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.

Many content creators have concerns about ChatGPT (and other generative AI models) using their content to generate responses without credit, and about the future of food blogging in an AI world. But there are also many opportunities for using ChatGPT as a tool in your food blogging toolbox to help you create high-quality content for your readers.

Before we jump in, we wanted to address a common concern: does Google punish sites that use AI to create content? Right now, the answer is no. While Google specifies that “using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results” violates their spam policies, they are not currently discouraging against the use of AI in creating content. Google goes on to say that “however content is produced, those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T,” or Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust.

So now that we know that using AI tools responsibly won’t hurt your performance on search engines, how exactly can you use tools like ChatGPT as a food blogger?

Focus on Prompt Engineering in ChatGPT

One of the most important aspects of using ChatGPT as part of your food blogging toolbox is prompt engineering — the art and science of drafting prompts to increase the odds of receiving a useful, tailored response from the chatbot.

So what makes a good prompt in ChatGPT? Most importantly, your prompt should be specific and clear. An effective prompt might also include:

• A character assignment, which lets ChatGPT know what perspective it should be writing from (i.e. “Writing as a food blogger, draft a blog post title for a post about chocolate chip cookies”).
• Examples of the style you’d like it to mimic in the response (“using three examples of recent blog post titles I’ve written as reference…”).
• A request for a certain tone (fun, serious, informal, encouraging, etc.).
• A specified reading level (“written in words a 10-year-old would understand”).
• Limitations for the response (like word count).
• The intended audience for the response (email subscribers, social media followers, food blog readers).
• The purpose of the writing (to encourage readers to click through to the recipe, to sell an ebook, etc.).

If you’re not satisfied with the first response that ChatGPT spits out, don’t be discouraged! Edit your prompt, provide feedback to the chatbot, and keep trying. ChatGPT can access information and examples from your previous interactions and will use that data to refine responses in the future.

7 Ways to Use ChatGPT as a Food Creator

1. Brainstorming Recipe Ideas with ChatGPT

There are lots of different ways to find inspiration for new recipes. But if you’re a food blogger, it never hurts to have more sources of inspiration in the kitchen, and that’s where ChatGPT can help!

As of September 2023, ChatGPT has access to current information (like recent food trends and viral TikTok recipes) which could help inform your recipe development process.

We asked ChatGPT to generate “5 different recipe ideas for autumn recipes featuring butternut squash,” and we were provided with the following ideas: Butternut Squash Risotto, Roasted Butternut Squash Salad, Butternut Squash and Apple Soup, Butternut Squash Pasta, and Butternut Squash Pasta. Nothing totally mind-blowing in those suggestions, but if we get a bit more specific, we might discover a new idea.

Next, we tried the prompt “Provide 5 different vegan recipe ideas for autumn recipes featuring butternut squash and hazelnuts.” One of the suggestions was Butternut Squash and Hazelnut Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms, which sounds like it has the potential to be a delicious and inventive recipe.

ChatGPT can also be useful when brainstorming recipe variations. Include your existing recipe, as well as your desired variations (like vegan, gluten-free, or ingredient substitutions) and see what ChatGPT suggests!

2. Using ChatGPT to Overcome Writer’s Block

If you’re a food blogger, chances are that you’ve experienced writer’s block. How many different ways can one write a compelling introduction to a recipe post or an SEO-friendly meta-description? Sometimes you just want to switch things up and word things in a different way than you usually do. And that’s where ChatGPT can come in very handy!

While we don’t recommend using ChatGPT to write entire blog posts, it can be a useful tool for getting started. You can use ChatGPT to generate ideas for blog post titles, meta descriptions, certain sections of blog post copy, and your FAQ sections. Curious how this might work? Glad you asked!

We asked ChatGPT to provide a meta-description for a blog post:

Not bad, but the ideal length for a meta-description is much shorter than ChatGPT provided, so we followed up with a prompt to generate a shorter version, and included some more detail on the desired perspective and goal.

ChatGPT can also be used to brainstorm:

• Content for an FAQ block
• Blog post titles
• Blog post copy
• Recipe card descriptions
• Recipe card instructions
• Job descriptions (if you’re hiring!)
• Pitch emails for brand partnerships

3. Optimizing for SEO with ChatGPT

Search Engine Journal has a thorough, non-food-centric post about using ChatGPT for keyword research and suggested the following prompt format: “List Without Description The Top {X} Most Popular Long-tail Keywords For The Topic “{X}” for conducting keyword research on ChatGPT. We decided to put this prompt to the test for butternut squash soup!

Just as you might with other keyword research tools, you can use these long-tail keywords to iterate and refine your keyword by asking ChatGPT something like “provide 5 more long-tail keywords like X” until you have some ideas that you like.

ChatGPT does still have some limitations when it comes to keyword research, and you will need to supplement your process with a tool designed for keyword research that can provide data like search volume and keyword difficulty. When asked to provide the estimated search volume for “easy butternut squash soup recipe” on Google, ChatGPT responded with:

“As an AI language model, I don’t have real-time access to search volume data. However, I can provide some general information. Keywords like “easy butternut squash soup recipe” are quite popular as they combine a specific dish with a desire for simplicity. Recipes, especially those that are easy to follow, tend to attract a good amount of search traffic. To get the most accurate and up-to-date search volume for a specific keyword, it’s recommended to use keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs. These tools can provide insights into search volume, competition, and related keywords for specific search terms.”

So while ChatGPT can provide you with a new way to brainstorm possible keywords, it is only a small piece of the keyword research puzzle (right now!).

4. Generating Social Media Captions with ChatGPT

Do you struggle to come up with caption after caption for your social media posts? ChatGPT might be able to help! Specifying the desired tone (funny, silly, motivational, etc.) is a really important step in the prompt engineering for social media captions to help match the voice you usually use on different platforms.

Bonus: ask ChatGPT to add in emojis on your behalf!

5. Using ChatGPT as an Email Marketing Tool

Just as you can use ChatGPT to help draft social media captions or blog content, it can be a great tool for brainstorming email copy and subject lines, too!

Not bad, right?! Though we did note that the chatbot added 11 emojis instead of the requested 5, which leads to our next point… As with every example in this blog post, you’ll want to edit the copy provided by ChatGPT to make it your own, but it can be very useful to have a drafted starting point to work with.

6. Improving Your Writing with ChatGPT

Do you ever wish you had an easy, free way of proofreading your blog posts before you hit publish? ChatGPT can help!

You can use the bot to check your text for grammatical errors, punctuation, or typos, provide alternate words, or make your writing more clear. Lots of clever ways to ensure that you’re writing your blog posts in an approachable style for all users!

7. Employing ChatGPT as an Education Tool

Sometimes it can be tricky to put into words a technique or process in a recipe. If you’ve chopped an onion a million times, how do you explain the method to someone who has never chopped an onion before? Enter… ChatGPT!

You can also use ChatGPT when brainstorming FAQ questions and/or answers, or to help you better understand a topic or ingredient.

This post barely scratches the surface of the functionality and possibilities of ChatGPT — we are still learning, too! — but hopefully we’ve given you some ideas for using ChatGPT in your content creation process.

Think of ChatGPT as a tool to get you started, provide inspiration, strengthen your writing, or overcome writer’s block. As a reminder: tools like ChatGPT are just that — tools! They shouldn’t be used to replace you, but they can help to enhance you (and hopefully make your life a little bit easier!)

We’re curious… are you currently using ChatGPT as part of your food blogging process? How do you use it?

The post 7 Strategic Ways Food Creators Can Use ChatGPT appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

Our sister site, Pinch of Yum, has been in the food blogging game for a long time (over 13 years now!) and has been through lots of trial and error with which plugins and tools they use on their site.

And that’s why we’re here to share Pinch of Yum’s favorite plugins and tools with you today! These are the tried-and-true resources they use on their site (we use and love many of them on Food Blogger Pro, too). We’re talking image optimization, nutrition labels, roundup posts, site security, and more!

WP Tasty Plugins

WP Tasty was a TinyBit brand (that’s our parent company!) for a few years before we sold it to Strategy11 last year. That said, Pinch of Yum still uses all four of the WP Tasty plugins.

Tasty Recipes ($49/year) is a WordPress plugin that simplifies the process of writing and formatting recipes on your blog (pretty necessary for a food blog!). Recipe plugins provide structured data that helps optimize your recipes for SEO (search engine optimization) and helps readers find your recipes on search engines (like Google and Pinterest). Tasty Recipes offers six customizable recipe cards, recipe scaling, unit conversion options, and more.

If you want to learn more about choosing the best recipe plugin for you, check out this article!

Tasty Roundups ($49/year) is a plugin that makes it easy to curate well-designed collections of recipes using your existing content (like this 10 Cozy Casserole Recipes roundup post). Built-in search functionality automatically pulls recipe titles, images, and links right into the roundup post. Easy peasy!

The Tasty Pins ($29/year) plugin optimizes your images for sharing on Pinterest. With Tasty Pins you can set a Pinterest description to your images, add a Pinterest hover button to your images, add Pinterest-specific images to your website front-end, or disable pinning on any blog images that you don’t want to share on Pinterest. 

Last, but not least, in the WP Tasty family is Tasty Links ($49/year). Tasty Links allows you to automatically link keywords in posts to URLs of your choosing. You can use Tasty Links to share affiliate links, link to evergreen content on your blog, or link to other content you write about often.

Nutrifox ($9/month, $89/year)

Nutrifox is a tool that makes it easy to create, customize, and embed nutrition labels into your recipe posts. Luckily it works in tandem with Tasty Recipes! All you have to do is input your recipe ingredients, copy and paste in a simple code into the recipe card, and tada — you have a recipe card with a nutrition label! You can also customize which nutrients are displayed in your nutrition labels, if you’d rather not display calories, for example.

Yoast SEO (Free version, $99/year for Premium)

The Yoast SEO plugin helps you optimize your recipe posts. The free version of the plugin provides reminders about the most important SEO aspects of blog posts and has handy tools that can help you optimize your posts for SEO. The premium version of the plugin has even more features (like a user-friendly redirect manager and an internal linking tool).

Akismet ($5/month)

Akismet is a spam filtering plugin (and just happens to be the most popular anti-spam plugin). Akismet protects against comment spam, form submission spam, forum bot spam, and any other type of user-submitted text spam and saves you the time (and frustration) of manually filtering these things yourself.

Cloudflare (Free – $20/month)

Cloudflare is a content delivery network that helps keep your site secure from any malicious activity. It also optimizes loading times on your site, which is a win for SEO.

Pretty Links ($100/year)

Pinch of Yum uses the Pretty Links plugin to make a long, ugly link into a… pretty link. Relatively straightforward, really! This plugin helps you make custom links, optimize links, and automatically add affiliate links to your site. It simplifies links for social media, email newsletters, and redirects.

Public Post Preview

Public Post Preview is a plugin that lets you share a link to users to preview a draft of a post before it is published. This makes it really easy for someone to proofread a post or to share with a brand if a post is part of a partnership so that they can check out the post before we hit publish.

Ninja Forms ($49/year)

When someone fills out the contact form on Pinch of Yum, they use Ninja Forms to reply with an automated response. This plugin makes things super simple and lets the user know they’ll be hearing back from the team ASAP.

Slickstream (currently on waitlist)

Pinch of Yum uses the Slickstream plugin to help readers search for, discover, and engage with Pinch of Yum content. You’ll see little heart icons in the bottom corner of the screen, the filmstrip of recipes across the top of the page, and embedded Instagram stories into posts. Pinch of Yum also uses Slickstream for site search!

Jetpack ($5-$25/month)

The Jetpack plugin helps keep Pinch of Yum safe and secure and lets readers have a great experience through faster load times. And now Jetpack has a Security plan that provides comprehensive WordPress site security including VaultPress and Akismet for a nice all-in-one situation for $10/month.

VaultPress ($5/month)

Pinch of Yum has over 1000 posts and pages (and counting!). Can you imagine if they lost all of those posts? That’s where VaultPress comes in handy. VaultPress is a backup plugin that helps recover and restore any losses if needed.

Of course, these aren’t the only tools and plugins that food bloggers should be using; they’re just the ones that are working for Pinch of Yum at the moment! You can check out our 6 essential food blog plugins blog post for more information on the types of plugins we recommend for all bloggers, and if you join the Food Blogger Pro community, you can learn how to use some of our favorites in easy-to-follow lesson videos and courses.

We’re curious… what plugins do you use and love on your site? We’re all ears!

The post Pinch of Yum’s Favorite Plugins and Tools appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

In today’s blog post, we’re going to cover three different ways to connect your new GA4 property to your site. You don’t need to do all three; just pick the one you’re most comfortable with and the one that will give you the features you need.

The three ways are:

1. With an Analytics WordPress plugin
2. With the Google Tag (gtag.js)
3. With Google Tag Manager

Check out the chart below for our “ease of connecting GA4 to your site with this method” breakdown:

Let’s start with the easiest, shall we?

Installing GA4 with an Analytics WordPress Plugin

For: WordPress users and anyone uncomfortable with adding code to your site.

There are plenty of WordPress plugins available that can help you connect Google Analytics to your site, but the one plugin that’s the most popular amongst the Food Blogger Pro community is MonsterInsights.

There are free and premium versions of the plugin, and both versions will give you everything you need to connect your new GA4 property to your site:

1. First, we’ll add the MonsterInsights plugin to your site. Log into your site, then go to Plugins > Add New.

2. Search for MonsterInsights, then click Install Now.

3. Once installed, click Activate.

4. Once Activated, you should be taken to the MonsterInsights area. Click Launch the Wizard.

5. Choose the category that best describes your website, then click Save and Continue.

6. Click Connect MonsterInsights.

7. Choose the Gmail account you’re using for your Google Analytics account, and then click Allow.

8. Choose your GA4 property, then click Complete Connection.

9. Review the recommended settings, make changes as necessary, and then click Save and continue.

10. Review the recommended addons, make changes as necessary, and then click Continue (alternatively, you can skip this for now!).

Huzzah! Your GA4 property is now connected to your website!

Data can take a few hours to start appearing in GA4 and in your MonsterInsights Dashboard, so don’t panic if you don’t immediately see information.

Installing GA4 with Google Tag (gtag.js)

For: Anyone who feels comfortable adding code to their site header.

If you were able to use your existing gtag.js code during your GA4 property setup, you should be good to go! Your GA4 property should already be connected to your site (and data should start showing up on GA4 within a few hours).

If that option wasn’t available for you during your GA4 property setup (or maybe you created a brand new Google Analytics account), using the gtag.js code can be an effective and relatively simple way to connect GA4 to your site… provided you’re comfortable with adding a little bit of code to your site!

You’re going to want to add the gtag.js tag in the <head> element on your website. While this process is relatively simple, it’s always helpful to make a full site backup before you make any changes to the code on your website.

1. The first step is to copy your gtag.js code. Go to the Admin gear icon in the bottom-left corner in Google Analytics, and then click Data Streams (note: if you don’t see Data Streams, make sure that your GA4 property is selected in the drop-down menu).

2. Click on the web data stream for your website.

3. Click View tag instructions.

4. Click Install manually, and then copy the code below. This is your gtag.js code!

5. Now it’s time to add your code to the header of your website.

Certain themes have built-in places for you to add codes to your header, and Genesis, the popular “parent” theme to many “child” themes, is one of them.

That said, an important note here is that any code you add to your header is actually added to your theme’s code. So if you switch themes somewhere down the line, it’s important that you copy important header codes from your old theme (like your gtag.js code!) into your new theme’s header.

If you’re using the Genesis theme with a child theme, you can go to Genesis > Theme Settings, and then paste your gtag.js code into the Header Scripts area.

You can delete your UA tracking code from this area as well. It should look something like this, and it should contain a “UA-XXXXX-Y” code (highlighted below):

Alternatively, you can install a plugin called Code Snippets to help you add your gtag.js code. Once you install and activate that plugin:

• Go to Snippets > Add New
• Give the Snippet a name (like gtag.js)
• Then paste the following code into the code area, pasting your gtag.js code where it says “DELETE THIS LINE AND PASTE CODE HERE”

add_action( 'wp_head', function () { ?>

DELETE THIS LINE AND PASTE CODE HERE

<?php }, 1 );

It should look like this:

Then simply scroll to the bottom and click Save Changes.

Yay! Your gtag.js code should now be in the header of every page on your site. To verify, you can view the page source on your website and search for “gtag.js.”

Installing GA4 with Google Tag Manager

For: Anyone who is comfortable with code and is interested in tracking lots of custom events with GA4.

Our last method requires the use of yet another free Google tool: Google Tag Manager.

Using Google Tag Manager is a nice way to avoid the pitfalls of installing your Google Analytics tracking code with a plugin, and it gives you the opportunity to configure your site with different tags, triggers, and variables in the future for things like conversion tracking and marketing.

Google has some points to consider before you start using Google Tag Manager, and, according to Google, you should consider using Google Tag Manager if you need:

• The ability to deploy and modify both Google and 3rd party tags
• The ability to deploy and modify tags for both web and mobile apps
• The ability to deploy and modify tags on the fly from a web interface
• Collaboration and versioning capabilities

If you don’t quite understand what those points mean, or if they’re not things that are particularly important for you and your blog, try out one of the other options above.

That said, if Google Tag Manager does sound like a good fit for you and your site, we’re going to refer you to Google’s documentation about the setup.

Why? Google updates their processes frequently, and, in turn, will always have up-to-date support documentation available for its users. Speaking of, here are Google’s support docs that will teach you how to:

• Create a new account and container
• Install the container on your site
• Add tags (this is the step where you’ll create a tag for your GA4 code!)

You can also review this video from Julius over at Analytics Mania if you need some visual help!

Troubleshooting & Learning More

If you’re having trouble connecting your GA4 property to your site, or if you’d like to dive even deeper into the wonderful world of Google Analytics:

• Refer to this support document from Google about common mistakes with the tag setup.
• Hop into the Food Blogger Pro Community Forum where our Analytics Expert, Ali, can help guide you through the process.
• Tune into this episode of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast with Alison Bechdol about what bloggers need to know about GA4.
• Check out our brand-new GA4 course on Food Blogger Pro:

PHEW! That does it for our mega GA4 blog series!

If you were able to create a GA4 property and connect it to your site using this guide, we’d love to hear from you in the comments! We’re excited for you and this new generation of site analytics.

The post How to Set Up Google Analytics 4: Connecting GA4 to Your Site appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

Universal Analytics (the Google Analytics property you’re probably already familiar with) will stop collecting data on July 1, 2023, and a new analytics property called Google Analytics 4 (or GA4) will be the default for all Google Analytics accounts.

Luckily, GA4 is already available, meaning you can set it up today! And the sooner you set it up, the sooner you can start collecting data in your GA4 property.

The setup can be broken into two parts (which we’re breaking into two blog posts):

1. Creating a GA4 property (this blog post)
2. Connecting GA4 to your site (tomorrow’s blog post)

Even if you’re not a techy person, these blog posts will help you get up and running with this new version of Google Analytics in a snap!

What’s the difference between Universal Analytics and GA4?

Without spending too much time on this (this is a “how to setup GA4” blog series after all!), we wanted to simplify the main differences between Universal Analytics and GA4:

• Universal Analytics classifies engagements with your site as hits while GA4 classifies them as events (think: pageviews, scrolls, and clicks).
• GA4 is more flexible, customizable, and granular.
• GA4 allows you to combine data from multiple data streams –– think websites and Android/iOS apps.
• GA4 automatically filters out spam and bot traffic.
• GA4 makes it easier to track one user from device to device.

So while they’re similar tools, they way they collect and report on web and app data is very different! But before you can dive into actually using GA4, you’ll need to create a GA4 property in Google Analytics.

Create a GA4 Property

If you’ve been using Google Analytics (and therefore Universal Analytics), you’ll just need to create a new property in your Google Analytics account. The data you’ve collected in your Universal Analytics property will remain (for the time being), but you’ll have new data flowing into your GA4 and Universal Analytics properties (at least until July 2023 when new data will only flow into your GA4 property). We’ll cover this process first.

If you’ve never used Google Analytics before, you’ll need to create an analytics account (and a GA4 property in the process). Click here to jump to those instructions.

Creating a New GA4 Property to Add To Your Existing Google Analytics Account

When I say “Creating a New GA4 Property,” I mean this:

Do you see how there are multiple properties in our single Food Blogger Pro account? While we have some extra properties like a staging site and our support site listed there, I wanted you to see that we also have a GA4 property there! We just added it to our existing Google Analytics account.

Luckily, it’s relatively simple to create a GA4 property thanks to Google Analytics’s handy GA4 Setup Assistant!

1. Click the Admin gear icon in the bottom left-hand corner, make sure that your UA property is selected in the Property drop-down menu, and then click the GA4 Setup Assistant button.

2. Click Get Started in the “I want to create a new Google Analytics 4 property” box.

3. If the “Enable data collection using your existing global site tag(s)” checkbox is checked, keep it checked! If it’s checked, it means that you already use the gtag.js code to connect Google Analytics to your site.

By keeping it checked, your new GA4 tracking information will automatically connect to your site through that gtag.js code! Once you create your GA4 property, you won’t need to do anything else to connect your site to your new GA4 property –– it’ll be done automatically!

If that checkbox is greyed out, it just means that you installed Google Analytics on your site in a different way and need to use one of the methods we outline below to connect your new GA4 property to your site.

Either way, click Create Property to create your new GA4 property.

4. Your GA4 property has been created!

The two most important things that the setup wizard just did were:

• It created your new GA4 property.
• It copied the property name, website, URL, timezone, and currency settings from your Universal Analytics property.

If you had the “Enable data collection using your existing global site tag(s)” checkbox checked, your site should already be connected to your new GA4 property and will start collecting data! It may take a few hours for you to start seeing data in your GA4 property, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t see any data at first. That said, you should start to see data in your brand new GA4 property soon!

If you didn’t have that checkbox checked and aren’t already using the gtag.js code on your site, you have a few other steps to connect your new GA4 property to your site (which we’ll cover in tomorrow’s blog post!).

Your site should have still been added as a Data Stream. To verify, click the Go to your GA4 property button.

Then click Data Streams to verify your site has been added.

Creating a New Google Analytics Account with a GA4 Property

Now if you’re brand new to Google Analytics… you’re in the right place! Google Analytics is one of the most important tools for a food blogger to have in their tool belt, and you can set up your Google Analytics account and your GA4 property at the same time!

1. You’ll need a Gmail account in order to use Google Analytics. Both are free (unless you’re using Google Workspace and a custom domain like @foodbloggerpro.com), so that’s your first step if you don’t already have one. Be sure you’re logged into the correct Gmail account as well.

2. Go to analytics.google.com and click Start measuring.

3. Type in an account name. This will be the name of your Google Analytics account. In this example, we’re just calling it Sage Baking, since that’s the blog name for this example. Feel free to review or change the data sharing options, and then click Next.

4. Next, enter a property name. This will be the name of your GA4 property. In this example, we’re calling it Sage Baking – GA4. Select your correct reporting time zone and currency, and then click Next.

Note: You can also create a Universal Analytics property by using the advanced options in this section, but it’s not recommended at this point in time since Universal Analytics will stop collecting data in July 2023.

5. Finally, choose your industry category, business size, and share how you’ll use Google Analytics, and then click Create.

6. Review the terms of service and data processing terms and then click I Accept.

7. Customize your email communication preferences and click Save.

8. Yay! You’ve successfully created a Google Analytics account with a GA4 property! Now, you need to add a data stream. Data streams are the places from which you’ll collect data. For most food bloggers, you’ll just need to set up a Web data stream for your website.

Under Choose a platform, click Web.

9. Add your website URL, and then give your web stream a name (again, we just used Sage Baking!). Keep the Enhanced Measurement toggle on, as it will help you collect event information about the way users interact with your content. Then click Create stream.

10. Your Data Stream has been created! You’ll see some information about your data stream including the name, URL, stream ID, measurement ID, and other settings you can customize.

At this point, whether you’re starting with an existing Google Analytics account or you’re creating an account from scratch, you officially have a GA4 property!

Now, if you still need to connect your GA4 property to your site (i.e. if you didn’t or couldn’t select “Enable data collection using your existing global site tag(s)” during the setup), be sure to check back tomorrow when we’ll walk you through that process.

Until then, great job getting to this point! If you have any questions, or if you’re interested in diving into the wild world of Google Analytics 4 right now, be sure to check out our brand new Google Analytics course, available exclusively for Food Blogger Pro members:

See ya tomorrow for part 2 of this series where we’ll connect your GA4 property to your site!

If you were successful in creating a brand new GA4 property, congrats! We’d love to hear from you in the comments. Have questions? Leave them below or jump into the Food Blogger Pro forums!

The post How to Set Up Google Analytics 4: Creating a GA4 Property 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.

Can you imagine if you woke up tomorrow, typed in the URL of your blog, pressed return, and saw a white screen? Then, in a moment of panic you looked in your computer’s photos folder, only to find that your pictures were missing as well? It’s rare, but it happens. Hence the reason for a blog backup!

Most people have a general concept of backing up, but we’ve found that more often than not people haven’t thoroughly backed up their computer and their blog.

If you’re a blogger (or wanting to become one), it’s vital that you properly protect your business (i.e. your computer and your blog)

Here are four ways you should be backing up your computer and your blog.

1. Computer-to-External Hard Drive Backup

All computer hard drives will eventually fail. It’s not a matter of if, but when. That’s why you need to make sure to have a backup that runs from your computer to an external hard drive. That way, when your computer’s hard drive fails, you’ll have all of your important files ready to be restored.

You need two things in order to set this up:

1. An external hard drive (like this one)
2. Backup software that runs on your computer

The external hard drive should be two times the size of your computer’s hard drive. This gives you plenty of space to keep multiple versions of the backup. For instance, if you have a 1TB hard drive then you should buy a 2TB external hard drive.

Both Windows and Apple computers come with backup software already installed. Windows calls their program Backup and Restore and Apple calls their program Time Machine.

After purchasing your external hard drive, you should read through the instructions provided by Windows or Apple to make sure that you correctly setup the software to backup to the external hard drive.

2. Computer-to-Cloud Backup

The computer-to-external hard drive backup offers a way to quickly and easily access your files if your computer’s hard drive dies. But what happens if your computer and your external hard drive go missing? If you don’t have a computer to cloud backup then all of your data will be gone forever.

Nerd Note: “The cloud” is really just a group of off-site computers. So, when we say “the cloud,” we’re talking about working with a company that has a room full of computers (servers and hard drives) where your information is securely stored.

With a computer-to-cloud backup, you install a program that periodically scans your computer and backs up any new files or files that have been updated. Cloud-based backup programs come at a cost, but it’s well worth it. We use (and love) Backblaze, but another popular cloud-based backup solution is Carbonite.

Here’s a screenshot of Backblaze when it has just finished a backup:

After you sign up for Backblaze or Carbonite, you’ll need to install the software on your computer. These are both “set it and forget” type programs, so after setting them up you can rest in peace knowing that your computer will be constantly backing up to the cloud.

3. Blog Backup to Cloud

Think of the time and energy you’ve put into building your blog. We’re guessing it is hundreds and hundreds, and maybe even thousands, of hours. The scary thing is that blogs are fragile structures. One line of bad code can cause your entire site to go completely blank.

Not only can a coding mistake cause your site to crash, but there’s also the reality that hackers are consistently trying to maneuver their way into sites across the internet.

It’s important for these backups to be stored with a third party company, not the same company that hosts your website. There are 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 make sure your backups are not with your hosting company.

There are different backup options available, but we’d recommend using a plugin that you pay for. We use (and love) a plugin called VaultPress (for WordPress). It’s actually created by the same company that created WordPress. The entry level plan is $5/month.

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

4. Google Workspace Backup

Along with many other businesses, we use Google Workspace all the time. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs… you name it, we use it. But have you ever thought about backing up your Google Workspace?

That’s right — recovering your files and information from Google Workspace due to accidental or malicious data loss (like ransomware) is up to you.

We use Backupify at Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro to protect our cloud data. It provides automatic backups three times a day, or on demand for everything in the Google Workspace, and allows you to easily restore any lost data. This is also a “set it and forget it” product, which you already know we love.

Bonus: Blog to Computer

Okay. We’ll admit it. This one is a bit obsessive. Occasionally (about once a week) we’ll download a complete backup of the blog and store it locally on a computer.

The only time that this would be needed would be if someone with bad intentions was able to get access to the blog and VaultPress and wipe them both out. The chances of this happening are really slim, but, as we’ve learned before, stuff like this happens.

The process is really easy. If you use VaultPress you just need to login to your account and click the “Download” button.

VaultPress will prepare your backup and then email you once it’s ready to download. After downloading the backup, you can store it on your computer in a folder called “Blog Backup” or something similar.

Rest Easy

If you’ve implemented these backup processes then you can rest easy knowing that your computer and your blog are thoroughly backed up. Congrats!

Now we’re curious — what is your current setup for backing up your blog and computer? Has this post inspired you to implement a new system?!

The post 4 Ways to Backup Your Computer and Blog appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.

There are a lot of different “Mighty Mouse” elements that exist when you’re growing a blog. These are seemingly small or unknown things that in actuality have a big impact on the success of your blog. One of these “Mighty Mouse” elements is the img tag. In today’s post we’re going to dissect the img tag and explain how it can super power your food blog.

You can click here to download the image we’ll use as an example in this post if you want to follow along!

What is the img tag?

The img tag is the HTML code used to communicate information about an image to a user’s web browser. When looking at a website, we humans see images, but your computer sees HTML code.

I think the best way to understand is by doing, so let’s jump in and explore this together.

1. Login to your blog (we’ll use a WordPress blog in this example).

2. Hover over Pages and select Add New (don’t worry, we won’t be publishing this page).

3. Add a title of Chocolate Chip Muffins and then click the + button and then click Image to insert an Image Block.

4. Click Upload. Find and click the chocolate-chip-muffin.jpg image you downloaded to use as an example.

5. Under Image Settings, set the Alt Attribute and Image Size:

Alt Attribute: a chocolate chip muffin on a plate in front of bananas and a muffin tray

Image Size: Full Size

6. Your image is on your page! Now let’s take a look at the HTML code that WordPress is using behind the scenes. We can see the HTML code by clicking on the image, then by clicking the three vertical dots and finding Edit as HTML.

7. Cool! We’re now looking at the img tag exactly as a web browser would see it when it comes to our blog.

The begin and end of the img tag

The first part we need to look at is the img tag itself. I put an orange line at the beginning and the end of the image tag. The first orange line shows where the tag starts, and the second orange line shows where the tag stops.

It’s important to know where the beginning and end of the tag is so we can examine everything that’s inside of it.

You’ll also see a figure tag that surrounds the img tag.

That’s some code that WordPress automatically adds to all of the blocks (i.e. paragraphs, images, quotes, etc.) on your page. You can ignore it for now.

The parts that are inside of our img tag are called attributes. Let’s take a look at the four attributes that are inside of the img tag and talk about how they can super power your food blog.

1. The class attribute

You’ll see the class attribute both within the figure tag and within the img tag.

We’re not going to spend much time with the class attribute, as you’ll only use it if you’re familiar with CSS (CSS is a type of code that helps you add style to websites).

You’ll see classes like “wp-block-image” and “size-full” at the figure level. The “wp-block-image” class is just applying certain styles to every image you upload in one of those image blocks. Size “Full,” if you recall, is the image size we set earlier:

We can change the image dimensions using that side menu bar (here we just clicked 100%), and that will add width and height attributes to our image tags. It also added another class, “is-resized.”

Let’s go back to our original image. We also see a class within the img tag.

This isn’t anything we’ll need to adjust manually. You can really get into the weeds by adding new classes to your images and adjusting the styles for all of the images on your site, but we just wanted to give you a quick overview.

2. The alt attribute

It’s easiest to remember the alt attribute as the alternative attribute, as in what text should be displayed as an alternative if, for whatever reason, the image can’t be displayed.

There are two reasons why the alt attribute is really important:

• Usability: It communicates information about your image to visitors who are visually impaired or have slow internet connections.
• SEO: It communicates to search engines what your image is about.

Usability

Visitors that are visually impaired will use a screen reader to process the information on websites. A screen reader will go through the different parts of a website and attempt to read back information to the user. This works really well for text, but it doesn’t work as well for images. Providing descriptive text in your alt attribute supplies the screen reader with content that can be read back to the visitor, enabling them to better understand what the image is about. Imagine how you would describe your image to someone that is visually impaired. That’s a good starting point for what you should put in as your image’s alt attribute.

Not only that, your readers may be on slow internet connections and your big, beautiful food photos may not load. This alternative text will load instead.

SEO

When a search engine like Google comes to your site it will crawl through your page and attempt to understand the information on your blog post. Search engines are really good at understanding text, but not so great at understanding images. That’s why the alt attribute and the image’s file name (more on that later) are so important for your food blog’s SEO. If your file name is IMG_9205.jpg and the alt attribute area is empty, then you’re not giving Google any clues to help it figure out what your image is about. Providing an accurate and informational alt text helps Google understand your image.

Nerd Note: Never try and trick Google by adding a bunch of words into your alt attribute in an attempt to help your post show up higher in Google. This would be an example of keyword stuffing and could actually end up hurting your blog’s rank in Google. Just do your best to provide an accurate description of the image.

Another Nerd Note: Not every image actually needs an alt attribute. If it’s a decoration (like an icon on your menu bar), you can leave the alt attribute blank. Here’s a nifty decision tree you can use to help you determine whether your image needs an alt attribute or not.

3. The src attribute.

The src attribute is telling the browser where the image is located on your server. It’s easiest to remember the src attribute as the source attribute, as in this URL is the source of the image.

This isn’t critical to know, but I think it’s interesting: Your blog’s images are organized the same way that they would be on a computer — where every image is stored in a folder. So, if you’re using WordPress, the URL for your src attribute will usually look like this:

http://yourblogname.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/your-image-name.jpg

In our example, the URL is:

https://foodbloggerpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/chocolate-chip-muffin.jpg

That means that there is a folder on our server called wp-content:
foodbloggerpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/chocolate-chip-muffin.jpg

…and in that folder there is another folder called uploads:
foodbloggerpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/chocolate-chip-muffin.jpg

…and in that folder there is another folder called 2020:
foodbloggerpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/chocolate-chip-muffin.jpg

…and in that folder there is another folder called 10:
foodbloggerpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/chocolate-chip-muffin.jpg

…and in that folder we can find our image:
foodbloggerpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/chocolate-chip-muffin.jpg

Nerd Note: You can actually copy the URL in the src attribute and paste it into your web browser like it is a website. When you do that it’ll bring you to a web page, but the only thing on the page will be the image.

The most important thing to consider with the src attribute is the file name that you give to the image before uploading it. The file name is important because search engines use it to try and figure out what your image is about. If your image is of a chocolate chip muffin, make sure that you don’t have a file name of IMG-1234.jpg, because that’s communicating to the search engine that your image is about “IMG-1234.jpg,” which doesn’t really make sense.

It would make much more sense if you call your image chocolate-chip-muffin.jpg, because that’s the actual content that is in image. This is an important concept, so I’ll bring in some emojis to help make my point.

There are lots of different ways you can change the file name of an image. Here’s how I usually do it:

1. Click on the file
2. Right click
3. Click Rename
4. Rename your image

You want to do this before you upload the image to your blog, as it’s really hard to change the file name after you uploaded the image.

4. The Pin Description.

Woah! What’s that?

You may not see the data-pin-description attribute on your images, and that’s okay. We see that here because we’re using a plugin (Tasty Pins — it’s actually one that we developed over on our sister site, WP Tasty!) to add that attribute for us.

Why is the data-pin-description attribute so important?

Pinterest is a huge driver of food blog traffic (we eat with our eyes, after all, and Pinterest is a highly-visual social platform), so we want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to optimize for traffic from Pinterest.

That’s where our data-pin-description attribute comes into play. It helps us add custom Pinterest Text to each of our images so that our images have descriptive and searchable descriptions.

Here’s what that looks like on Pinterest:

Linking an image to an image

Occasionally I’ll notice a blog that is linking all of its images to a page that is just another picture of that image. I’ll provide an example below. If you hover over that image you’ll see that you can click on it. When you do click on it you’ll notice that it opens a new window that contains the same image.

This doesn’t hurt anything, but it’s considered poor form (unless you’re linking to a larger version of the same image to allow the visitor to see it better).

That said, there are instances when it makes sense to add a link to an image, like if you’re publishing a recipe round-up. It might make sense then to add a link back to the source of the original recipe when someone clicks that imgae. You’d do that by:

1. Clicking on the image
2. Clicking the link icon
3. Pasting the link in the field

This is what that’ll look like in code form:

Editing and updating your img tag

We’ve dissected the img tag and understand the attributes that are located inside, but how the heck do you put them in correctly in the first place (or edit them if you know you’ve done it wrong in the past)?

Attachment Details

The easiest way is fill out the information in the Attachment Details when you’re first adding the image.

It’s super simple, but many people rush through this part. The screenshot below shows a basic example of an image with properly formatted Attachment Details. You’ll see that we’ve filled out the Pinterest Text and the Alt Text (and the Title has been auto-filled).

Nerd Note: Here’s a quick explanation on the other fields in this screen: (1) The Pinterest Title is auto-filled by Pinterest and comes from Tasty Pins. You can leave this blank. (2) The Pinterest Repin ID also comes from Tasty Pins and is used to help readers pin existing pins. You can read more about that here. (3) The Title attribute is no longer used in WordPress, so it’s not a critical area to fill out. It was auto-filled here. (4) It’s rare to see a caption used on a food blog (as the pictures are pretty self explanatory). (5) The description (which isn’t pictured, but it’s below the caption) is for your own internal use and won’t show up when you insert the image.

Editing the HTML Manually

At the begin of this post we switched our block from a Visual view to the HTML view:

Once you’re in the HTML view you can easily update the different attributes of the img tag.

Conclusion

Did you make it all the way through this post? If you did then you’re the kind of person that’s serious about growing your food blog.

I just threw you a virtual high five for going above and beyond and taking the time to understand the img tag. Remember: it’s all about small changes that can have a big effect on your blog. I’m off to watch some Mighty Mouse on YouTube!

The post The IMG Tag and How it Can Super Power Your Food Blog appeared first on Food Blogger Pro.