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How This Travel Blog is Winning at SEO (Post Helpful Content Update)

ByNina Clapperton Updated on

A couple of months after Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU), I decided to do a deep dive into a site that’s been absolutely thriving. 

The site is Stay New England . 

I’m so appreciative to Mike Donovan (@Niche Twins) for allowing me to go through his site and learn from his success! 

I’ll also be sharing my personal opinions on some elements of his site because that’s what I do when I do site audits. I’m literally incapable of keeping opinions to myself, so please take everything with a grain of salt. 

That said, the review is almost entirely positive.

I noticed a couple of little things that I would do differently, but a lot of that comes down to personal preference. 

In this video, I analyze a travel blog that has had massive organic growth since the Helpful Content Update. I pinpoint successful strategies you can implement on your travel blog to improve your SEO, including winning with Google Discover traffic.

I hope this was helpful and interesting. Be sure to check out Stay New England . follow Mike on Twitter, and sign up for his Newsletter.

Also, if you’re just starting out, use Keysearch. I know I mentioned AHREFS while assessing Mike’s keywords, but Keysearch is honestly the best tool.

You can get 20% off with code “KSDISC” here.

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Nina Clapperton is the founder of She Knows SEO.

She started blogging in 2018 and spent years doing everything “right” while earning $0. Then she stopped guessing and learned how search actually works. She rebuilt her travel site around audience intent and structure and grew to 50,000 sessions in 6 months. Within a year, the blog was bringing in $30,000 months and later crossed 243,000 pageviews.

She took the same audience first SEO approach and built her education business into multiple $100,000 months.

Now Nina teaches bloggers and online business owners how to build search powered businesses grounded in strong positioning, clear structure, and monetisation that actually supports their audience. She covers traditional SEO and AI driven search without the tech bro noise, and she’s known for explaining complex strategy with analogies you won’t forget.

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