We all know how hard it can be to drive traffic to your new or old food blog. The algorithms of social media channels are constantly changing and SEO rules for Google are also always expecting new requirements from us. That's why I've put together this article on How To Grow Your Food Blog in 2020!
I’ve put together a list of 3 things you can do today to increase traffic to your food blog. Implementing these 3 things today will not only help you become more visible on the internet and social media but will increase the quality of your food blog
Improve your food photography
I could right and entire post about this (okay, I probably will) because it is SO important. Upping your food photography game will not only make your blog prettier but also drive more traffic to you food blog.
With the market being saturated, having strong visual content has become one of the most important things you can do. It will make your recipes stand out from the rest, ensure that your images and recipes are favoured on Pinterest and definitely help with growing your Instagram profile.
One of the best things you can do is to invest in yourself. I waited WAY too long to make that commitment. Think about it, you would easily spend money on University or gym memberships. Investing in yourself and your food blog should be just as important if you want to grow your food blog and eventually make money from your food blog.
Okay, now that you understand why you need to up your food photography game, the next question is how to improve your food photography right? The answer is so simple, take that food photography course!
As I mentioned, I took years before I invested in myself (don’t make the same mistake), but once I did it was a game changer. I took Sarah Fennel’s (Broma Bakery) Foodtography course and I’ll NEVER look back!
It completely changed the look and feel of my blog and Instagram profile. It helped me to understand how light works within food photography, how to improve your composition and even how to create a consistent look and feel for your brand. All these food photography techniques helped me grow my food blog and increase my Instagram followers.
Ultimately, it helped me earn money from my blog as well as gain content creation clients. GAME CHANGER I tell you!
Rethink the way you approach Pinterest
Pinterest is my main source of traffic, and is still the best way to grow your food blog in 2020. But Pinterest in 2020 acts totally different to when I first started my food blog.
Back in the day all you had to do was pin a ton of pins every day and it would probably be good enough to drive traffic to your website. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to drive traffic to your food blog with Pinterest in 2020 anymore.
Nowadays, there are a couple of different things that needs to be done in order for you to increase your Pinterest marketing.
5 ways to grow your food blog with Pinterest in 2020:
1.Pin less. Yes, you heard right, no more pinning 100 pins per day. Stick to pinning around 20-30 pins per day of which around 70% of those pins should be from your own blog and the rest from sharing others pins.
I use Tailwind to schedule all my pins and it’s not only made my life a ton easier but has also helped increase my Pinterest traffic.
2.Create new pins. Before you get scared, I’m not telling you to create tons of new content. While yes it is important to create new content, it can also be done by simply creating new pins for the same post.
I tend to pin 2-3 images from the blog post and then I create 3x new pins with text overlay which I then schedule using Tailwind and pin those to group boards and any other relevant boards. (include 3x images of same post)
3.Use keywords. Make sure to research your keywords for each pin just like you would for SEO. Pinterest is ultimately a search engine so making sure that your pin descriptions contain relevant keywords is incredibly important.
You can simply use the suggested words at the top of a Pinterest search as a guideline. It’s that simple.
4.Clean up your boards. Deleting under performing pins from your boards can help the Pinterest algorithm think that your profile is only jam packed with high performing content, this will help to push your pins up a little higher on the ranks.
This can take some time so have patience. I go through my boards on a regular basis and delete old pins that are under performing. Start with pins that have lower than 1 save and work your way up from there. That doesn’t mean that content can’t be pinned again. Go ahead and create new pins for that old content and schedule it, but ensure you're regularly going through your pins and deleting the underperforming pins.
5.Pin seasonal content. This is one strategy that took me a while to catch on to. It’s honestly really easy, make sure that you pin content that’s seasonal. That’s it! I tend to start pinning content about 30 days before the actual “season”.
For example, I would post an Easter related recipe 30 days before Easter, then continue to promote that recipe for the next 30 days. So on the day I post the recipe, I post it to my main Pinterest board and then schedule it to go out to various other relevant boards every 2-3 days.
SEO SEO SEO.
Yes, I know, you’ve heard this one before. But we all know it’s SO SO important. It can be frustrating when you don’t get it right, but once you nail your SEO game it can increase your traffic SO much.
3 tips to grow your food blog with SEO:
- Yoast SEO. Every food blog NEEDS this plugin. It is free (unless you use the Pro version) and is incredibly easy to use. Yoast SEO helps you to tell Google exactly what your blog is about. It also provides guidelines when writing your blog post in order to ensure that your post is super duper SEO friendly.
- 2.Keywords are where it’s at. Make sure that you use keywords at least 4-5 times in every post. I use Keywords Everywhere to help me to find keywords to use in my blog post. But you can simply use the Google search bar. Simply start typing in something like Peanut Butter Cookies and see what the auto complete suggests. These suggestions are things that others are searching and are keywords you can use in your posts.
- 3.Answer questions. Recipe blog posts used to be filled with peoples life stories and non-relevant content. Nowadays it’s best to answer questions that readers might have relating to the recipe in your post. For example if your recipe is Peanut Butter Cookies you could add subheadings like “How to freeze cookies” or “How long can you store Peanut Butter Cookies for?”.
Food blogging in 2020 is incredibly different to years before and making money from a food blog could feel impossible. But incorporating these 3 main tricks will ensure that you’re able to grow your food blog in 2020. It will put you well on your way to bringing in more traffic to your food blog and ultimately being on track to make money as a full time food blogger.
Head on over to my Instagram to say HAAAY or if you have any questions or other tips and tricks that readers might be interested in.
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