Food Blogging FM 010 How To Increase Your SEO Traffic Every Month

Food Blogging FM 010:

How To Increase Your SEO Traffic Every Month Brought To You By: RecipeThis.com

Introduction Welcome to our tenth food blogging Podcast.

Today I wanted to talk to you about SEO. It is such an important subject as far as bloggers are concerned and is a part of your traffic that you should take seriously and work on the most.

There are a lot of bloggers out there (not just ones in the food niche) that are confused by it and just don’t understand what it means or how to achieve it or think that it is a lot more complicated than it is.

Well I should state by saying I probably have an unfair advantage because I have spent years building up good quality SEO results for my websites and the websites of my clients.

I first started researching how to do SEO back in 2006. At the time I had been ripped off by an SEO company that was based in the UK to the tune of around $20,000. Thankfully I eventually got the money back via the bank, but it put me off SEO companies for a long time and I decided to learn all about it for myself.

So it was my mission in 2006 and I worked hard learning it for a long time and I helped many clients over the years climb to the top of the serps. And I never suffered from the Panda and Penguin updates that Google have put in motion over the last few years.

Plus when I do come across corporate SEO companies they just don’t seem to practice what they preach and offer very little that you can’t do yourself.

So let me show you how I have increased my organic Google traffic by 1800% in the first five months of my food blog and how shockingly easy it is to do the same.

SEO Is Slow Yes of course I have built my SEO traffic from nothing and I generally double what I did the month before. But it is slow to get going. You may well find that what you start ranking for today, is something that you published on the blog 2 months ago.

And this part of it can put a lot of people off. They don’t have the patience to wait and with SEO it is important that they do!

But if you are doubling your SEO traffic on a regular basis, then who cares if it is slow if it means that those 3000 SEO visitors that you currently get a month, could turn into 6000 next month. You just have to imagine where I would be a year from now!

I also record my SEO results each month so that I can see the growth and as long as it is increasing each month then you know you’re doing a good job!

For the record here is my Google SEO traffic results month on month:     

First Month - 208 Sessions Second Month – 310 Sessions Third Month – 837 Sessions Fourth Month – 2022 Sessions Fifth Month - 3466 Sessions

This brings me up to 2 weeks ago. So my blog is not even six months old and it is already getting regular SEO traffic so it shows you can build it from scratch.

When I compare this to all SEO traffic (so not just Google) we got a total of 4668. This of course cheers me up and stops me from being so

inpatient when I compare it to what my other sites get. But I have to remind myself that they are a few years old!

SEO Is Like Your ABC Do a few super simple things and you can be pretty much guaranteed success.

It is not rocket science and anyone could achieve amazing results. You don’t have to have had SEO training or know your way around website code to achieve it.

Here are a few simple baby steps you need to achieve to make it happen: A) Make sure your content is SEO friendly – back on the blog in January we discussed about how to make your posts SEO friendly.

The way you should put your post together, where you should put tags, what you should call your post and simple little things that you should do each time you post.

B) Make sure your content has good keywords in it – this is VERY important as a couple of minutes that it takes to choose keywords can make a huge difference in your SEO traffic.

C) Make sure your content is niche specific – never mind doing a smoothie one day on your blog and then doing chocolate chip cookies the next. This may be what you want to do BUT Google is like a computer and will get confused if you go from one topic to a totally different one.

D) Make sure you share your blog content – be the first person to share your blog posts as they happen. My blog posts are scheduled in advance but each morning I will go on my laptop and share my latest posts to Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, & Facebook. My virtual assistant will then do the sharing (around the same time) to Yummly, Stumbleupon, Flickr & Photobucket.

Then in the evening Dominic will share our posts to Instagram.

E) If it’s a recipe share it to recipe submission sites – This should also be a daily/weekly habit depending on the amount of content you have. Build up a collection of at least 5 recipe sites to submit to and then do the same for Tumblr recipe sites.

These five steps in itself can have a huge impact on your SEO and do you want to know why?

Hitting the top of the search engine results is all about having backlinks.

You have probably had a few spammy emails by now offering to build backlinks and please stay away from these services as they are AGAINST GOOGLES TERMS AND CONDITIONS and when (not if) they catch you, you will never rank for a recipe ever again!

Google and the other search engines want natural backlinks and the best form of them is social media links. So if you think each time someone retweets or shares your recipe you have created a new backlink. You even created them yourself by sharing your content on social media and on recipe sharing sites. The more backlinks you have over your site the easier it will be to rank.

So let’s do the maths for a second…… You post to your blog every day for the first 60 days (this is highly recommended to get authority early on with the search engines) and each time you do, you have shared that piece of content over nine different sites (sorry Instagram doesn’t count!). You then share your content over 10 recipe sharing sites for each post you do. This would mean that over a 60 day period you have created 1,440 backlinks.

Let’s say that out of those 60 posts you get 5 shares from others from your social media. This would increase your backlinks to a grand total of over 4000 backlinks from your first two months of blogging.

Then you imagine that you reduce your schedule to about 3 posts a week and the same rules apply, but because you have built up a social media following it is easier to get shares. And each post then gets you 10 shares each from your followers. This means that over a weekly basis you can be increasing your backlinks by 100 per week which is an average rate for a blog and you continue to rank for your chosen keywords.

At the same time not only are you building up your SEO traffic but your social media and your recipe sharing traffic at the same time.

As I also like to work off fact here is my backlinks as of the 25th April: 10,416 links And out of this 4115 have come from Pinterest, 1647 from FoodGawker, 1113 from Tumblr and 702 from Delishogram.

When I think that many blogs that do really well in the search engines have around the 50,000 mark it sounds great to say I am 20% there.

Also when you compare notes I have 859 links to one post which is my Crispy Potato Wedges. It is also the post that brings me the most SEO traffic and much of it is actually for keywords that I have not even targeted!

This is also why bloggers that are blogging daily in the long term will grow faster than those that manage 2 posts a week. Content rules and the more regular content that you have available to do this with the better your results.

Checking SEO Stats Another important part of your SEO is to keep an eye on your SEO stats. Check your Google Webmaster Tools at least twice a week. Download the results and see what is ranking and see how you can improve things. I also find as a food blogger that it is not necessarily what you expect that ranks in the search engines.

For example I will do recipes for my blog because they are good and because I like them, not because I want it number #1 on Google. Take

my flourless cheese sauce. It was published a while ago as a quick recipe and it is my top SEO blog post!

It is also a good idea to view your webmaster tools for you to see what Google is associating you with.

As soon as possible you want to be associated with keywords to do with your website. If your niche is Paleo you want to see regular Paleo recipes appearing. Just like for us we are all about the kitchen gadgets and we rank most for Airfryer recipes. Though, we also do well for soup maker recipes, spiralizer recipes and a few slow cooker recipes.

Also the idea is that you can rinse and repeat. If a certain type of recipe is ranking well, what similar recipes could you do?

Our Podcast Sponsor For this week our Podcast sponsor is Google Webmaster Tools. This is because they are your go to as far as SEO research is concerned, checking your SEO rankings and best of all for increasing your SEO results month after month.

If you didn’t have this information to hand, you wouldn’t be able to see what were your success points and what was not worth the effort.

I also love the fact that I can see in an instant my positions in Google for my keywords.

There are also a lot of expensive SEO tools out there and you really don’t need it when you have your webmaster tools!

What You SHOULDN’T Be Doing With Your SEO

Okay so I have put together what I recommend for great SEO results but what will tarnish it? What will stop it before it has even started?

Well there are actually a few things……including: Avoid Fiverr like the plague – There are a lot of gigs on there offering all kinds of different backlinks. They are useless and usually involve Russian social bookmarking and are run using black hat SEO software.

Don’t disappear – Google likes to associate you with things. They like to know that you are there. If you disappear for a month then you go from 0 new content and 0 new backlinks to lots of content and lots of backlinks and they will often think of you in a spammy way. I have a favourite diet food blog and she goes from 3 times a week posting to nothing for months and if she stuck at it she would have millions of monthly visitors by now and her recipes are amazing!

Don’t change your niche – now this has to be the biggest “no no” out of all of them. I have seen food bloggers go from a Paleo theme to a nondiet theme. This just confuses the search engines. They have always associated you with certain keywords and you going off and doing something different will take a long time to recover from. You’re much better selling the site and starting again on a new one!

Food Blogging Q & A Each Podcast I pick a question that has been asked on one of the Facebook Groups and then answer it for you. For this session I was asked what to do if you don’t have a micro niche.

Well slowly get yourself one!

As a food blogger you don’t want the expense of having to buy in specific ingredients and will generally cook surrounding what you have in. Well if you are putting out 3 new recipes a week then make sure it is niche focused so you can gradually alter your site so that it fits in with a micro niche.

Look at what the majority of your recipes are made up of. You may find that 60% of your recipes are easy family ones in the slow cooker, so increase this to 90% and then just add a few other random ones along the way. Or you might be a busy family and you could relaunch yourself under the 30 minute meals format. Or even better save yourself extra money and have the focus on frugal cooking and start adding a pricing of what each recipe costs to make.

Just look outside the box at what you’re doing now and look at how you can make yourself more niche specific.

Well That’s A Wrap Thanks for joining us in our latest Podcast. We have built up search engine traffic from nothing and proved that you don’t have to be an established site to get search engine traffic.

We recommend that you download the transcript so that you access all the links mentioned and that you come back regularly to listen to our other food blogging podcasts.

Links & Resources Mentioned In This Podcast        

The 3 stages to completing SEO on every post The art of good keyword research Do you have a micro niche?

My secret SEO strategy for food blogs Google Webmaster Tools One year content plan Airfryer Crispy Potato Wedges Flourless Cheese Sauce

How To Get Involved In Our Podcasts Our Podcasts are easily accessible no matter how you prefer to access them. You can download them as a PDF from our blog by going to recipe this dot com and visiting the Podcasts category. This is also very good for getting the links to material that is mentioned in the Podcast.

Alternatively you can listen to them like you are now. You can also subscribe to our iTunes feed or you can be kept in the loop by joining our mailing list at recipe this dot com forward slash the food blogging newsletter.

Thanks again for listening and best of luck with your food blog.

Samantha & Dominic Milner http://recipethis.com And don’t forget to connect with us on social media:    

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And to get regular updates from us sign up for our free food blogging newsletter below: http://recipethis.com/thefoodbloggingnewsletter/ We also have a food blogging group on Facebook that you can access at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/472542536277443/ And don’t forget to check out this Podcasts sponsor: (Google webmaster tools)