Keyword Research for Travel Blogs: What to Write First

Research a travel blog one destination at a time, and write first the planning questions your own trip can answer, such as when to go and how to spend three days; leave visa rules, package deals and tour bookings to the sites that own them. By the end you will have turned one city's real searches into a short writing plan, with a reason for each post's place in it. Everything below happens in SearchCub's Keyword ideas, which loads up to 100 related searches for a topic.

The general method, from shortlisting topics to writing a brief, is in keyword research for bloggers. A destination raises three questions that method does not ask: when in the trip each search happens, which searches belong to governments and booking sites rather than to you, and what a first-hand visit can add to a results page that already has an answer.

Start with one destination

This guide uses lisbon travel, searched for the United States on 8 October 2026. The figures are SearchCub estimates from that saved result and the analysis opened inside it. The search loaded 100 rows with more available, so any count here describes those 100 rows.

1. Open Keyword ideas, choose Keyword and type the destination followed by the word travel, here lisbon travel.

2. Set Region to the country most of your readers live in, here United States, and click Search.

3. Read the Keyword set. Monthly searches is the estimated average number of searches a month in that region, and each row carries an intent tag.

Read the words before the numbers. The two biggest rows ask for a map and a train route, the seed sits third at 3,600, and then the planning questions start: best time and safety at 1,600 each, then a 3-day itinerary, a travel guide and a things-to-do list at 720.

In a travel set, the intent tags help separate what you can write from what someone else should answer. SearchCub's help text says search intent "estimates what someone wants to do: learn information, compare options, buy or complete an action, or reach a particular website." Those four jobs appear as Informational, Commercial, Transactional and Navigational, and a row can carry two.

Sort the searches by trip stage

A traveler searches differently while deciding whether to go, while planning the days and once they arrive. Sort the Informational rows by that stage and you can see which posts readers need first. In the list, the two figures after each search are its monthly searches and its Difficulty, SearchCub's 0-to-100 estimate of how hard it is to rank in the unpaid results.

• Deciding when and whether to go. What people typed (monthly searches, difficulty): best time to travel to lisbon (1,600, 0), is lisbon safe (1,600, 0), is lisbon expensive (210, 0), is lisbon cheap (90, 0). The post it points to: When to go, safety and cost.

• Choosing how long to stay. What people typed (monthly searches, difficulty): lisbon itinerary 3 days (720, 0), what to do in lisbon for 3 days (390, 0), lisbon itinerary 4 days (260, 0), lisbon itinerary 5 days (170, 0). The post it points to: One itinerary for each trip length you have done.

• Moving between places. What people typed (monthly searches, difficulty): train travel lisbon to porto (8,100, 2), best way to travel from lisbon to porto (320, 0). The post it points to: A route guide.

• Already in the city. What people typed (monthly searches, difficulty): top 10 things to do in lisbon (720, 0), unusual things to do in lisbon (170, 0), what to do in lisbon for a day (170, 0). The post it points to: Things-to-do lists.

Two things stand out. People settle the length of the trip in the words they type: itineraries came in 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 days, and 3 days leads at 720 a month. And none of the 100 rows named a Lisbon neighborhood or asked where to stay, so search for those with their own seeds before you plan neighborhood posts.

Leave official and booking searches to their owners

Some rows ask for something only a government, a seller or one particular website can give. A blog post that restates them competes with the source of the answer, and it goes out of date whenever the rules or prices change.

• Rules and advisories set by governments. portugal visa requirements for us citizens (390 a month), portugal travel requirements (170) and is portugal safe to travel to right now (210). Link the official page from your own guides instead of restating it.

• Trips for sale. travel packages to lisbon (320, Commercial and Transactional), portugal travel agents (210, Commercial) and best tour companies in lisbon portugal (20, Commercial). The tags say these searchers are comparing or buying, which agencies and tour sellers answer directly.

• One particular place or site. new lisbon travel plaza (480, Navigational), lisbon hotel travel park (140, Navigational and Commercial) and lisbon reddit (140, Navigational and Informational). The searcher already knows where they want to go.

• A picture, not advice. The joint-biggest row, lisbon map europe (8,100), asks for a map.

Flights did not appear in the 100 rows at all, and the word hotel appeared only in lisbon hotel travel park. The difficulty column points the same way. The highest scores in the set belong to entry rules, safety and transit passes: is portugal safe to travel to right now (39), lisbon travel pass (34), portugal travel requirements (30), lisbon travel card and travel pass lisbon (27 each) and the visa row (25). Every other scored row is below 25, and 67 of the 100 rows score 0.

The pass rows sit in between. lisbon travel card and travel pass lisbon (170 a month each) are tagged Informational and Transactional: the seller handles the purchase, but a traveler who used a pass can explain whether it was worth buying. Write that post only if you used one.

Read the season in the monthly numbers

Click best time to travel to lisbon to open its Keyword analysis. The wording best time to visit lisbon was not among the 100 loaded rows, so this example opens the closest seasonal question that was.

An Informational question asked 1,600 times in an average month, at difficulty 0. Under Next stops on the best line, the next three stops are all routes: Lisbon to Porto (320), Madrid to Lisbon (110) and Lisbon to the Algarve (70).

Then click More keyword details and read the Search trend (monthly searches) chart; hover over or tap a month to see its value. For this search, January 2026 was the highest month at 1,900. October, November, March, April and May were the lowest at 1,300, and the other six months sat at 1,600.

The seed moves very differently. lisbon travel fell to 880 in February and April 2026 and rose to 9,900 in June and July. The broad trip search peaked in summer, while the question of when to go was asked all year and most often in January. January was the single highest month for 12 of the 100 rows, this one included; among the others are travel packages to lisbon (1,300) and best way to travel from lisbon to porto (480).

So publish the when-to-go post before January, not before summer, and keep every month in it current, because the question never dropped below 1,300 a month. These figures cover September 2025 to August 2026, so they cannot tell you whether the January high repeats. Seasonal keywords shows how to check more years and work back from the start of a rise.

Check what the results page already says

Scroll down the same analysis to the SERP overview, which lists the results page for the search; this one shows United States desktop results checked on 8 October 2026.

Read the blocks in order: an AI overview, then U.S. News Travel, then People also ask. Its four questions are all planning questions: budget, trip length, the cheapest time to go and the rainy season.

The nine ordinary results came from travel.usnews.com, reddit.com, ricksteves.com, royalcaribbean.com, tripadvisor.com, portugalgetaways.com, audleytravel.com, cntraveler.com and lonelyplanet.com. Eight of the nine snippets point to spring or fall; the ninth, from cntraveler.com, points to June to August for good weather. The second result is different in kind: a Reddit thread whose snippet opens with a traveler's own visits, "I've been in Lisbon in Mid-to-late May and in early September." When a Reddit thread ranks for your search explains how to decide whether to write the post anyway.

Google's guidance on creating helpful content asks whether your content shows "first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge", and its example is expertise gained by really using a product or service, or by going to a place yourself. It also asks whether a page provides "substantial value when compared to other pages in search results". When eight results already say spring or fall, a tenth page saying the same adds little. What you can add is what you saw: the month you went, what you paid, the weather you got and what you would do differently.

The People also ask questions show where that detail goes. "What is the cheapest time to go to Lisbon?" and "What is the rainy season in Lisbon?" belong in the when-to-go post. "Is 3 days in Lisbon too long?" belongs in your itinerary, and "Is $1000 enough for a week in Portugal?" in a cost post built from your own spending. SearchCub stored a shortened copy of the AI overview, so read the full results page in Google before you write.

The writing order for Lisbon

Put the three sorts together. Planning posts go before in-the-city lists, because people ask those questions earlier; here the when-to-go question peaked in January. Among those, choose the posts your own trip can improve, and leave out every row that belongs to a government, a seller or a particular site. For Lisbon:

1. When to go to Lisbon, for best time to travel to lisbon (1,600 a month, difficulty 0), built from the months you were there.

2. Lisbon in three days, for lisbon itinerary 3 days (720) and what to do in lisbon for 3 days (390), built from the days you actually spent. Add longer versions only for trips you have taken.

3. Lisbon to Porto by train, for train travel lisbon to porto (8,100, difficulty 2), if you made the journey. Link the official timetable and tickets; your post covers what the trip was like.

4. Is Lisbon safe? and Is Lisbon expensive?, for 1,600 and 210 searches a month: what you saw and what you spent, with the official travel advisory linked for current conditions.

5. Things to do in Lisbon, for top 10 things to do in lisbon (720) and unusual things to do in lisbon (170), written after the planning posts so they can link to it.

Each of the five answers a real search with something only your trip can supply, and neighborhood posts can follow once you have searched for them. If your blog covers food as well as travel, keyword research for food bloggers works the same tool through a single dish.

Your next step

Pick a place you have actually been and search it in Keyword ideas with the word travel after it, for the country most of your readers live in. Sort the rows into the four trip stages, cross out the ones that belong to governments, sellers or particular sites, then open your biggest planning question and read its Search trend (monthly searches) before you schedule the post.