SEO Tips for Food Bloggers
Food is one of the evergreen topics on the web. Its importance has never ebbed and never will. But, with thousands of food blogs churning content daily, it has become hard to get enough page views.
In this article, you will learn 12 tips to improve the SEO of your food blog. Let’s dive in.
1) Use Long-tail Keywords
Few things are as varied as food. Thousands of queries related to food enter Google searches every day. Many are long-tail key phrases like ‘easy vegan food recipes’.
These are rich in user intent, meaning you can easily write content answering the query.
Also, with the outbreak of Covid-19, people have become more health-conscious. Even those used to eating from outside have switched to cooking, using recipes from the web. This means seeking recipes with varied ingredients, many of which are added to the search. You can use a keyword tool to find these long-tail keywords. Many of these tools offer free/trial versions.
2) Write Long-form Content
Food is a personal matter. As such, you need to weave real-life context into your content to connect with people. This means telling a story that led you to create that recipe. Such content is likely to be long-form, with a word count of between 500 and 1,200.
Writing such long-form content gives you two primary benefits:
1) Higher user trust
2) Uncluttered indexing
Both these qualities are crucial for your SEO efforts. So, don’t shy away from long-form content just because you hear such pieces are no longer in vogue.
3) Optimize Content for Voice Search
Voice search is becoming commonplace around the world. This is particularly because of the penetration of smartphones around the world. Moreover, Covid brought its use as a contactless way to communicate with the web into relief.
How to do it:
To optimize your content for voice search, focus on conversational long-tail keywords. This is because people using voice search tend to use sentences as search phrases, for example. A user who might type ‘healthy fruit salad quick’ will say ‘how to make healthy fruit salad’ in a voice search.
4) Earn Your Links
Neil Rollins of Haitna says, “A decent link profile will help you rank better on Google search results. But link-building is closely connected to useful content. For this purpose, you can use strategies like the ‘skyscraper technique’ or ‘content’.”
The first technique entails creating better content than the one ranking high. It works on the assumption that only quality can grab attention!
But do audit your link profile time-to-time. This is because dubious websites -- link mills -- might link up with you without your knowledge. This can hurt your rankings in two ways.
1) Attracting a Google manual action
2) Lower rankings because of reduced trust
Note: Recovery from the Google penalty is a time-consuming process. So, once you detect the presence of rogue backlinks, request their removal or disavow them.
5) Organize Your Stuff
A well-organized website is crucial for a great User Experience (UX) and, thus, higher ranks. This means organizing your articles based on categories and tags for a food blog.
Remember, however, that you need to limit the number of categories. Too many of them will disorient a user, nullifying the very purpose of the organization. A few easy categories are ingredients, mealtimes, and dietary needs.
Even if you cover many topics related to food, you can organize them. You can give them tags, briefly explaining what the article covers.
6) Increase Your Page Speed
This is also critical to improving your SEO performance. Since you are running a food blog, you are likely to have large media assets on your page. As such, you must reduce the load time wherever you can.
Take a look at the page speed of Bing.
Here are two tips
6.1) Reduce HTTP requests
Every time someone clicks on your link, a browser communicates with the server. The browser demands assets – parts of your page —and the server supplies. Reducing the number of assets will help the page load faster.
Our website has a page accessibility score of 96/100.
Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to find the number of requests and remove any unwanted ones.
6.2) Use Content Delivery Networks (CDN)
CDN works by storing copies of page assets in servers around the globe. This means a server will be close to the browser to fulfill a request. The CDN thus reduces the distance requests need to travel and makes pages load faster.
7) Don’t Chase Popular Keywords
If you are just starting, it will be better not to chase after highly competitive keywords. It will only sap you of your energy but produce little to no result. Instead, use that time to find a niche and target keywords.
One way to do it is to focus on regional recipes. Yes, the search volume will be minuscule compared with popular ones. But, you will be the first or among the first to introduce something fresh to the web. Therein lies your worth!
Moreover, new content has a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR). Users will be curious about a recipe they haven’t seen or heard. With decent metadata, you can increase the CTR and lead many users to your website.
8) Give Alt Text to Your Photos
No food blog can succeed without quality pictures. They play a crucial role in user experience. But the only way Google can understand these images is through alt text.
See how we have added alt text to our images.
Many food bloggers ignore this fact and use curt phrases while naming their files. That’s a lot of wasted opportunity to fare well on Google image searches.
So, make your alt text more descriptive. Try to convey what exactly your image shows. Such a move will also benefit specially-abled individuals who rely on screen readers. Moreover, such descriptions will salve users annoyed by a slow-loading page!
9) Use Videos
There is no denying video is the way forward. The quantity of video consumption has risen exponentially in the last decade. Moreover, videos are the best medium to introduce a recipe.
Your videos will rank directly on Google search.
Benefits of Using Videos
A) Having videos on your website will satisfy both readers and viewers.
B) It will increase dwell time on your website, helping your rank better on SERPs.
C) You can have your own YouTube channel and link it to your website to get more traffic.
D) Overall user experience will increase, sending positive signals to search engines.
Also, videos will become your greatest asset in the future. You can use them on a variety of platforms, current and coming.
10) Make Your URL Human-friendly
An esoteric aspect of SEO is the URL. Its length and readability play an important role in user trust, a key determiner of UX. If your URL has many special characters that only a machine can decipher, you may be a little spammy. You may not get referral traffic too.
For example, we have added the keyword “photography SEO” to the URL.
But don’t worry. There are tools you can use to shorten your URL length. Not only do they make them shorter, but they also make them readable to both humans and algorithms. Also, include keywords in your URL, so the user and the search engines know what the link contains.
11) Have a Good Website Design
Nothing is appealing if it’s not presented well. That’s why a good website design is crucial for great SEO performance.
Now, this is not to say Google ranks your website by assessing the design of your site; it can’t do that. But, Google does assess how a user experiences your website. Signals like bounce rate, dwell time, and Scroll depth helps it measure UX.
There is a psychological aspect to it too. User makes their first impression not by reading your content but by viewing your design. If the initial impression is good, people will stay to read your content. And if your content is good, you are on your way to the top!
12) Use Structured Data
Structured data on your website determines how well search engines understand your content. In layman’s terms, it refers to: “A standardized model of organizing page content.” Now, anything ‘standard’ can be easily understood. And that’s the point!
For a food blog, you can organize content under ingredients, time, and temperature. You can do this yourself if you know to program. If you don’t, use a recipe plugin like WP Recipe Maker or WP Tasty – Tasty Recipes.
Structuring data also show your webpage as rich snippets on SERPs. Such snippets have higher CTR because of photos, brief descriptions, and ratings/views.
SEO for Food Bloggers FAQs
1) How Should I Name My Food Blog?
Being unique comes out of the content you produce. And the starting point is the name of your blog. Do a wordplay with terms popular among foodies, as in ‘butterscotch’ or ‘hunger games’. Alternatively, try to use a benefit in the domain name, as in ‘1dollarhealthyfood.com’.
2) How do I Make My Blog Stand Out?
Do your reference starting, but find your style. One way to do this is to locate a niche. These can be regional delicacies or seasonal foods. Keywords covering such topics may not have a large search volume. They, however, will give you a foothold when you are starting. Besides, who doesn’t want to read about/watch a rare food?
3) How do I Earn Backlinks for My Food Blog?
To build links, you will need at least ten quality articles longer than 300 words. Once you have those ready, place useful comments on other food blogs. Also, offer guest posts to media outlets, provided you have something to share.
