Why you might want a template for recipe blog posts

Writer’s block, anyone? Sometimes you’re super inspired to write a recipe blog post. You have a story about your family’s history with a recipe, an anecdote about a vacation that inspired a recipe, or information to share about the star ingredient. But… sometimes you’re just writing yet another recipe blog post and the WordPress cursor is staring back at you at the top of a blank post.

Having at least a rough outline of what needs to be included in a recipe blog post is a great way to get started. Creating a personalized recipe blog post template can give structure to your blog posts, allow your readers to know what to expect, and generally please the SEO gods.

How to structure the perfect recipe blog post

As with almost all of our recommendations, these are general best practices, not hard and fast rules. Trial and error is an important part of blogging — see what posts perform best for you in search engines and see what sections of content seem to resonate most with your readers (recipe reviews and comments are a great way to keep a pulse on this). The primary goal of structuring a recipe blog post this way is to optimize your content for the user (not Google)!

Zippy Introduction

The first 2-3 sentences of your blog post should be your sales pitch for the recipe. Why should someone want to make your recipe? Think of this as the highlight reel of your recipe — share main ingredients, keywords, preparation time (especially if it’s a quick recipe!), relevant nutrition information (“packed with protein” or “vegan”), and flavor profile (“cozy and chocolatey” or “savory and cheesy”).

Here are some great examples:

From the Chimichurri Shrimp with Tomatoes recipe on Pinch of Yum: “Saucy, punchy, and delightful Chimichurri Shrimp! Served with a tomato salad, a pile of hot steamy rice, and a dollop of creamy tzatziki.”

From the Pulled Pork Nachos recipe on Tastes Better from Scratch: “Nothing says party time like a giant platter of Pulled Pork Nachos with black beans, jalapeños, sour cream, shredded pulled pork, BBQ sauce, and cheese. A winning appetizer for game-day, or any day!”

From the Bakery-Style Vegan Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe on Rainbow Plant Life: “With a pillowy soft texture, crunchy caramelized topping, and dark chocolate in every bite, these Vegan Chocolate Chip Muffins may just be the muffins of your dreams. They look and taste gourmet but are easy to make.”

Star Photo

The first photo in your blog post should be your best. This is likely the image you will select as your Featured Image, as well. We usually recommend a photo of the finished product of your recipe!

Personal Paragraph (or Two!)

The section of blog posts that many people like to make light of (“just give me the recipe already!”) but we would argue is one of the most important — the personal paragraphs! This is the moment for your personality to shine. Tell us about the recipe! Cover things like:

• Your inspiration for creating the recipe, such as:
  • Travel
  • Family recipe
  • Restaurants
  • Ingredients (source, in season, etc.)
• Why you love the recipe
• How you like to eat the recipe
• How you developed the recipe (a peak behind the scenes)

In the age of AI, we believe that this is the writing that will keep followers coming back to your content and your recipes over and over again. Use this part of your blog posts to connect with your loyal readers and differentiate your content from other food blogs (and AI ).

We love this example from Lindsay’s Banza Chicken Bowls with Calabrian Chili Sauce recipe at Pinch of Yum:

Ingredients Breakdown

This is the section where you share the most important ingredients in your recipe. You can also include a little bit about each ingredient (purpose, suggestions for substitutions for certain ingredients, quick notes about preparation, etc.). You might offer additional ingredient suggestions here, as well. This section is a natural one to demonstrate your expertise (E-E-A-T, anyone?).

This is also where you’ll want to include a photo of your ingredients, if you have one! It can also be helpful to include a quick note along the lines of, “make sure to check the recipe card for a full list of ingredients and quantities” in this section!

Step-by-step instructions and photos

In this section you’ll break down the steps to making the recipe, but with a bit more personality than you might find in the recipe card itself. You don’t need to include exact timing or precise instructions, but rather a general idea of how the recipe is made (bonus for including helpful anecdotes here)!

Frequently asked questions

An FAQ block is an easy way to add additional structured data to your post. FAQ blocks can also help readers quickly find answers to questions they potentially have about the recipe!

What should you include in this section? A great place to get inspiration is the ‘People Also Ask’ section on Google. When you search for your recipe keyword (or a main ingredient) what do people already want to know? Other go-to questions include preparation questions, storage tips, substitution questions, and/or nutrition tidbits. This is also a great place to answer questions that come up often in your recipe reviews, comments, or social media DMs!

Recipe card

Can’t forget the recipe card! We have a whole blog post about choosing a WordPress recipe plugin if you’re in the market, but otherwise, this part of your blog posts should be fairly straightforward. Fill out as many sections of your recipe card as possible (structured data!), list the ingredients in the order they’re used in the recipe, and provide as much detail in the instructions as you can.

Also consider including storage suggestions and substitutions suggestions in the Notes portion of your recipe card, as those are useful to readers!

Optional sections

While these sections won’t make sense in every recipe post, they’re nice to have (or necessary) in some! Consider including:

• Links to other, relevant recipes (side dishes, similar recipes, etc.)
• An email opt-in or call-to-action section
• Sponsored post disclosures
• Nutrition facts
• Recommended equipment/tools

And that wraps up our guide to structuring the perfect recipe blog post! Remember — the ultimate goal is that your post makes it as easy as possible for a reader to make your recipe. As long as you’re doing that, you’re off to a great start!

We’d love to know… do you follow a template for your recipe blog posts?

The post Structuring the Perfect Recipe Blog Post appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

The Food Blogger Pro Podcast has been going strong for almost 9 years (!) and we have 430+ episodes in our archive. Bjork (the Co-Founder of Food Blogger Pro and podcast host extraordinaire) has interviewed countless successful food bloggers and industry experts over the years, covering everything from monetization to food photography, and plugins to SEO.

In this blog post, we’re rounding up our 10 favorite podcast episodes all about food blogging SEO. If you haven’t already listened to these interviews, bookmark them for future listening — you won’t want to miss them!

You can listen to all of the SEO-related episodes mentioned in this blog post in this handy-dandy playlist:

In no particular order…

1. 399: E-E-A-T, Static Homepages, AI, and More Food Blog SEO Advice with Casey Markee

In this episode, we shared five major takeaways from a members-only Live Q&A with our SEO Expert, Casey Markee. Casey shares more about E-E-A-T, how AI may impact organic site traffic, and if there’s an ideal recipe post “template,” and more!

Listen to the full episode here!

2. 405: How Keyword Research, Resilience, and Resourcefulness Helped Casey Rooney Make a Six-Figure Income in Two Years

Casey Rooney started her food blog, Get On My Plate, in 2021, and has had incredible success growing her site over the last two years. She has leaned into her passion for SEO and content creation and made a six-figure income in 2022.

In this episode, Casey shares more about her workflow, keyword research process, and why she doesn’t focus on social media.

Listen to the full episode here!

3. 407: How Core Web Vitals and Image Size Impact Search Ranking with Andrew Wilder

In this episode, Andrew Wilder (our WordPress Support Expert) takes a deep dive into Core Web Vitals and explains how they’re calculated and why it’s important to optimize your site with Core Web Vitals in mind. Bjork and Andrew also chat about the best practices for blog image sizes, including the best method for compressing your images, and frequently asked questions about Featured Images.

Listen to the full episode here!

4. 380: What Google is Expecting from Food Creators with Arsen Rabinovich

In this podcast episode, Bjork and Arsen Rabinovich talk all about content that performs well in Google search results. They discuss Google algorithm changes, ranking factors, domain authority, and more!

Listen to the full episode here!

5. 372: How Elena Davis Went From 20k to 100k+ Monthly Pageviews and Got Accepted Into Mediavine

Elena Davis launched her blog in 2020 and has grown her traffic to over 100k monthly pageviews since then. She has also been accepted into Mediavine and transitioned to working as a full-time content creator. In this interview, she explains how she strategically optimized her site and grew her traffic to meet the requirements for Mediavine.

Listen to the full episode here!

6. 362: How to Increase Your Organic Traffic with Keyword Research with Aleka Shunk

In this episode, Bjork chats all about keyword research with Aleka Shunk, the creator of Cooking With Keywords. Aleka shares her tips for developing a strong keyword research strategy to increase your site traffic. You’ll learn what keywords and modifiers are, how to get started with keyword research, what tools you should use, and more.

Listen to the full episode here!

7. 333: Serving Your Audience – How Emma Duckworth Doubled Her Pageviews by Focusing on SEO

After growing her business for a few years, Emma (from Emma Duckworth Bakes) decided to double down on her blog and hire a mentor to help her out with SEO. In this interview, you’ll hear how she used the avatar exercise to understand her audience, how she optimized her homepage and recipe categories, and what she’s doing to focus on SEO moving forward.

Listen to the full interview here!

8. 343: Blogging with a Full-Time Job (Part Two) – How Focusing on SEO Led to $2,000 Monthly Earnings with Cree Carraway

In this episode, you’ll hear how Cree Carraway from Cooking with Bliss strategically focused on SEO to increase her traffic and join an ad network, how she started doing keyword research, and what the impact of earning an income from her blog has been on her life.

Listen to the full episode here!

9. 337: Shifting Your Mindset – Leaning into SEO and Learning from Industry Experts with Ali Stafford

Ali Stafford from Alexandra’s Kitchen is a seasoned food blogger who has been sharing her recipes online since 2006.

But over the past few years, she has been shifting her mindset to focus on growing her traffic and leveling up her content strategy. In this episode, you’ll hear what changes she has implemented to focus on SEO, how she has strategically worked with consultants to grow her business, and more.

Listen to the full interview here!

10. 322: Going All In – How Sarah Cook Went From 17k to 600k Monthly Pageviews

In this interview, Sarah Cook from Sustainable Cooks shares everything she’s done along the way to go from 17k to 600k monthly pageviews with her blog. She explains some of the unique ways she has invested in her blog, why she decided to delete hundreds of posts, why she loves having a blogging accountability partner, and more.

Listen to the full interview here!

We hope you love tuning into these episodes! We release a new episode of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast every single week, and we encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app so you never miss a thing!

And that’s a wrap on our roundup of some of our favorite SEO-centric podcast episodes! Are there any we missed? Share in the comments below!

The post Top 10 FBP Podcast Episodes about Food Blogging SEO appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

E-E-A-T is a brainchild of Google (which should get your SEO senses tingling!) and is part of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.

At the end of 2022, Google made a change to how it rates and ranks the quality of content (as part of its Search Quality Rater Guidelines), which influences where that content appears in the Search Engine Results Pages, or SERPS. This change expanded the initial concept of E-A-T, to include another E — Experience.

Creating content that exemplifies E-E-A-T ensures that you’re creating content first and foremost for your readers, that is high-quality (yes, there I said it again!), thorough, and future-proofed.

What is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T (or double E-A-T) stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. But what does that really mean when it comes to creating content? Let’s break it down:

Experience: Google defines this (relatively) new E as follows: “Does content also demonstrate that it was produced with some degree of experience, such as with actual use of a product, having actually visited a place or communicating what a person experienced?” Think of this as the first-hand, personal, life background, ‘been there done that’ part of the E-E-A-T equation.

Have you been baking for twenty years? Experience Have you raised three toddlers and have lots of picky eater tips and tricks to share? Experience Were you diagnosed with Celiac Disease and had to learn how to eat and shop for a gluten-free lifestyle? Experience

Expertise: Do you have the knowledge, skills, education, or training relevant to the content you share? This can take many different forms as a food creator — are you a Registered Dietitian? Did you attend culinary school? Do you have a background as a chef? Let your readers (and Google!) know.

Quick intermission in our definitions to dive a little deeper into the difference between Experience and Expertise in the eyes of Google.

Experience is more personal than Expertise. An Expert in baking might be able to explain the reason why two different chocolate chip cookie recipes produce different results, but if you’ve baked two different chocolate chip cookie recipes, you can tell readers the difference between the two recipes based on your Experience.

Despite their differences, both Expertise and Experience influence the trust a reader has in the content (more on that, later)!

Authoritativeness: In Google’s eyes, Authoritativeness is described as “the extent to which the content creator or the website is known as a go-to source for the topic.” Are you a resource for a certain type of recipe content (think vegan, French patisserie, baby food)? Have you been interviewed by news outlets on that topic? That’s Authoritativeness.

Trustworthiness: Google has told us that “the most important member at the center of the E-E-A-T family is Trust.” Are you sharing honest, safe, and accurate content with your readers? In the food (and particularly the nutrition) space, this is a really important aspect of E-E-A-T. Always make sure that your posts are appropriately cited and researched before sharing any nutrition or health information. (Psst… This is a helpful blog post about staying within your scope if you’re not a Registered Dietitian).

Source: Google

How does E-E-A-T impact SEO?

E-E-A-T is Google’s way of communicating what it considers to be *high-quality content.* While E-E-A-T is not part of Google’s algorithm or a ranking factor, it can still impact the performance of your content in SERPs.

Search Engine Journal put it like this: E-E-A-T is “a guideline Google uses to determine what content is high-quality and should be ranked higher and part of several different aspects of its algorithm. So while it’s not a direct ranking factor, it can have an impact on your overall search rankings indirectly.”

Google explained further that “assessing your own content in terms of [E-E-A-T] criteria may help align it conceptually with the different signals that our automated systems use to rank content.”

So when a human reviewer from Google peruses your site, they’ll be using the E-E-A-T guidelines to evaluate (and potentially reward) content that is determined to be high-quality. Sign us up!

How can food bloggers incorporate E-E-A-T into their content?

It is always a good idea to create content for your food blog with E-E-A-T in mind because, ultimately, it means you’re creating content with your readers in mind. But how, exactly, do you go about doing that? Here are a few simple ideas:

Be meticulous about recipe testing

You know that we’re big advocates for recipe testing here at Food Blogger Pro. Beyond ensuring that you’re sharing foolproof recipes with your readers, it can help establish you as a T

rustworthy content creator and demonstrate your Experience as a recipe developer.

Here are two of our favorite examples of recipe testing in action:

• Handle the Heat’s Ultimate Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies (Fun fact: this blog post was used in Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines as an example of ‘Experience.’)
• The Pancake Princess’s No-Bake Cheesecake Bake Off

Include an About Me/Author Bio on your food blog

Including an About Me section in your sidebar as well as an About Me Page (and linking to it in the byline of each recipe) is a great, easy way to convey your Experience and Expertise (and to position yourself as a Trustworthy resource in the food blogging space).

Make sure to include:

• Your educational background
• Relevant work experience
• How many years you’ve been blogging
• Your credentials
• Links to any cookbooks or ebooks you’ve authored
• Links to any news articles or podcasts you’ve been featured in
• A high-quality headshot or photograph of yourself

Alexis Joseph (the food blogger at Hummusapien) has a great example of an About Me page that exemplifies E-E-A-T.

Share evidence of you preparing the recipes or using the products

Odds are, you’re already capturing recipe videos to share on social media or in your blog posts. These videos are also a great way to demonstrate your Experience with the recipe creation process because they usually show you making the recipe!

If you often share links to products you use and like, this is also a good opportunity for you to show yourself using the product. Never forget to explain why you endorse the product, too!

Include structured data on your site

Including structured data throughout your site helps communicate to Google the purpose of your site, and the type of content you share.

Recipe plugins and FAQ blocks are some of the most common examples of structured data on food blogs — use them!

Educate your readers

As you might have guessed from the terms Expert, Authority, and Experience, a big part of the E-E-A-T guidelines is that you are, in fact, serving as an educator in your field. What does that look like for food blogs? Including step-by-step recipe photos or videos to demonstrate how to make your recipe is an easy place to start.

You might also consider creating resources for your readers that can help teach a skill and establish you as an Expert in your niche (in certain cases, this could also serve as cornerstone content on your site). Here are a few examples of educational resources on a food blog:

• Sally’s Baking Recipes: How to Properly Measure Baking Ingredients
• The Perfect Loaf: The Ultimate Sourdough Starter Guide
• Pinch of Yum: How to Cook Salmon

Regularly update and audit your content

It’s important to consistently audit, update, republish, and delete content on your site for many reasons, and the E-E-A-T guidelines are just some of them!

Make sure to audit your older blog posts for accuracy, broken links, and anything that might be inaccurate or out-of-date.

Additional E-E-A-T Resources:

• TopHatRank: For Food Bloggers: What Is E-E-A-T And Why Should I Care?
• Search Engine Journal: Your Guide to Google E-A-T and & SEO
• Amsive: How Google’s Latest ‘Helpful Content System’ Update is Impacting SERPs

And that wraps up our deep dive into E-E-A-T for food blogs! It’s a lot of information, but is a really useful framework to keep in mind as you plan and create content.

We’d love to know… what changes will you make to your site after reading this blog post?!

The post E-E-A-T for Food Blog SEO appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

The Feast Plugin is a powerhouse of a plugin that gives all users access to six popular food blogging themes and helps food blogs run more efficiently and effectively in terms of optimizing for search traffic and usability.

You can check out all of the features that come with this plugin here, but here are the three our community of food bloggers and industry experts are most jazzed about:

1. Access to all Feast themes

Probably the most notable thing about the Feast Plugin is the fact that it gives you access to all Feast themes.

A theme is what gives your website the look and feel all readers will see. They’re typically installed via the Appearance > Themes menu in your WordPress dashboard, but there are some benefits to getting your theme through a plugin.

While Feast does sell standalone themes for one-off purchases, with the Feast Plugin, you get access to all five Feast themes:

• Foodie Pro
• Brunch Pro
• Cook’d Pro
• Seasoned Pro
• Cravings Pro

Plus, you get access to Genesis, the parent theme that all Feast themes are built upon.

Child themes? Parent themes?

The idea of child themes for WordPress came out of a problem with regular ol’ themes: when a theme is updated, it overwrites important settings that make your site look and operate in the way you like.

So child themes were introduced to fix that issue: they run on top of a parent theme and are never updated.

But what if a child theme needs an update? Well then we’re right back to square one.

Updating a plugin, however, is easy. You’ve probably done it loads of times on your own website!

That’s why getting your themes through a plugin like Feast is so helpful; you can install important updates for security reasons or for new features in a much more straightforward way.

So with the Feast Plugin, you can make sure that your theme is up-to-date with the latest and greatest recommendations in site speed without worrying about losing your existing customizations. Score!

2. The Modern Homepage

If you’ve been around this industry for a while, you’re probably aware of a shift that we’ve seen in food blog homepages over the past few years.

Years ago, a homepage was essentially a running list of the most recent blog posts, oftentimes with a sidebar with a few extra links to things like trending recipes and an about page.

But now? Food blog homepages are trending towards more static, curated homepages with different sections to highlight popular, trendy, or seasonal content. Here’s an example of the Foodie Pro theme in the Feast Plugin from Food Blogger Pro member, Cooking Chat:

So why the switch from “feed” homepages to more static homepages?

You might have heard of “the seasonal triangle,” or promoting seasonal content via your mobile menu, your homepage, and your sidebar. It’s important to highlight seasonal content in these areas for topical discoverability and internal linking, and you can learn a bit more about that here.

A static homepage with different sections that you can easily switch and organize to highlight seasonal or trendy foods is a huge asset for you to not only promote content that your readers are probably already looking for, but create some internal links between pages on your site.

The Feast Plugin has a widget-based Modern Homepage that helps you easily customize a curated homepage that’s easy to update with the changing seasons. Definitely a win!

3. SEO and Site Speed

The Feast Plugin does a lot in terms of making sure your theme is up-to-date with search requirements and recommendations. And because plugins are easier to update than themes, your annual payment for the Feast Plugin gets you any SEO/site speed/security/search updates as things change (as we all know they do!).

A lot of the “modern” features within the Feast Plugin (like the Modern Homepage, Modern Recipe Index, and Modern Menu), are designed to eliminate unnecessary JavaScript and code to help your site run faster and more efficiently. They also help you improve SEO with strategic linking, optimized navigation, and enhanced post info.

Photo from Feast Design Co.

Of course, site speed is impacted by a ton of different site elements and not just your theme (image sizes, ads, and other plugins, to name a few!), but having a rock-solid theme focused on performance is a great place to start.

And while some of these settings work “out of the box,” you may need to do some additional setup to reap the full SEO and site speed benefits of the plugin. Be sure to check out the FAQ page and setup page for more information.

These are just a few reasons why the Feast Plugin is a favorite amongst members and our Experts. That’s why we wanted to create some content about it! This is not a sponsored post; it’s just an informational article about a plugin that our community is using and finding helpful.

You can learn more about the plugin and purchase an annual subscription over on the Feast Design Co website.

Do you use the Feast Plugin? Have you seen any site improvements since implementing it?

The post 3 Advantages of Using the Feast Plugin for Food Bloggers appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

As you probably already know, everyone’s keyword research process is different, and each of those processes have quite a few steps.

So in today’s Part 2 of our Keyword Research for Food Bloggers series, we’re just focusing on 6 keyword research tips that can help you along on your keyword research journey. They’re actionable, related to recipe SEO, and good things to keep in mind whether you’re looking to start or optimize your keyword researching strategy.

We’ll cover:

1. When you may want to start your keyword research
2. Why we like longtail keywords
3. Where you should (and shouldn’t) include your keyword
4. Why keyword research isn’t the end-all, be-all
5. How long it may take to see results from your keyword research
6. If every post you publish should have ranking potential

Ready? Let’s dive in!

1. Start your keyword research process before you develop your recipe.

Yep, keyword research can start earlier than you may have expected.

Of course, there are going to be recipes that you want to publish that aren’t great keyword research candidates (more on that in a bit), but it helps to start researching keywords early in the recipe development process.

Why?

It can help you figure out what can make your recipe unique and even more valuable to searchers who are searching for more specific terms.

For example, if you’re wanting to develop a chocolate chip cookie recipe, you may want to start by using a keyword research tool (I’m using Ahref’s Keyword Explorer for this example) and search for that term:

The Keyword Difficulty is super hard, but the Volume is really high. This is saying that a lot of people are searching for this term, but it’ll be pretty difficult to rank for that keyword unless you have a ton of people linking to your site.

So a regular ol’ chocolate chip cookie recipe may not rank in the first few spots in a Google search, but are there any other related keywords we can try to rank for?

This is where we can click around under Keyword Ideas to find different iterations on this search term. If you click View All under “Terms Match,” you’ll see other keywords that include “chocolate chip cookies” along with other terms.

The search volume goes down, but the keyword difficulty (the KD column with all of the colors!) also tends to goes down.

Of course we have some variation here due to the fact that there’s a lot of content about certain keywords (for example, in the image above “how to make chocolate chip cookies” has the same keyword difficulty as “chocolate chip cookies,” even though the search volume is wildly different), but in general, when less people are searching for a keyword, the easier it will be rank for that keyword.

Ideally, you want to target a keyword that has high volume (aka there are a lot of people searching for it) and a lower keyword difficulty (aka the tool you’re using thinks it would be easier for someone to rank for that term/there aren’t many good results for that term).

Keep in mind that other tools may have their own terms for Keyword Difficulty (for instance, it’s called Score in KeySearch), but it’s still a helpful data point to keep an eye on.

And those keyword variations we found? That’s our next tip!

2. Lean into the power of the longtail keyword.

A longtail keyword utilizes those extra terms (also known as modifiers) to form a keyword that has less search volume but is also less competitive.

An example is “one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookies.” As you can probably imagine, the keyword “chocolate chip cookies” is incredibly difficult to rank for. It’s highly competitive and has a lot of search results (121,000,000 on Google at the time this article was written!), and it would take considerable effort and SEO power to rank within the first few search results for that keyword.

So instead of trying to write a post that targets the “chocolate chip cookie” keyword, we can use extra terms (or a longtail keyword) to help us reach searchers who are more likely to click on our blog post in a search result.

Not only is vegan a modifier, “one bowl” is too. By making “one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookies” your target keyword, you’re targeting searchers who are searching for a more specific need than just chocolate chip cookies. Therefore, you’re fulfilling their needs (the recipe) and satisfying their intent (wanting to find a one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe).

And as you can probably imagine, this is why it’s helpful to start keyword researching before the recipe development starts! That way, you can let these modifications help inform the recipe development process.

3. Know where to include your keyword in your blog post (and where not to).

There isn’t a way to tell Google “hey this is the keyword I’m trying to rank for, so please rank this blog post accordingly.” At least, not directly.

Instead, your strategic use of a keyword within a blog post can tell search engines what your post is about and what types of searches this blog post helps satisfy. Search engines are always looking for content that will help satisfy user intent, meaning articles and posts that get the searcher the information they’re looking for as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

So where should you include your keyword? In general, you’ll want to make sure your keyword is in:

• Your post title
• Your recipe title
• The first paragraph
• Image file names
• Your meta description
• Other parts of your post where it fits naturally

If you use your keyword too often throughout your post in an unnatural way, you’ll be at risk for keyword stuffing, which is a common form of “spam” search engines like Google keep an eye out for. If you’re looking for a rule of thumb about how often you should use your keyword, we’ve heard that a 2% keyword density, meaning your keyword makes up only 2% or less of your content, is a solid percentage. You can measure your keyword density with tools like SEO Quake or Semrush.

That said, as long as your post sounds natural and you’re not throwing keywords into your post just to add them, you should be a-okay. You don’t need your keyword in every heading or every paragraph –– include it where it makes sense, and leave it at that.

And do you need to type your keyword in the exact word order each and every time? No, especially if it sounds awkward or unnatural. Search engines like Google can read and understand keywords in any order and understand your intent. For example, some variations in word order for our “one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookies” keyword could be:

• Vegan chocolate chip cookies
• Chocolate chip vegan cookies
• One bowl vegan cookies

You don’t need to use the exact “one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookies” phrase over and over in your post. Write in a natural, helpful way, and search engines will understand.

4. Keyword research is just one small part of the greater SEO equation.

The goal of keyword research is to find keywords that you can target that will:

1. Bring organic search traffic to your site.
2. Not be too terribly difficult to rank for.

Google’s ranking algorithm is made up of hundreds of different factors, so keyword research is just a small portion of what can affect how your post gets found via search.

This article from Ahrefs does a good job at describing some of what we do know about Google’s ranking factors. Some of the most well-known ranking factors include:

• Backlinks
• Freshness (or recency)
• Keyword mentions
• User experience
• Topical authority

So just keep this in mind as you’re doing your keyword research –– it’s just one part of the very large SEO equation!

P.S. Depending on the tools you use for keyword research, you may come upon information about your domain authority, authority score, or domain rating.

These metrics are developed by companies like Moz, Ahrefs, and Semrush and are not ranking factors in the eyes of Google. It’s a nice metric to see and understand, but it’s not used in determining your post ranks in search results. You can find more information about this metric here!

5. It may take some time to see results from your keyword research.

How long your blog has been around, how old the post is, and how many other websites have linked to your content can all impact the length of time it may take to see results from your keyword research. That means that it’s possible that, for new content, it may take days or months to actually see significant organic search traffic numbers for that post.

Since it takes time, try setting yourself up for that eventual success by making your post as well-researched and thorough as possible. Some things to keep in mind are:

• Add some related internal links to that blog post
• Add links back to the blog post you’re optimizing in some of your existing related blog posts
• Make sure your image names and alt text are descriptive
• Make sure your images are the correct size
• Keep quality guidelines like E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in mind to help make your post as helpful as possible
• Fill out all recipe plugin fields
• Help your readers easily navigate your blog post and get to the answers they want faster with a “Jump to Recipe” button, FAQs, and a table of contents

By focusing on those other SEO elements and by making sure that your post is as comprehensive and helpful as possible, it may help move that ranking needle even quicker!

6. Not all posts will have keyword ranking potential… and that’s okay.

All of this being said, if you have an incredible recipe for a regular ol’ chocolate chip cookie, does it mean you shouldn’t post it if you don’t think you can rank for it?

Of course not! If it’s still content that your readers, email subscribers, and/or social media followers will love, it’s still great content. Just because it may not rank in the first few positions in a search result, your content can still be helpful and fulfill a need for your readers, and it can still drive traffic back to your blog through other avenues like social media or email.

In fact, for most bloggers, the majority of their search traffic comes from just a handful of posts –– not all posts are organic search super stars.

Plus, as your blog grows, your keyword volume and ease at which you can rank for keywords can grow. And you can always go back to posts you’ve done keyword research for 6-12 months later and tweak as needed.

That’s why it’s so important to write for your readers and not for what you may think search engines want –– Google isn’t reading, using, and sharing your posts; humans are.

And that’s a wrap on this two-part series all about keyword research! Here are some other resources you might want to check out to dive even further into keyword research fun:

• 362: How to Increase Your Organic Traffic with Keyword Research with Aleka Shunk
• 405: How Keyword Research, Resilience, and Resourcefulness Helped Casey Rooney Make a Six-Figure Income in Two Years
• Juicing the Low-Hanging Fruit: Optimizing Old Content for SEO
• 7 Mistakes Food Bloggers Make When Writing Recipes

What other keyword research questions do you have? Leave them in the comments below, or add them to the queue of our upcoming member-only Q&A with our Keyword Research Expert, Aleka!

The post 6 Keyword Research Tips for Food Bloggers appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

There are a bunch of different keyword researching tools that creators can use to optimize their blog posts, and in this post, we’re going to cover some of our (and our community’s) favorites.

Let’s dive in:

1. Use the right tools to find (and track!) keyword performance.

There are tons of different keyword tools available these days, and they’re available at all different price points.

Popular Free Keyword Research Tools

Google

Did you know you can use a regular ol’ Google search to do some keyword research? It’s true! Check the People Also Ask or Related Searches boxes within a Google search and see how Google suggests you end a search to get ideas.

You can also utilize tools like Google Trends or Google’s Keyword Planner (which lives within Google Ads) to see what searches are trending and refine your keywords.

Browser Extensions

There are a few browser extensions that our members, Experts, and team love:

• Keyword Surfer: This extension allows you to see keyword information within a Google search and gives you estimated traffic information for results
• Keywords Everywhere: The free version gives you difficulty metrics, trends charts, related keyword information, and more.

You can even get creative to get an idea of what people are searching for. Places like Pinterest, YouTube, Reddit, and Quora can all be effective places to find keyword inspiration.

Popular Paid (or Freemium) Keyword Research Tools

KeySearch*

Price: starting at $17/month after 1 month trial

KeySearch is one of the most popular keyword research tools because it’s a little more cost-effective than others. In fact, they have a limited free trial plan (hence the asterisk)!

KeySearch uses Google APIs and shows you information like search trends, keyword difficulty, search volume, related keywords, and more.

Ubersuggest*

Price: starting at $29/month

Ubersuggest is another one of those “freemium” keyword research solutions, and you get 3 free searches per day if you create an account.

You need to upgrade to get information like historical keyword data, searcher information, and other information, but it could be a good starting point!

AnswerThePublic*

Price: starting at $9/month

Owned by Neil Patel Digital (the same company that makes Ubersuggest), AnswerThePublic gives you information about questions related to your keyword as well as different versions of your keyword in visual graphs.

What’s the difference between Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic? According to the Neil Patel team, “AnswerThePublic helps you get strategically creative. Ubersuggest takes you on a deep dive into endless keyword data opportunities.”

AnswerThePublic has a 7 day free trial and limited free features so you can try it before deciding it’s right for you.

RankIQ

Price: starting at $49/month

RankIQ analyzes the content that ranks in higher positions in search results and identifies the topics and subtopics a blogger may want to include in their blog posts. It also provides you with estimated ranking information like competition, time to rank, and content targets.

RankIQ also has a Content Optimizer tool where you can get optimization tips on the blog post you’ve already written and a Keyword Library to help you find keywords based on any niche. Depending on your plan, you’ll have a limited amount of reports per month available, but you can buy additional reports as needed.

Ahrefs

Price: starting at $99/month for full access

Ahrefs is the keyword research tool that we use the most here at Food Blogger Pro. In addition to their Keywords Explorer tool that can help you find and analyze keywords, they have other site-maintenance features like site audits, broken link checkers, and linking information.

Ahrefs actually does offer a free plan called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools that gives you limited access to some of their features. One of the most helpful features is their Organic Keywords report, which shows you the keywords you’re already ranking for and the position your post is in for that keyword. We recommend signing up for this free plan first before deciding if Ahrefs is right for you!

Semrush

Price: starting at $119.95/month for full access

Similar to Ahrefs, Semrush helps you research, track, and analyze keywords and learn more information about your site. You’ll be able to set up projects to run site audits, check your on-page SEO, learn about your backlinks, and more.

In terms of price and features available, it’s very similar to Ahrefs. That said, Semrush is a robust tool for those who are interested in getting down into the nitty gritty of optimizing their sites!

What about tools for tracking keyword performance?

Once you’ve done all of the keyword research, recipe development, blog post writing, and promotion, how do you actually measure the impact of all of your hard work?

There are plenty of tools out there for this (and most of the tools we covered above allow you to track keyword performance), but some of our faves include:

Google Search Console

This free tool from Google allows you to dig into your search result performance and see your average position for some of the keywords you currently rank for. Click Search Results, and then toggle “Average Position” to on to see that data over time.

While Google Search Console is a helpful tool, it can be a little tough to find your exact ranking since it calculates average position based on where the top result is sitting. Since search results on desktop and mobile can vary (you can rank third on desktop and eighth on mobile for the same keyword), we recommend using the “position” data point within Google Search Console as guide when analyzing your keyword performance.

Clariti

Clariti is our sister site, and it has some pretty slick keyword rank data and functionality right now. You’ll soon be able to track change in keyword rank position over time!

How do you choose the right tool?

This is a great time to use the frustratingly classic response: it depends.

When you’re analyzing keywords and finding potential ranking opportunities, different tools will show you different information in different ways, so it’s up to you to figure out which one (or ones!) can give you the information you need to effectively make decisions.

And you don’t need to use just one keyword research tool. In fact, it’s helpful to use a few to compare data and dig deeper into different keyword opportunities. Not all tools source their ranking information from the same spot, so there will be some discrepancies between what you see in one versus another.

At our sister site, Pinch of Yum, we use:

• Ahrefs for keyword research
• Google Keyword Planner for keyword research
• Topic (a tool available for those running Raptive ads) for keyword research
• Google Trends for keyword research
• Clariti for keyword tracking
• Google Search Console for keyword tracking

How do you actually use these tools?

We’ll get into some keyword research tips and tricks in tomorrow’s part 2 blog post, but at a super high level, here’s how a food blogger may approach keyword research using some of these tools:

Step 1: Search for a keyword idea in a Google search.

• Add words to your search to play around with modifications of your keyword and see what Google tries to auto-complete your search with (for example, type in “vegan chocolate chip cookies” to see other variations on that search term).
• Take a look at the top results for those searches –– are they well-researched and thorough? Or is there an opportunity for you to create a better resource for searchers?
• Take a look at the People Also Ask and Related Searches boxes to get an idea of the types of answers searchers are in need of. You can use this information to come up with recipe ideas, to answer commonly asked questions in your blog post, or as a focus keyword for the blog post.
• If you’re using one of the browser extensions we mentioned, take note of the data it provides for your initial and additional keywords.

Step 2: Use a keyword research tool to discover search volume and keyword difficulty.

• Search for your initial keyword, as well as the variations you found to get a sense of the traffic opportunity.
• Look for keywords with a search volume of at least 100 monthly searches if you’re starting out as a new blogger. As an experienced blogger, you may want to shoot for keywords that have a bit more monthly searches (think over 1000, depending on the keyword).
• Keep in mind that seasonality can affect these numbers, so don’t be afraid to target a keyword with a lower search volume if you can create some really awesome content about it.
• Look for keywords with lower keyword difficulty (this means it may be easier for you to rank!). While each keyword tool calculates their “difficulty” level in different ways, a good rule of thumb is to try and find keywords with a difficulty under 30.

Step 3: Choose your focus keyword and create your content!

• Keep any secondary keywords you may want to try and rank for in mind, as you may be able to incorporate those secondary keywords into your content (for example, if a secondary keyword to your primary “chocolate chip cookies” keyword is “gluten free chocolate chip cookies,” you can have a section in your post about making them gluten free if you’ve tested it).
• Your #1 focus should always be to create the best content you can for your readers, so don’t fall for the trap of keyword stuffing (aka using your keywords too often within your blog post).

In our Part 2 of this two-part blog series, we’ll dive into some of our very best tips to help you keyword research like a pro and make some awesome optimized content.

Watch this space. We’ll see ya for Part 2 tomorrow!

And remember: If you want even more keyword research info, join the Food Blogger Pro community! Members have exclusive discounts on keyword researching tools (like KeySearch) and resources (like the Cooking with Keywords course), as well as access to our new Keyword Research Expert, Aleka!

The post Best Free & Premium Keyword Research Tools for Food Bloggers (2023) appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

A.
B.
C.
D. All of the above

It’s 100% okay and normal to pick any of these options (especially the last one) when you’re optimizing your content for SEO. But it really doesn’t have to be that way. 

As you probably know, “SEO” stands for search engine optimization. That means that there are things you can be doing to your posts to optimize them for search results. So if a post is better optimized, there’s a greater chance for it to show up higher in search results.

SEO isn’t a one-and-done kind of thing though; there are a ton of different tips and tweaks that you can apply to your blog posts to help you get more traffic (and in turn more email subscribers, higher ad revenue, additional social media followers, and all of the other positive outcomes that can result from more people visiting your site).

And I’m not just talking about new posts; you can actually improve the existing posts on your site. We like to call this “juicing the low-hanging fruit” because you’re addressing content you’ve already created and just making it a tiny bit better. And that’s what we’re focusing on today.

It may seem overwhelming to implement all of these different SEO strategies, especially when you’re trying to balance creating awesome content and optimizing it in a way that Google rewards (more on that in a bit). 

But it’s important to remember that you’ve already done the hard part. You’ve created content, photographed recipes, and started to grow your audience. Now it’s time to juice the low-hanging fruit on your blog and make sure that your posts are optimized (but not too optimized) for search.

So how do you do that? Let’s discuss:

Step 1. Figure out what’s missing in your older content

Yep, I’m talking about auditing your existing content to see where there are shortcomings. Some questions to consider are:

Are your image file names descriptive?

Image names are searchable by Google and may appear in search results if they’re descriptive and keyword-rich. So an image name like fruit-pizza.jpg says a lot more about what’s in the actual photo than something like img-1203.jpg, and your fruit-pizza.jpg image may show up in search results for “fruit pizza.”

Speaking of images, do they all have alt text?

Not only does alt text help those using screen readers, it also tells search engines (like Google) what’s in your images.

How about Pinterest Text?

This is the description that contributes to “Pinterest SEO.” Even though the Pin Description won’t display on your pins, it’s important to provide one and make it as descriptive as possible.

Do your posts have descriptive meta descriptions?

Meta descriptions suggestion you’re giving to Google for what to display in a search result.

Ideally, Google will show this description in search results, but Google does what it wants and will sometimes pull other information from the blog post like ingredients or the first few lines of the post.

The meta description should describe the recipe, include your keyword, and entice the reader to click on the result.

Do your posts exemplify E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T is a very on-brand and important topic for food bloggers to understand; it stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, and sites that have high levels of E-E-A-T are seen as high-quality resources and create a more well-rounded, future-proofed site.

Are all paid links marked as nofollow or sponsored?

You want to make sure to tell Google that an external link is paid for so that it doesn’t contribute to that site’s PageRank. Just a way to stay on Google’s good side.

Have you optimized your internal links and external links?

The link text for your internal and external links should have descriptive link text and include a keyword if it makes sense.

A descriptive link looks like this:

It tells the reader exactly what they’ll see when they click on the link!

Do you have any broken links?

When the Google bot crawls a website and it comes across a broken link, the crawl is interrupted. Broken links also negatively impact your site’s “user experience,” because a link that a reader wants to visit isn’t correct and leads to a 404 page.

You can install the Broken Link Checker plugin or use a tool like Clariti to help you identify (and fix!) those pesky broken links.

Are you using a solid recipe plugin?

While recipe plugins make your recipes eye-catching for your readers, for those who have WordPress sites, they also send important information to search engines.

Is your recipe card complete?

Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to fill out every section of a recipe card, or it might be an intentional choice to omit something (for example, some bloggers choose not to include nutrition information), but in general, you’ll want to fill out all fields that are available in a recipe plugin

Are you answering some of the questions your readers may have about the recipe?

Using tools like the Yoast FAQ block allow you to add special markup to the questions and answers in your blog posts for Google. Not only will the information within your FAQ block help your readers with answers to their questions, your FAQs could also end up as a rich result in the People Also Ask box within a Google search:

You could also use a top-of-mind tool to help you figure out some questions your readers may have when making your recipe: ChatGPT! Here’s an example:

You can also use ChatGPT to help you think of different ways your readers may want to customize your recipes:

Last but not least, you can optimize for keywords. Check out this podcast episode with Aleka from Keywords with Aleka for more information on keyword research for food bloggers.

How to actually implement and track those updates

Once you audit your content, you can manually go through it all to track your fixes in something like a spreadsheet, but you can also use tools to make the process a bit easier. We recommend checking out:

• Clariti* –– A tool that helps you identify, organize, and track site enhancements.
• Alt Text Tools –– A free WordPress plugin from Food Blogger Pro’s WordPress Expert, Andrew Wilder that allows you to see where you’re missing alt text on your images and where you can stand to optimize it.
• Tasty Pins –– This plugin allows you to easily add Pinterest Descriptions to your images.
• Tasty Links –– This is an auto-linking plugin that can help you add and optimize internal and external links, as well as add nofollow and sponsored tags to your links.
• Ahrefs or SEMrush –– These tools can help you figure out which posts need to be optimized for search results.
• Rich Results Test –– A free tool from Google that tells you a lot about your structured data and whether or not your posts are eligible for rich results.

*Clariti is our sister site!

Step 2. Check out your analytics (aka how is that older content performing now?)

Pretty self-explanatory, but there is a lot of information in data; you just need to know where to look.

Google Analytics

You can start with Google Analytics. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that helps you figure out how your content is performing, where your readers are coming from, and what kind of content your readers are enjoying.

If you don’t already have Google Analytics 4 (GA4) set up, be sure to do that ASAP! Universal Analytics (aka the older version of Google Analytics) will stop collecting data July 1, 2023.

Here are some GA4 resources you might find helpful:

• How to Set Up Google Analytics 4: Creating a GA4 Property blog post
• How to Set Up Google Analytics 4: Connecting GA4 to Your Site blog post
• Google Analytics course (for Food Blogger Pro members!)

Google Search Console

Next, we’d recommend exploring Google Search Console. It helps you dive deep into the content on your site and shows you specific errors, helps you submit your sitemap to Google, and gives you insights into which keywords are bringing the most traffic to your site.

An important note: if a post is already performing really well, don’t touch it. Unless it’s riddled with errors and/or obviously out-of-date, you should leave those high-performing posts alone and allow them to continue being the shining stars they are.

Confused by these two tools?

We have courses that can show you how to use both of these important tools for members on Food Blogger Pro!

Some other non-free analytics tools you could check out are:

• Ahrefs –– We mentioned this above, but their site audits are really helpful to monitor and improve the health of your site.
• SEMrush –– Another re-mention! SEMrush is a super powerful tool that helps you gather ideas, unlock keyword recommendations, and track your progress.
• Ubersuggest –– This freemium tool helps you understand your page ranking, see how your competitors are performing, and get content ideas through keyword research.
• Moz Pro –– From the well-known SEO pros over at Moz, you can use this tool to track your rankings, audit your site, and find link opportunities.

Step 3. Add some internal links

By now you probably have quite a few posts on your blog. Maybe it’s over 100. Or over 500. Or over 1000 like our sister site, Pinch of Yum.

That’s a lot of posts! And something tells me that you could add links to related content on your blog to some of your older content.

Let’s say you published a chocolate granola recipe back in 2015. It’s a decent performer, but you’ve since published seven other granola recipes on your site. 

You can go back to that chocolate granola post and add links to those related recipes (aka your seven other granola recipes!) so readers have a natural next step when they’re reading your content. 

If you do that, you’ll have just added seven powerful internal links to your site!

You can also add links to related/relevant recipes in your recipe cards. So if you published a grain bowl a few years ago that uses a specific sauce recipe, which now has its own post on your site, you can link to that sauce post within your grain bowl recipe card. 

Here’s an example from Pinch of Yum of what that could look like (this is for a naan-wich recipe that uses a baked falafel recipe and a Magic Green Sauce recipe, both of which have their own posts on the site):

Step 4. Don’t over-optimize

We just talked about a number of different ways that you can optimize your posts. But there can be too much of a good thing.

Over-optimizing is dangerous. Keyword stuffing, link spamming, and other strategies once used to get on Google’s good side will no longer help you. And, in fact, they could hurt you.

When in doubt, write for your readers. That’s what Google wants! It wants your content to be valuable, shareable, and helpful for your readers.

If you need help identifying which of your existing posts are good contenders for this “juicing” process, we have a whole lesson about it in our Republishing Content course for Food Blogger Pro members. We also have a republishing content blog series that will give you a little preview of what’s included in that course:

• Part 1: Why You Should Republish Content as a Food Blogger
• Part 2: How to Identify Posts to Update and Republish as a Food Blogger
• Part 3: What to Update When Republishing Content as a Food Blogger

——

Phew. That’s…a lot! But these are just some of the ways that you can juice that low-hanging fruit on your blog and get the most value out of your content.

Really solid SEO is such an important step in the ‘going pro with a food blog’ process, and so if you want to learn more, we recommend checking out our SEO-focused episodes of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast, some of our SEO-related articles on the Food Blogger Pro blog, and the conversations and courses within the Food Blogger Pro community. 

Now we’re curious: Have you successfully juiced some of the low-hanging fruit on your blog? How did it go? What did you learn? Let us know in the comments!

The post Juicing the Low-Hanging Fruit: Optimizing Old Content for SEO appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

Whoa. That’s a lot of plugins, right? So how do you know which ones you should actually install to run your site?

That’s what we’re going to chat about in this post! We’ll break down six different types of plugins that we recommend using for your food blog, then we’ll share a few of the best plugins on the market for each category.

An important note before we start: Some of these plugins are free and can be found in the WordPress plugin repository. Others are premium, meaning that you need to purchase them from a third party.

The benefit of using free plugins is, well, they’re free! That said, sometimes it makes sense to purchase a plugin to get premium support and to make sure that it’ll consistently get updates.

Now without further ado, let’s jump into the list!

1. Recipe Plugin

As you might imagine, recipes are really important to a food blog. Most of the time, the recipe is why your readers are there! However, there’s more to a recipe than meets the eye, and that’s why you’ll want to use a plugin to add your recipes to your site.

You might be thinking, “Why do I need a plugin? Is it that hard to just type it into my post?” And while just typing it into your post isn’t all that difficult, using a plugin can make it a lot easier. There’s no need to worry about formatting, and plugins often offer different fields and styles that you might not have considered including.

That’s not all, though. Recipe plugins provide structured data for search engines like Google and Pinterest to use so they can feature your recipes in their results (like in the Google recipe carousel). Plus, using a recipe plugin can really boost your SEO!

There are lots of recipe plugins out there, but we’d recommend choosing one of these three options:

• Tasty Recipes — Brought to you by our sister site WP Tasty, Tasty Recipes offers six customizable recipe cards to choose from, recipe scaling, unit conversion options, and more (costs $79 per year).
• WP Recipe Maker — With adjustable servings, a template editor, recipe collections, and more, WP Recipe Maker is another great recipe plugin for food bloggers (free to use; premium version starts at $49 per year).
• Create by Mediavine — In addition to recipes, Create by Mediavine also lets you get schema markup for how-to guides, craft instructions, and lists (free to use).

2. SEO Plugin

The idea behind SEO, or search engine optimization, is that you’re structuring your blog so that Google (and other search engines) can easily understand what your content is about, thus increasing the chances that the search engine will show your website on the search results page.

SEO might sound really complicated, but in reality, it involves a list of things that are fairly easy to understand! The tricky part is consistently applying these SEO best practices, and that’s where an SEO plugin comes in.

And the number one SEO plugin we recommend? Yoast SEO.

The free version of the plugin does a great job of reminding bloggers about the most important SEO factors and provides tools and tips that can help you develop an SEO-friendly post. Not only that, you can upgrade to their premium version for even more features like a redirect manager and an internal linking tool.

3. Page Caching and Site Speed Plugin

When it comes to the loading speed of your website, faster is better.

Research has shown that a faster website ranks higher in Google, keeps visitors around longer, and sells more products. Unfortunately, when it comes to food blogs, slow is usually the norm, and that’s because many food blogs don’t have a caching plugin installed. And if they do have a caching plugin installed, it’s probably not fully optimized, which can mean your website is slower than it has to be.

And how do caching plugins work? Well, a caching plugin can encourage browser caching of assets, and they help ensure that the HTML of a page is cached at the server — therefore, WordPress doesn’t have to regenerate it each time it’s requested.

Now that you know how caching plugins work, let’s chat about a few of our favorites:

• WP Rocket — With industry-leading techniques to help pass Core Web Vitals, WP Rocket is one of the best caching plugins on the market (price starts at $49 per year).
• Cache Enabler — For a more affordable alternative, Cache Enabler is a great barebones caching plugin that only does HTML caching (free to use).

4. Image Optimization Plugin

Site speed is affected by so many things, and image size is one of them. And one of the ways you can optimize the images on your site is by using an image optimization plugin!

Image optimization plugins help optimize your images (hence the name!) by reducing image size and affecting the way your site handles image loading.

There are lots of great image optimization plugins out there, but these are our favorites:

• ShortPixel — ShortPixel offers three different image compression options, and it allows you to optimize new and existing images on your site (free up to 100 images/month; option to purchase additional credits).
• Imagify — Another great option is Imagify! This plugin lets you optimize images in one go with its bulk optimization option (free for up to 20MB per month; additional plans available for purchase).

5. Backup Plugin

It’s possible that your host already makes full backups of your site, but to be extra careful and make sure that you’ll always have a backup of your site available, we recommend using a backup plugin.

Why’s that? Well, you’ll oftentimes hear stories of people losing their website and backups because they were stored in the same place. You don’t want to be one of those people, so you’ll want to make sure you have backups in a place outside your hosting company… like a plugin!

And a good backup plugin not only makes it easy to backup your site but also makes it easy to restore it if and when the time comes. Here are a few backup plugins we’d recommend choosing from:

• UpDraftPlus — UpDraftPlus is one of the most popular backup plugins on the market, and the free version lets you easily set up manual or scheduled backups of your website (free to use; paid version also available with additional features).
• VaultPress — VaultPress is another great option, and it’s actually what we use for Pinch of Yum (price starts at $4.95/month).

Here’s a screenshot of the “real-time” backups running on Pinch of Yum using VaultPress:

6. Spam Filtering Plugin

Have you ever visited a blog or forum and noticed a list of spammy comments? It’s kind of like walking into a restaurant and seeing garbage on the floor. Gross. It results in a major hit to your blog’s brand and decreases the chances that people will come back and visit again.

But the reality is, as your blog grows, so will your comment spam, and at some point it will become too much for you to sort through and manage on your own.

So what can you use to help you out with this problem? A spam filtering plugin! Here are some of our favorite options to choose from:

• Akismet — With over 5 million active installations, Akismet is the most popular anti-spam plugin on the market, and it’s free to use for personal websites and nonprofits (free to use; paid version also available with additional features).
• Antispam Bee — Another great option, Antispam Bee is completely free and claims to be 100% GDPR compliant. Similar to Akismet, it blocks spam comments and trackbacks without captchas or sending personal information to third parties (free to use).

And those are our top recommendations! We hope you found this article useful and that it helped clarify which plugins you might want to consider using for your food blog.

Let’s chat in the comments: Do you use any of these recommended plugins? Which plugins do you rely on most for your blog?

The post 6 Essential WordPress Plugins for Food Blogs appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

And it was a great question!

Speaking personally, I love when tables of contents are included in the articles and posts I’m reading because it allows me to understand the structure of a post while giving me direct links to sections within that blog post that I can easily jump to.

You can check out the table of contents for this post (meta!) below:

• What are tables of contents for blog posts and why are they helpful?
• How to add a table of contents to a blog post
  • With a WordPress Plugin
  • With Code

By the end of this post, you’ll understand multiple ways you can add tables of contents to your blog posts. Let’s jump in:

What are tables of contents for blog posts and why are they helpful?

Just like in a book, a table of contents in a blog post typically appears in the beginning and outlines the major points that will be discussed in the article.

Instead of the chapters you see in a book’s table of contents, a blog post table of contents usually corresponds to the different headings within the article. And it makes sense –– since headings are “used to introduce a new sub-topic.”

Plus, a blog post table of contents typically links to those headings (those links are also called anchor jumps), making it easy for readers to navigate through the post and jump to sections they want to read.

Not only is this a positive in terms of user experience (it makes it easier for your readers to access the information they’re looking for!), it may also benefit you in your search results, as your table of contents sections can be highlighted as extra links below the main result.

In short, tables of contents help transform an article into a resource that can more easily be read, shared, and digested.

How to add a table of contents to a blog post

There are two popular ways you can add a table of contents to your own blog posts: with a plugin and with code.

There isn’t a “right” or “wrong” way of doing it –– some people prefer using a plugin while others would rather spend a little extra time manually adding a table of contents over installing another plugin on their site.

Here’s how to do it either way:

With a WordPress plugin

Two popular WordPress plugins give you the ability to effortlessly add a table of contents to your posts:

• Yoast SEO (the premium version)
• The Feast Plugin

They work in a similar way; either plugin will give you access to a WordPress Block that automatically generates a table of contents for you.

With Yoast SEO, you’ll need the premium (aka paid) version of the plugin. The block you’re looking for is called “Yoast Table of Contents.” By using this block, you’ll get an automatically-generated table of contents based off of all of the headings used throughout your post. The block will automatically update if you add more (or delete) headings as you’re writing your post as well.

Learn more about the Yoast Table of Contents block here.

If you have The Feast Plugin, the block is called “Advanced Jump To.” It will create a table of contents for you only out of the headings that are H2s in your post.

You can learn more about using the Advanced Jump To block in this article, and you can check out this post from our Member Success Manager, Leslie, to see a live example of this block in action!

With code

The other way to add a table of contents to your blog post is with code. If you’re not techy, don’t worry –– this process is relatively easy, quick, and it doesn’t require you to buy or install an extra plugin!

We’ll use the power of ids to create our tables of contents with code. While the id tag can be used to style text, it can also be used to create anchor links. Those links help you link to different sections in the same page, so they’re exactly what we need to use to create our tables of contents.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Add a heading to your post. You can add a heading block by using the + button or by typing ## ahead of the heading text.

2. Make sure you still have that block selected, then click the Options button (it looks like this → ⋮).

3. Click Edit as HTML.

4. If you don’t already see an id in the code, add an id=" " element to your header. Add a descriptive word or hyphenated phrase between the quotation marks. If you do already see an id in the code, WordPress probably created the id for you. Feel free to edit the text to make it shorter and more succinct if desired.

5. Repeat steps 1-4 for all of your headings, noting the descriptive word or phrase you used for each heading id. The ids you use for your headings must be unique, so each heading should get its own id.

6. It’s table of contents time! Figure out where you want to add your table of contents. Create a bulleted list where each bullet point contains the same heading text you want to create the jump to.

7. Add your links. Simply highlight the text, click the link icon, and type #your-id-text, replacing your-id-text with the id text that corresponds to that heading.

8. Repeat until you’ve linked to all of your headings!

Here’s what that looks like on the code side of things (the highlighted bits are the anchor links you just added!):

And when someone clicks on one of those links in your table of contents, they’ll be taken directly to that heading and the URL will reflect the jump (the id will be added to the end of the URL). If you’re a food blogger who is familiar with the “Jump to Recipe” button, it works in the same way!

It seems like a lot of steps, but once you do it once or twice, it becomes a super quick process. Plus, it gives you a helpful insight into the way your site works, and you can easily edit and tweak the ids and text as you see fit. This is actually how Pinch of Yum adds the tables of contents to some of their posts!

And that’s a wrap! We hope this article will help you more efficiently and effectively add tables of contents to your blog posts with plugins and with code.

What other questions do you have for us about adding tables of contents to your blog posts? Let us know in the comments!

The post How to Add a Table of Contents to Your WordPress Blog Post (with Plugins and with Code) appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

In this post we’ll answer the age-old question: what is a meta description?

We’ll also share why it’s important, where to find the meta description, how to change your meta description, and some basic advice for optimizing the meta description for your food blog.

Let’s jump in!

What is a meta description?

First, the technical explanation:

A meta description is an HTML attribute on a web page that explains what the page is about. In other words, the meta description describes the page.

You can see the meta description HTML code if you look at a website’s source code. It usually looks something like this:

Don’t let the code scare you though!

You’ll never have to do any manual coding when entering a meta description for a post or page on your site. I just think it’s important to fully understand how this stuff works, which means understanding where it lives on a website.

Here are some examples of where you might find meta descriptions at work:

The meta description for the Pinch of Yum home page on Google

The meta description for the Pinch of Yum Strawberry White Chocolate Cookies recipe on Google

Note that our homepage’s meta description is different from the meta description found on our Strawberry White Chocolate Cookies recipe –– all pages and posts on our site have meta descriptions that are unique to them.

Why is the meta description important?

Before I answer that question, it’s important to address why the meta description is not important.

The meta description doesn’t help you rank higher in search engines.

That’s not a hypothesis. Google actually openly says that they don’t use meta descriptions or keywords in their ranking algorithm.

Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don’t use the description meta tag in our ranking.

In other words: Google doesn’t use the meta description in search rankings.

So if the meta description doesn’t improve your rankings, why is it important?

Good question!

See if you can figure out the significance of a strong meta description by looking at this screenshot of a Google search for creamy tomato lasagna florentine.

1. Ingredients · 1 tablespoon olive oil · 2–3 cloves garlic, minced · 4–5 cups fresh spinach · 2 cups 4% cottage cheese · 2 eggs · 1/4 cup ground flaxmeal (optional, see…
2. This Freezer Meal Lasagna Florentine is so deliciously comforting and simple. Noodles, tomato sauce, and a creamy spinach layer!

Can you see how the second description is just wee bit more enticing?

Side note: We actually have a meta description set for the first recipe in that screenshot, but it’s not showing up in search results. And that’s not uncommon. We’ll get to the why in a bit, but you can click here to jump to that section in this article if you’re curious right now.

But why is that second description in our example more enticing? There are two primary factors that you need to consider when building traffic from a search engine:

1. Ranking: Getting your website or blog post to rank higher on a search engine results page (i.e. SERPs).
2. Clicking: Getting people to click on your website or blog post when it appears on a SERP.

The first one doesn’t matter if the second one never happens, and optimizing your meta descriptions is one of the best ways to increase the chances of #2 happening more often.

When you’re working on increasing the number of people who click on one of your links from a search result, it’s called optimizing your click-through rate, or CTR.

Where to Find Your Meta Description

There are a bunch of different ways to find the meta descriptions on your websites.

If you’re a bit more technical and using a browser like Google Chrome, you can right click on your homepage or any page on your site and click View Page Source. Then search for the <title> tag. Your meta description should be found near there!

You can also use a browser extension like SEO Quake to see a quick SEO overview of the pages on your site:

1. Download the SEO Quake extension.
2. Go to your homepage.
3. Click the Summary Report icon.
4. A new browser tab will open and display relevant SEO information, including the page’s meta description.

How do I change my meta description?

If your website is built on WordPress, you can easily update or change your meta description with the help of a freemium plugin called Yoast SEO.

This plugin will allow you to update the meta description on individual posts and pages:

…as well as your blog’s home page:

How do I optimize my meta description?

Remember, when optimizing the meta description, we’re not trying to influence ranking, we’re trying to influence clicking (more clicks = more pageviews!).

Here are some things to consider:

Keep the meta description length below 165 characters

Try to keep your meta description around 160 to 165 characters. If your meta description is too long, Google will truncate it (aka users won’t see your entire meta description!).

Funny enough, the current Pinch of Yum meta description that you’ve seen throughout this article is 157 characters long, and it’s still truncated in search results. This is just a really great example of Google doing what Google wants.

Include keywords in your meta description

Back in the ol’ days of eBay, one of the options you had when listing an item was to pay an extra fee in order to include bold text in your listing.

Why?

Because bold text stands out, and people are more likely to click something that stands out.

The same is true for search results –– people are more likely to click on items that include bold text.

If your meta description includes the keywords that the person actually searched for, they’ll show up in bold.

Utilize Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console

Both of these free (!) tools provide website owners countless ways to analyze, improve, and optimize SEO-related elements on their websites.

If you’re interested in learning more about either of these tools, all Food Blogger Pro members have access to our courses on both! Learn more about becoming a member here.

If you’re not a Food Blogger Pro member, you can also check out this episode of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast about the latest update from Google Analytics:

Listen to this episode of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast using the player above or check it out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

When can I expect my new/updated meta description to show up in Google?

Google doesn’t make any promises about actually showing the meta description that you suggest. That’s the thing: whatever you set as your meta description is only a suggestion to Google. Oftentimes Google will decide to show it, but it’s also common for Google to pick a different meta description that they think will be more enticing to searchers.

For recipe posts, it’s not uncommon to see the ingredient list or the first sentence or two of the post in the meta description position on a SERP.

What about you?

Do you make a point of optimizing the meta descriptions on your blog’s pages and posts? If you don’t, why not?

Any other meta description tips or tricks that you think we missed? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

The post What is a Meta Description and How Can It Help Increase Traffic to Your Website? appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.