, as one would expect. It also mentions some free tools like Google Keyword Planner.
Just know that there are many SEO tools in the marketplace, so consider your choice of tools independently of the course(s) you take. Many such courses are designed to market a company’s tools.
HubSpot Academy SEO Certification Course
The last dedicated SEO training material I went through was the HubSpot Academy training for SEO.
This is set up like an online course with several video lectures and quizzes to test your knowledge. I found myself taking notes the whole way through and getting some interesting insights.
There is some definite overlap between the ahrefs material and the HubSpot material but I found enough of a difference that each provided value. The HubSpot material went much deeper into technical information like meta tags, redirects, responsive design, etc.
The HubSpot course added some practical information about how to use link text, how to integrate with Google Search Console to track your performance, and how to make an SEO strategy.
What did I think about the HubSpot Academy SEO Certification Course to learn SEO?
I really enjoyed the HubSpot course. It felt like I was back at a university studying at that level. Kudos to them on the level and polish on the course.
The HubSpot course was a much deeper dive than the ahrefs guide, especially from a slightly more technical end. Given my background in software, I appreciated this. Though, it might be overkill if you’re just getting going.
I took copious notes while watching the lessons. Note too, that clicking on the “Resources” tab under the video provides links to tons of other resources! Importantly to me, it gives a transcript link that I find much more efficient for revisiting a topic than a video.
The HubSpot course is clearly professionally done and intended. It’s amazing content to have for free.
Again, note that there were some upsell attempts after taking the course. They weren’t anything intrusive but good to know they’re coming.
Wrapping up
So those are the 3 formative courses that helped me get The Traveling Something up and going. I hope they can be useful on your upcoming blogging journey! You’re going to rock it!
Tell me in the comments if you’ve got any other helpful resources to recommend. Also, let us know what kind of blog you’re starting and why!