7 Tips to Start and Grow Your Environmental Blog

I am a huge fan of getting competition. In other words: I want as many people as possible to start an environmental blog and write about topics like global warming, sustainability, zero waste, and recycling.

Why? Because it helps to educate people.

It’s so much fake news out there that website owners with honest intentions are the only thing that combats all these conspiracy theories. Therefore, I would like to give you some tips on how you can improve the traffic to your website.

This article suits two types of audiences: Those of you who already have an environmental blog and want more traffic. And those who plan to start such a blog (or any blog at all).

Here are the tips:

7 Tips to Start and Grow Your  Environmental Blog

Table of Contents

1. Provide high-quality content that is super useful to the reader

One thing is to be a decent writer. Not everyone can be that. I myself is no native English speaker. In other words: it’s not exactly J. K. Rowling’s quality on the articles I write. Yet, the content I provide on this website is very useful.

If you don’t get any traffic or engagement around your content, it’s probably not because you’re a horrible writer. It’s more likely that the topics you cover are not interesting.

How do you find topics that are relevant and interesting? This is something I will teach you later in the article, in tip number 4. Stay tuned.

Now, let’s talk about Facebook.

2. Promote your blog on social media

When I started my Sustainability Matters Daily Facebook group, I had no idea what type of success it would generate. (Info: The group has been renamed and disconnected from this blog in the meantime.)

Despite not spending any money on advertising, it has grown to more than 7,000 members – and is growing every single day:

All I do to grow this Facebook page is constantly adding one single picture or article every day.

Having your own Facebook group is important to send social signals to Google.

Why are social media sites vital to grow your environmental blog?

Firstly, because eco-friendly material is content people tend to engage in and share. For instance, I shared a single tweet that I randomly found on Twitter:

One of my most viral Facebook posts – generating many hundreds of new likes to my FB page.

It has now been shared more than 30,000 times and been seen by 2 million people.

Secondly, Google has admitted that social signals (shares on social media websites) is an important ranking factor on their search engine page result. In other words: it will also help your SEO.

3. Maintain a consistent posting schedule

This is where most people struggle. It’s easier to log in and check your (non-existing) traffic numbers. Getting that motivation to write about various topics…that’s a bit harder.

99% of blog owners will quit before they see any success. You have to be aware that for the first 6 months, you will write to a ghost town. No people will find your content. No people will comment on your articles. No people will care at all.

But you have to stay in there. Keep your posting schedule consistent and never give up.

What I do is simple: Creating a Word document for every month, where I note what I intend to write about. This is how my document looks like when it’s still a draft:

Plan your success – month by month.

Very clean, simple, and smart. Every time I do a task, I simply cross it out.

4. Do smart keyword research to find topics that bring in traffic

Let’s see what happens if you google the phrase “What is global warming?“.

Google results that will appear if you search for the phrase: “What is Global Warming?”.

As you can see, the four top articles are owned by extremely popular and powerful websites:

  1. Wikipedia.
  2. National Geographic.
  3. NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)
  4. NASA.

Most likely, no matter how good you write, your website isn’t better nor more relevant than these. In other words: you stand no chance to rank or get any traffic on an article explaining global warming. No chance. Don’t go there.

What should you do instead?

Narrow it down. Let’s still use the global warming topic. Instead of naming your article “what is global warming?” you could use some of these topics:

  • How will global warming impact people in Sweden?
  • What can I do myself to prevent global warming?
  • How much do scientists believe that the sea will rise because of global warming?

All these questions do have MUCH less number of searches per month. At the same time, you can be 100% sure that they are not covered by large websites like Wikipedia and NASA.

In other words: you have a big chance to actually get the first position in Google – and therefore also quite a lot of traffic.

Need more inspiration to come up with blog topics?

Great. Let me help you out. I have actually written an article called “Blog Post Ideas: Environment and Vegan blogs“. It’s a super helpful article that does not only give you some topics to write about, but also shows you exactly how you should do keyword research.

5. Interact with your users in the comment section

One of my most popular articles is called “Bachelor/Master thesis topics for your Environmental studies“. Since it was launched, an awful lot of students from all over the world have contacted me in the comment section asking for advice.

People asking for help in the comment section.

And I give it to them.

…and I am “nice” enough to provide them a proper answer.

The chances of people returning to or linking to your website increase dramatically when you interact with them. Make your readers feel valued and understood.

It’s something many people ignore, but it’s actually crucial. When you look at the statistics for your website, all you see are numbers. But behind those numbers, it’s actually real people trying to figure out more about a problem they encounter.

6. Keep a healthy relationship with other people in the “industry”

There are 1000s of businesses that work with eco-friendly services and products. You should be careful about burning any bridges with any of them.

For me, that has been an excellent way to get more people to my website. These are some ways that you can benefit from a healthy business relationship with other people in the industry:

  • You can interview them on your website
  • If they own products on Amazon, you can send people to their Amazon page and earn money (commission)
  • You can help to test and review their product (Free product! Wohoo!)
  • You can get a shoutout on their Instagram or Facebook page

7. Follow SEO and online marketing experts

I very seldom spend any time reading about other peoples’ success. But there are two websites that I truly value. These guys know exactly how to make websites that get a lot of traffic.

Income School

Their name might imply that they’re all about making money online. And they are, sort of. Yet more importantly, the Income School guys (Ricky and Jim) are brilliant at making user-friendly websites that Google tends to love.

These are some of the things that they will teach you through their YouTube channel:

  • Why some websites do not rank in Google (a HUGE topic)
  • Why links should not be manually created, but earned through posting high-quality content
  • Why you should pick a niche that interests you
  • How you can build a website, get thousands of visitors…and then sell it
  • And a lot more.

Niche Pursuits

If you are interested in monetizing your website, Niche Pursuits is, by far, the best website online. Spencer has taught me a lot about how to earn money on my blog visitors.

This is what you can expect to learn on Nichepursuits.com:

  • How to put useful ads on your website that visitors will click on
  • Which affiliate programs to apply for
  • How to use the Amazon Affiliate Program to earn money
  • SEO

That was it. Now, let’s look at what we have learned and how we can implement these changes to grow your blog traffic.

Key takeaways to grow your environmental blog

  1. Stay focused and determined. You are not going to see spectacular results within a year. Online business doesn’t work like that.
  2. Do spend SOME time reading articles like this one, but not too much. Education is important, but it’s more important to create powerful content on a user-friendly platform.

  3. Stay connected with your readers. I can’t emphasize how important this is. People need to trust that you will answer them if they leave a comment. Believe me: they will come back to you.

  4. Use social media channels to grow your business. It does not only help to get more traffic from Facebook, but it also tells Google that your website is influential.

9 thoughts on “7 Tips to Start and Grow Your Environmental Blog”

  1. Avatar

    Starting small is better than having lots of elaborate items. I will analyze my quite short articles. I will expand on the topics that are frequently searched for in search engines. In my opinion, building a blog based on the “Start Lean” principle is the way to go.

  2. Avatar

    Wow, this is one h… of an article!

    I never thought that opening the comment section of my blog is valuable, but I can clearly see that this is something that provides a lot of value. 😉

    Do you believe that SEO is the best way to get traffic ? It takes so much time for Google to detect your website properly

    1. Avatar

      Thanks a lot, Ulgtr! 🙂

      Yes, I love to interact with my readers. The comment section is gold.

      I do believe that SEO is the best long-term way to get traffic to your website. If you want to run a blog or a website for more than a couple of years, Google traffic will be your main traffic source in the end. Pinterest could be a good second, but creating SEO-friendly content is alfa & omega.

  3. Avatar

    I love that you share real-life examples. I also find it very nice of you to actually help other competitors grow, which most people are extremely afraid of.

    That being said, I will say that it’s extremely hard to become anywhere close to famous on Facebook. They are not giving anything away for free anymore. I run a food blog (with vegan products in Italian) and even there, in a small local market, I do not get any organic traffic from Facebook.

    What can happen is that my picture gets shared a lot. But when I post a link to my website…. NO. That never works out very well.

    1. Avatar

      Thanks! 🙂

      I have no problem helping “competitors” as long as we together can share more useful information about the environment.

      You are right about Facebook. It doesn’t work to get website traffic anymore…not for small websites at least.

  4. Avatar

    Wow, what a guide!

    Thanks a lot!

    I am not a direct competitor as I do have a Swedish vegan recipe blog. What I see is that I do struggle to get some visitors from Google. If I write a recipe called “swedish meatballs vegan style”, it will always be much higher rated website over me on Google. For instance the biggest newspaper in Sweden, Aftonbladet, made their own food section. And they are always ranking above me on the same keywords. What to do?

    1. Avatar

      Hej Julia,

      thanks for letting me know about your blog. Sounds like you are onto something – I guess a lot of people are interested in Swedish vegan recipes. 🙂

      In regards to your Google Search Result problem, I would suggest one of the two following:

      1. Only write recipes that are unique. Let’s say that you and Aftonbladet (or any other huge Swedish website) have more or less the exact same recipe. In that case, you stand no chance in ranking above them.

      Sorry to be a bit direct in this response, but it’s important for you to know. If you spent a lot of time trying to beat their rankings, I would feel bad…because it’s not going to happen unless you have something unique.

      2. Try to see if you can get some more links from high authority websites. Try to advertise your website among other vegan bloggers, be active in the vegan community on Instagram, etc.

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