Episode 292: How to Use SEO and Other Strategies to Improve Your Content and Accelerate Growth with Chef Dennis Littley

292_DENNIS_LITTLEY

Chef Dennis: Hi, this is Dennis Littly from askchefdennis.com and you are listening to Eat Blog Talk podcast. 

Sponsor: Hey, awesome food bloggers. Before we dig into this episode, I have a really quick favor to ask you. Go to your favorite podcast player. Go to Eat Blog Talk, scroll down to the bottom where you see the ratings and review section. Leave Eat Blog Talk a five star rating if you love this podcast and leave a great review. This will only benefit this podcast. It adds value. And I so very much appreciate your efforts with this. Thank you so much for doing this. Okay. Now onto the episode. 

Megan Porta: Hey food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, the podcast for food bloggers, looking for the value and confidence that will move the needle forward in your business. This episode is sponsored by RankIQ. I am your host, Megan Porta. Today Chef Dennis and I are going to have a conversation about using SEO to improve your blog posts. Chef Dennis is a food blogger, chef, social media enthusiast, and travel blogger. He loves sharing his restaurant style recipes and helps his friends find the joy of cooking. Chef Dennis, it is such an honor to have you back on Eat Blog Talk for the second time. So welcome. 

Chef Dennis: Thank you Megan. I am so excited to be back again. We had such a great talk last time I was on. I’m looking forward to this one. 

Megan Porta: Yes, same. I got such great feedback about that episode, by the way. I don’t know if I ever shared that with you, but so many people love you and love everything you share. So I’m always grateful to talk to you. We are going to ask you for a second fun fact. I know I did that the first time around, but what do you have for us this time? 

Chef Dennis: This is actually a fun fact relating to a recipe I just created for a brand. This fun fact is I have never eaten or made a tuna casserole before.

Megan Porta: Oh. 

Chef Dennis: I did it for the first time, I did for the first time, just because that was a recipe I pitched and they took it, and it was amazing. . 

Megan Porta: So did you purposely avoid tuna casserole or is it just something that you never got around to making? 

Chef Dennis: Well, people, hot tuna, just never really, fresh tuna, but canned tuna heated up? I was like, I don’t know. 

Megan Porta: Ok, when you put it like that. 

Chef Dennis: Isn’t there anything else to eat? I did make it quite flavorful, I have to say. I took the pictures and it was cold by the time I got to it. When I surprise myself with something, that is like a monumental day for me. Because I create dishes and I know what they’re supposed to taste like and I go, yeah, this is good. This is really good. But when I eat something, I go, oh my God. So that was this moment. Probably from all the other things I put into it too, and it was really good tuna that I used. 

Megan Porta: All of those other ingredients made up for the hot canned tuna.

Chef Dennis: Of course cheese, cheese always helps it.

Megan Porta: Oh yes. Cheese makes everything better. 

Chef Dennis: Yeah, no. So that was a fact. I even put in the blog list, I’m gonna let you in on the secret I’ve never had or made one before. 

Megan Porta: That is so funny. I love that. I love that you shared that. Now I’m never gonna think of tuna casserole the same. Hot canned tuna. Okay. You are actually here to talk about SEO. I know you’ve really dug into this. You were mentioning before we started recording that you had a traffic dip at the later part of last year in 2021. So you’ve really tried to hone in on what can get you more traffic and you’ve found such great ways to do that. So do you just wanna talk through that? I would love for you to share that little bit with everyone before we get started with SEO specifically.

Chef Dennis: Absolutely. It was the pandemic. As crazy as the past two years have been, the beginning of the pandemic, I think traffic was off. RPMs were low, it was just not a good situation. Then all of a sudden people realized that they could cook at home. They had to, because they couldn’t go out.q As they were cooking at home, they were looking for recipes. My traffic just blew up. It doubled basically. It was a great year. But now as normalcy comes back, I knew I wouldn’t keep at all. It would’ve been unrealistic to think that I would. But I lost about 20 to 25% somewhere in there, depending on the month. That started in November, the dip. Actually there was an update in Google that affected me little, but I don’t know if it was so much because I have never been affected by any update before. Which is not bragging or anything, but I have good people that I listen to. Casey tells me things and I go, yes, master. Do or do not. So I don’t really know if it was the update and the fact that things were just returning to normal.

So I had just had an audit with Casey and on his recommendations, one of the things that he mentioned to me was that since he started doing audits for me, my links had not improved. My links into my blog and stuff. That they were stagnant. I gained some, I lost them. I gained some, I lost some. But there was never any great improvement which wasn’t helping me at all. He says, you need to get on more podcasts. I went, I was in a couple. He goes, a couple’s not enough. He goes, you need to pretty much talk to anybody that’s willing to talk to you at this point. I tried. There’s a lot of free resources out there, and this is one of the things we’re bringing back to. I started doing some research and I came across a company outta Denver called Kit Caster. That’s actually who scheduled this one with you for the second one. They started getting me on a variety of different podcasts. It’s not only been fun, but it’s broadening the scope of who’s getting to listen to me. I was on one called, Make It Cute. We talked beforehand. I go this is somebody completely different. It’s a TikTok, younger generation guy who is talking to this old foie about food blogging. We found we had common ground in the fact that we both loved to travel. We both love Paris and different things. Then he goes, I’m gonna ask you what your best recipe is because I already know what it is. He goes, because everyone on TikTok talks about it as the gold standard. I went, really? I said tiramisu? He goes exactly. I had no idea. 

Megan Porta: Wait, everyone on TikTok was talking about your tiramisu? 

Chef Dennis: Correct. My recipe, as the goal standard for tiramisu. 

Megan Porta: Oh my gosh and this guy knew that about you. 

Chef Dennis: Yeah. I never met him, never talked to him before this time on a show. Evidently he went in there and he says, yeah, he goes, they talk about you all over the place there. So I was like, wow, that’s great. 

Megan Porta: That’s amazing. So you didn’t even know it. You were a star and you didn’t even know it. 

Chef Dennis: Yeah, who knew. Who knew? So different types of shows. That was one, I would’ve never applied to, never thought to talk about. Wasn’t really as food oriented as I thought, but it was a different venue. So think outside the box. Because your readers, again, I always told people when I was pushing Twitter for a long time, which was, one, everyone wants to eat and everyone wants to travel. So talking about your food and your travels are good ways to get new followers. 

Megan Porta: Absolutely. Podcast guesting is so easy. I feel like you show up, you bring your knowledge, you bring your value and you don’t have to do the editing. You don’t have to do anything. The other person does all the work. So you just show up and deliver your awesomeness and then spread your connections. You get to diversify who you know and all of that good stuff. 

Chef Dennis: Like I started to say, there’s some free resources out there. I had tried those. I listened to myself and sent notices out and bupkis, I got nothing. That’s when I thought, let me find someone to market me. Because really, as a blogger, we need someone to market us. Sometimes I wish there was, I could find the right PR person just to get me jobs. Take 25%. I don’t care. I had one person that was gonna get me this exorbitant amount of money. They said, my rate’s 20%. I says, you get me that you can keep half. She says no, 20 percent’s fine. It never turned out to get me anything, but at the rate she was quoting, I was like, oh, hell, I’ll take half. Finding someone to market you. I think podcasts, finding the right person and there’s a bunch of ’em out there. Kitcaster was the one I went with because it talks about getting you on the higher ranking blogs that are in the top 10% of all blogs that are listened to. There’s a thing called listen notes that’ll let you know what podcasts are rated at. You can check things out ahead of time. Even though they’re listed as that, doesn’t always mean that they’re still active. 

Megan Porta: So has this helped your SEO, like on a bigger scope? 

Chef Dennis: I don’t know yet, but it’s the back links. That’s what Casey had mentioned about the back links. He says you need more backlinks, quality backlinks. So he also referred me to Top Hat Rank who does that webinar on a regular basis with Andrew and oh my God. I’m trying to think of his name from Top Hat Rank… 

Megan Porta: Arson.

Chef Dennis: Arson. Yeah. So it was a natural tie and it’s someone he trusts. I trust Casey with my blog. I never take him off as someone that has access to it because every now and then I’ll get an email that says, oh, I was looking at your blog. You had this wrong, I fixed it. You can change it back. But I wouldn’t. I’m like, okay.

Megan Porta: Sounds good. 

Chef Dennis: It sounds good to me. So he recommended Arson and Top Hat. It’s a lot of money. It’s an investment. But at this stage of the game too, it’s also, I was losing money. So I needed to learn how to make it back. The old adage, to make money, you have to spend money is true. I always tell people if you’re using your income to put food on the table, it’s a whole different strategy that you need to use. But if this is fun money. I bought a condo last year with it. Okay. Fun money. You can spend more money to make more money. Bad news this year was I went into a new tax bracket. Good news is I found more expenses but then my wife goes, so you hired all these people to get you more traffic, so you make more money and I’m like, it doesn’t really make sense. Does it? Okay. 

Megan Porta: Okay. First of all, I feel like there’s so many new SEO experts in our realm right now, and they’re popping up absolutely everywhere. People apply to be on this podcast all the time. I have a really hard time because I know a lot of people just like going to the people they know and trust, like Casey. You mentioned a lot of food, bloggers love and trust him. So it’s really hard to know which experts to listen to. Do you recommend finding your people and just sticking with them or looking around in all kinds of areas of the SEO world? 

Chef Dennis: I think it’s important to diversify a little bit because, God forbid something happened to Casey. He loves his bacon and his bourbon. So God forbid, something happened to him. You’d be sitting there going what am I gonna do now? Now I’m not saying to actively hire another person, it’s good to just to look for other resources. First of all, you, he tells you to do something, you do it. So many times, he tells me to do something, I go back and they haven’t made any changes. He says, why did they bother hiring me? They wasted my time. They wasted their time. If he tells you and I’m guilty to some degree, but I do try, because I know he looks and I don’t want to be taken into the wood shed or anything. But finding other resources and I think this is something Casey promotes too, is like, look around. See what’s going on. That’s how I came up with a few other resources. Again, think of them as resources, not as carved and stone tablets brought down from the mountain.

Top Hat suggested a change. Casey didn’t suggest that change. So it went into a round table discussion with Arson and Casey and Andrew. They finally decided that, yeah Top Hat Rank was right on this one top. Because Andrew wrote back, he goes, I’m not too sure about this. We’re gonna talk about it for a while and get back to you. Then the consensus was, yes this was correct. We’re gonna make it. It’s your business. You need to decide what to do with it. You don’t just take as the word of gospel pretty much anything they tell you to do, because it’s gotta make sense to you too. So reading other things, looking around is always a good idea. Point to case this morning there was an article shared on Search Engine Journal about people overusing John Mueller. Okay. Mr. Google himself had said that people are overusing FAQs and the blog posts are too long. They suggested that you create just a page of FAQs. Another post, or cut your blog post into two. Someone reading that would go, wow, this is Search Engine Journal. The guy must really know his stuff. That’s not always the case. 

Megan Porta: So what are your thoughts on that? I’ve never heard anything like that before.

Chef Dennis: That was new. This was just out today.

Megan Porta: Oh, so fresh thoughts. 

Chef Dennis: I’m looking at it and I’m reading it this morning and I look at it and I go I wonder what this is. Let’s look at the comments. There’s 48 comments. Casey Markee chimed right in and said that this is the author taking things outta context, which a lot of reporters tend to do these days. He is talking about FAQs where people are putting 15 FAQs on a page. Okay. Too many. You want three to five tops. That’s what Casey had said. You’re and you wanna make sure you’re answering the question? So Dennis, how do I know what questions to ask? Glad you asked that. Google helps you. When you go search something. It gives you questions that people are asking. So lots of times those are your FAQs right there. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. It’s really easy to find those. You don’t have to look very far. 

Chef Dennis: No. Generally you answer a lot of them in your blog post, if you’re doing a good blog post. What you’re answering is maybe not what people that are looking for that post are asking. Because sometimes they’re strange and you have to take some that don’t really seem like they’re a good fit and eliminate them or if it’s a good thought, but it wasn’t written properly. Let’s try this. People are saying are they important? There’s an area on Google search console for them now. So that kind of tells me they might be important. Or why Google is looking for ’em.

Megan Porta: Tell me what you think of this strategy. So for existing blog posts, when I’m updating my old content, I’ve been going into Google search console and just looking at the queries for each URL. I have to sometimes scroll down far, but I’ll find those weird questions that you’re talking about, like things that maybe aren’t on Google, but it is specific to my content. Is that a good strategy for FAQs? 

Chef Dennis: I think absolutely. I think anywhere you can find what people are asking about your content specifically, is good. Now asking about your content specifically may not be the broader picture though. So these are the people that are already coming to you. That is getting to you from them. Very good point. Because other people might be thinking the same thing. But you also wanna look at questions that maybe you hadn’t considered, that as an expert you can answer.

Megan Porta: Yeah, that’s a good point. So maybe doing a combination of the two. 

Chef Dennis: Yeah. Again, without getting wordy, another point on that was that blogs are too long. I have friends that say, oh, I wrote a 10,000 word blog. I was like, oh my God. Not even your mother would sit down. It goes back to that, we don’t want your life story. Just gimme the damn recipe, kind of philosophy. I think it’s good to keep it a little human without going overboard. 

Megan Porta: It is a balance, right? It’s such a hard line to walk sometimes, but you gotta find that line and you have to find what works for you. I know some bloggers who write a lot of words, and that’s just their standard and some who go more on the leaner side. Yeah. So finding that balance for you. Do you have a template that you use for creating blog posts? 

Chef Dennis: I do. I created it when I became a travel blogger. People always say, oh, you’re a writer or you’re a professional at this. No, I’m not. I’m a blogger. Okay. I’m not gonna give you the great American novel by any stretch of the imagination. So when I started writing my travel post, not really knowing what people wanted, I went through my pictures. Because pictures speak a thousand words and I would post a picture and then I would start talking about that and that would naturally lead me into the next picture.

So once I discovered how, first of all, how easy it is to write a blog post that way. Secondly I started applying that a little bit more to writing a food post. The difference in this is, was I just writing about the picture. I would ask a question first. So this is my template. Then that comes into play with the H2 tags, using them. You really don’t need to go H3, H4, it just gets messy when you do that. Your H one is your title, your H two or all the other questions you ask. One of my first questions that I ask after I introduce whatever I’m making, I’ll say, what ingredients do I need to make tuna casserole? So that leads me into my picture of it. My little spiel about gathering the ingredients beforehand, how it helps you. It really does. That’s how I do that with everything I cook. Then I go into, how do you make it? If there’s different components. This is where you don’t wanna be repetitive, or you don’t wanna overuse keywords. Or you want to use different keywords, which gets us into a whole other aspect of it. But because you don’t wanna keep using tuna casserole, tuna casserole, because then it’s over keyword stuffing. It’s overusing ’em, it’s just redundant. How did I make a bechamel because that went into it? What kind of cheese can I use? Questions like that. Different aspects of it. You still want to be interested, but you don’t wanna overuse the whole verbiage of it. So you start asking questions. Supply your images. I do either groups of four or groups of six, depending on how many step by steps I had. One thing Casey called me on was, to me it made sense, I was numbering from top to bottom and then going over a column and going from top to bottom again. He said, Dennis, people don’t read that way. You have to go left to right. I’m like, oh, damn. It made sense to me. He goes you’re the only one it makes sense to.

Megan Porta: Oh, that’s funny. He called you out. He’s very honest. 

Chef Dennis: He does. I never take offense at anything cuz I know he’s trying to help me. 

Megan Porta: Absolutely.

Chef Dennis: I have people that will say he can’t talk to me that way and go, yes he can. You paid him to talk to you that way. 

Megan Porta: Exactly. That’s what you want. When you pay for something. You want complete honesty, at least that’s how I feel. 

Chef Dennis: Yeah. Again, so that’s my format. I go down the pictures. You don’t wanna overuse images. Some people will put every step in a single picture. It drags it down. I know it opens up ad space and you’re gonna make higher RPMs. But you’re killing your reader. So it’s gotta be good for both of you and there’s a good mix between what’s good for you and what’s good for them. Again, I think most people understand that. But then highlighting, the right pictures that you do wanna share full frame and get good shots of that are really showcasing what you do. That leads into the thing of, people are saying, why aren’t my pictures showing up? They’re the wrong size. They’re not 1200 pixels wide. Google still shows some of my older ones that aren’t the right size. Some of my speakers just went off cuz I said the magic name. They listen all the time.

Megan Porta: That’s hilarious. They’re always listening. 

Chef Dennis: They’re always on. I found that also, I thought we had corrected it, but the setting in my blog wasn’t correct. It wasn’t showing full size images. So I was creating large images, but I hadn’t set something up in the WordPress correctly so it was shrinking them down. So Andrew went in and fixed that and everything’s fine. Now of course it doesn’t retroactively go back and correct them, but everything moving forward corrects.

Megan Porta: I know that first hand I’ve been spending a lot of time going back and correcting that issue. I have a lot of photos. So it’s been an ordeal for me. 

Chef Dennis: Talking about old posts, you need a plan and you were talking about looking for, queries and stuff down in the Google search console. I use Google analytics to update my old posts. Granted, I don’t have to do the top performing ones because I’ve been doing this for a while now, but I do go in some of ’em, like I’ve added FAQs to a lot of my top ranking posts. The whole trick, there is not always asking Google to update it right away. So maybe it just happens naturally later. Unless it’s a major change to it. Actually my tiramisu dropped in rank on Google, so I did a refresh, a little bit and asked them to recrawl it, to see if I can move back up. It’s a matter of using common sense when you’re doing some of that. Have a plan. Like add your FAQs. Do you use the images across the bottom instead of internal links? I think it’s F S R I?

Megan Porta: I do sometimes. I do both right now just to see what works better. What are your thoughts on that? 

Chef Dennis: It’s not so much that it’s easier, but it was something I was used to doing. I’m not sure to be honest with you. I like the pictures better than the links. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, it looks nicer. Doesn’t it? 

Chef Dennis: We’re visual. If I see a link that says spaghetti meatballs, I might just pass it by. But if I’m scrolling down and I see the picture of spaghetti meatballs, I go, oh, hell, look at that. Does it do the same? I know yoast always calls me out on not having internal links now. But I do. So this leads you to another thing. You can’t always believe what yoast tells you. 

Megan Porta: Because you have to think like the user, like you were saying, and if you are a user, you would think that you would be pulled in more by that visual than by a couple more words.

Chef Dennis: I think so. I think it’s enhancing the user experience. You’re showing them what you have, what deliciousness you create, so you’re giving me a glimpse at things. So I think it’s helpful. 

Megan Porta: I agree. So what else in your template? So you mentioned recipe ingredients, step by step instructions, FAQ. Is there anything else? 

Chef Dennis: The FSRI pictures. I also made a reusable block and it’s my call to action. The call to action, it’s my, you may follow me all the places you can follow me or subscribe with all the links. Then most importantly, if you made this and like it, please leave a rating. When I started doing that, it was amazing how many ratings and comments I got just because I asked. 

Megan Porta: That’s great because mine doesn’t work. So how do you word yours? How do you magically get people to actually do this? 

Chef Dennis: I don’t know. Wasn’t rocket science. I think I probably copied it from somebody.

Megan Porta: I’m gonna look yours up.

Chef Dennis: I had Andrew make me up a little template for it before, and it’s a little highlighted block but it actually says, more recipes you’ll love. Sometimes I’ll make more salmon recipes or more chicken recipes or more desserts. Then there’s a little lock that’s highlighted and says, did you make this? Please rate the recipe below. Then below that are all the subscribe and follow me on it. That’s just inserted right above the recipe. That’s like the last thing I put in. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. It’s very simple. Just two short sentences. Maybe that’s your key. I think mine might be too long. It’s three sentences, three lines.

Chef Dennis: Again, people are a little bit oriented in stuff and again, if they see it, oh, I’m not reading all that. It’s that kind of mentality. It gives me a little bite. That’s just like breaking up your paragraphs. It’s not only, you don’t break up paragraphs only because you can get more ad placement, you break up your paragraphs because that’s how people think and read these days. Not just keeping them plain, but using some italicized text, using some bold text, to make it stand out a little. When they’re reading it, especially on the phone, because it’s smaller. Just little things that you think may help them. If you’re an expert in something every now and then I’ll throw in a Chef Dennis tip. For me, it’s common sense. For other people, it’s oh my God, I didn’t know that. It’s an aha moment. So if you can give them some aha moments, that’s what you want to do. You wanna throw those in from time to time? 

Megan Porta: That’s a great point, right there giving people aha moments. So you point out your chef tips and not every recipe or just when it seems natural?

Chef Dennis: When it seems natural. Sometimes if I’ve got a lot of headers in there already, a lot of H two tags, I’ll just italicize it, bold it and throw a little asterisk on it, and there’s my tip right there. Honestly, sometimes I feel a little too, I don’t wanna call it arrogant or something, but I’m like, oh, this is my Chef Dennis tip for you. I say that to my wife sometimes and she wants to slap me. I go. Oh, chef Dennis doesn’t do that. 

Megan Porta: Anyone who knows chef Dennis would not associate you with the word arrogant. So I don’t think you need to worry about that. 

Chef Dennis: I tell her, I’m just kidding. She goes, Well I don’t know about that. 

Megan Porta: That’s hilarious. So I just looked up your tiramisu, and when did you start blogging?

Chef Dennis: Oh, 2009. So this probably came out in 2010.

Megan Porta: That’s so crazy. So that’s why you have almost 2000 comments on this post. 

Chef Dennis: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. We had to imaginate those. I do believe that’s the correct word for that. 

Megan Porta: I think that this looks amazing. Just a little side note, what makes your tiramisu different from other recipes?

Chef Dennis: I use Kahlua, which I now see a lot of people use. 

Megan Porta: Ah, okay. 

Chef Dennis: I see a lot of almost exact copies of my recipe. But I use Kahlua because you use coffee for the lady fingers. So Kahlua is the natural flavor enhancer. It enhances the coffee, it gives it more depth. The rest originally call for marsala. So I would never sit around sipping marsala. It goes in chicken, it goes in mushroom sauces. It goes in a dessert? Nah, it’s not my liquor of choice. People say, do I have to have alcohol? No, you don’t. It’s just a little added something else. But the Kahlua, the coffee flavored liqueur, since I’m using coffee, seems this is what I want to use for it. I think originally when I was taught Marsala was what was put into it when way, way back in the day when I learned it. But recreating it, I had marsala, I always have marsala on hand, who’s kidding who. I just think I lent towards Kahlua because I like kahlua too.

Megan Porta: Oh, it’s so good. So good alone and so good in other things. Okay. Is there anything else with blog posts? I wanna ask you about how you do your keyword research. But I wanna make sure we cover that first. 

Chef Dennis: I think it’s just important. Like I said, layout a template. You’ll find it goes much quicker. One of the things for me and it might be just me or I don’t know if it’s everybody’s, I hate doing recipes. I hate it.

Megan Porta: Like actually writing out the recipe? 

Chef Dennis: Oh, I hate it. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Same. 

Chef Dennis: It just annoys me. So, the very first thing I do is complete the recipe. Okay. 

Megan Porta: Get the annoying thing out of the way first. 

Chef Dennis: Yeah. I always had the ingredients. I write the recipe and print it out. I don’t have the steps in there when I write it. I print it out and then I go make it. As I’m making it, then I decide what I thought should go in there, maybe I shouldn’t go in there or it didn’t taste good so I started again and left that out. So you know, it’s a process then. Then I go back as it’s fresh on my mind and write down the steps. But I also have step by step pictures. So if I forgot a step, I’ve got a picture of it to remind me.

Megan Porta: Do you ever have people call you out? I’ve had this happen a few of your times over the years where people will say you have something in one of your photos that either is or isn’t in the recipe. They compare, which is great. I think it’s great that they’re paying attention, but then I’m like, oh no. So I have to figure out did I put it in? Did I not? Was it just this version? 

Chef Dennis: Oh, yeah. Oh, too many times. Because again I hate writing the recipes. I need to get a proof reader or someone, again to see that, Hey, this is up here, but it’s not up here. Now a lot of times when I write out the step by steps, like I’ll put my four pictures up of the process. I will include it in that, but they go, you have it up in the blog post, but it’s not in the recipe. I’m like, ah, crap. You can only go, oh, my recipe, plugins not working so many times. Like the dog ate my homework kind of thing. So I say, yeah, thank you so much for pointing that out to me. I missed that. Thank you. That’s usually what I do and say, yes, it does belong there. Another good thing. I just found a new videographer. English isn’t their first language and the videos are freaking amazing. Best quality I’ve ever seen. But if I didn’t write the recipe, guess what? They’re not gonna fix it cuz they’re writing it as I did, so I had that happen to a couple. So good thing. Bad thing. I gotta go in and make sure that the recipes I’m giving them to recreate are right. Good thing. I’m making sure they’re right. So when my readers make ’em, they’re not questioning things. Sometimes we write things in a hurry or we write things and I leave words out all the time and grammar really catches them thankfully. It’s just a matter of, it’s an honest mistake. It’s not something you did on purpose, but you got a lot on your plate. If that’s not your number one priority of writing the recipe, which it probably should be, you’re gonna miss things. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. We’re just human, just humans.

Chef Dennis: Every now and then I’ll take a picture of the ingredients and make it and go, I left something out. So the old, something ingredient, not pictured. 

Megan Porta: Yes. oh yeah. That’s the perfect way to do that. That takes care of it. You don’t even have to say anything else. 

Chef Dennis: Yep. When I made the tuna casserole, I had the grated Romano cheese and with the whole blend. Then later I said, no, that should go in the sauce. So I put, pictured in the above, not used in this. Again, you can’t assume just because, oh, I would understand that if I read it, that other people that are reading it would. 

Megan Porta: Exactly. But you never know. 

Chef Dennis: Like Casey says, explain it, like you’d be telling a six year old or a drunk.

Megan Porta: Yep. Absolutely. Gotta think along those lines for sure. So I’m curious about your keyword research. You mention RankIQ, which I’m so in love with RankIQ right now it’s working. It is working, so I’m sticking with it. But what else do you use to determine your keywords? 

Chef Dennis: Well for keywords I think RankIQ is probably one of the best. But then sometimes, in the frequently asked questions, you might see a keyword that you weren’t thinking of. RankIQ covers a lot. I think that is the new, the gold standard right now. Now, do you use their pre-written ones or do you put your own in?

Megan Porta: What do you mean by pre-written? 

Chef Dennis: They have a list.

Megan Porta: Yeah, their database. I just use that right now. 

Chef Dennis: Do you? It takes too long and sometimes it doesn’t write, so I just put my title in and hope for the best. 

Megan Porta: Oh, I see what you’re saying. So you use the keyword, but then you shift a little bit?

Chef Dennis: I know they had a keyword for it, I don’t necessarily use their already rewritten version of it. I will put my blog post title of whatever I created, whatever I’m making, whatever my keyword is, or my long tail keyword is.

Megan Porta: Do you run it through the optimizer that way? 

Chef Dennis: That’s too much work. That’s like, do I take the blog post and put it in there? No, because that’ll change how I write. Like most of the time Yos tells me that my readability is not good. But that’s how I write and that’s how I’ve been writing. That’s why people follow me. I don’t wanna be a cookie cutter blog post. If I was doing another blog and all I was doing was passing assimilating information and passing it, then that would be fine. But I want to keep my humanity in it. I have photographers that work for me and all I want is raw images because I wanna put my eyes, how it should look. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, no, I understand that. So I rarely run existing blog posts through the optimizer because of that. I do start writing new content and I put it through there and somehow, maybe it’s just a mental thing for me, but it works that way because I write it, put it in the optimizer and then I shift things or I change things according to suggested words. I only do it if it’s authentic. I don’t keyword stuff, I don’t put things in that don’t make sense to me. I don’t always get that top grade, but at least I try to tweak it a little bit, if that makes sense. 

Chef Dennis: Oh, absolutely. I think again, you use what works for you. You use what you’re comfortable with, these are suggestions. They’re very good suggestions, but again, and at the end of the day, they’re suggestions because it’s your business. Sometimes what other people do isn’t necessarily what you wanna do or what will set you apart. Again, I’m not trying to take over the world on a blog, be number one in everything or overtake the Food Network, or some of these all recipes. That’s impossible. But I want people to come to me for authenticity, for how I write and for what I give them. So that leaves, I use them to the extent that I want to have the opportunity of more people seeing my posts. So the keywords make that part of it really important. Again, that’s a good starting point. Now, speaking of which, I found a new tool.

Megan Porta: Ah, let’s hear it.

Chef Dennis: Okay, it’s called Reconolist and it’s a nerdy Excel spreadsheet lady that loves what she does, hates being on camera and I just got my report back. What it does is it goes through all of your blog posts and it prioritizes which are your top blog posts that really don’t need any work, but they want you to social share them that really need to be socially shared. Then it finds blog posts that you could rank for if you I’ll work for them. 

Megan Porta: Oh, okay. Can you spell that? Because I can’t find it. 

Chef Dennis: Sure. It’s R E C O N A L I S T.

Megan Porta: That sounds very similar to, is that like Clariti? 

Chef Dennis: Possibly? I’ve never used Clariti. 

Megan Porta: Okay. That’s like a content management tool that integrates into your WordPress dashboard.

Chef Dennis: This doesn’t integrate. This is a and you get a whole teachable set of lessons. I’m up to the third block of lessons, which she says you don’t touch your, my list. Again, priorities and I sit here and watch it when I can. I’m through my third list of how-tos and what fours, and some of them are cutesy. Some of ’em didn’t really apply and I’d fast forward through them. But for the most part, they’re all teachable moments where, when she does send the report and I look at my report and it’s broken down to one through seven lists of priorities. Number one is you don’t touch, but you socially share it, number two. Then she even tells you which ones, what part, if their three point fours don’t touch them, just do this to them. So again, I have not finished the course. But, I’m working my way through it. But I got the report and like anybody who got the report, I’m gonna open it up and look at it and see all the cool things. So it does tell you what keywords you’re ranking for in each post. You can shift things because she is an Excel nerd. She shows you how to manipulate an Excel spreadsheet. So you can look at each thing the way you like, the keywords that you ranked for from the highest amount to the lowest amount. Then one of your sets of blog posts is ones that you could work on, but the return isn’t gonna be as great. So 20% of your blog posts return 80% of your income. So the philosophy is, let me find another 20% of your blog posts that’ll earn 80% of your income. So that means you’re gonna be getting like a hundred per 60% of your income. I don’t know if that’s new math or not, but…

Megan Porta: That sounds good to me.

Chef Dennis: So I spent the money and bought it, again, because I needed an expense and because that way I might make more money, need more expenses. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, that’s great. I don’t know, the spelling isn’t working, but I can’t find that. Maybe we can get a link. I’ll get a link from you for the show notes, but I don’t know if my brain is working today or something.

Chef Dennis: Oh, sorry. It’s recon a list. A L I S T. And it’s actually reconalist.teachable.com. 

Megan Porta: Ah, perfect. I’m glad I asked. 

Chef Dennis: Yes, I’m glad you did too, because Johnny can’t spell. 

Megan Porta: No, that’s great. 

Chef Dennis: With filling things in, I hate it when I try to spell a word and Google has no idea what it is. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. You’re like, come on, read my mind, Google, why aren’t you doing that?

Chef Dennis: That’s how badly I spelled it. 

Megan Porta: This is great. What a great resource. I’m sure some people will check this out. 

Chef Dennis: Actually another blogger friend, she had done work with her and said, yeah, she took her course and decided to try it out and you know it again that’s not as much as a Casey audit. But it’s a way, if you can improve 20% of your blog posts to get them to rank, can you imagine? 

Megan Porta: No, I can’t. That’s a lot of my blog posts. That would be amazing. 

Chef Dennis: So yeah, even if you got 5% of them to rank. That’s still a lot, in terms of what you got. If you nerded out on this stuff, you were gonna be drooling. Because she provides a lot of information. 

Megan Porta: Oh gosh, I’m tempted. I’m looking at this now. 

Chef Dennis: That’s really easily usable. Also guess what she tells you? What months you should promote it. 

Megan Porta: What. 

Chef Dennis: yes. 

Megan Porta: Oh my goodness. 

Chef Dennis: She tells you what months. Evidently they go back. I don’t know how she does this, but figure out what months it is when it hits properly. So you want to do it two months beforehand. You break down, you click on this little part of it and it drops it down to show you which of your number ones, which of your number two so you can eliminate those and you work on your number threes. If it’s overwhelming, cuz you have 47 blog posts this month, she says, do this and do this. Now you’ve got six. These are the six you really should work on. 

Megan Porta: Wow. Okay. That is so awesome. I’m really glad you mentioned that. I’m gonna put that on my middle burner. 

Chef Dennis: Yeah. That’s why I thought, this is something, if it worked, it would be wonderful, if it didn’t, it might give me some boosts. When I used to go to travel conferences or other conferences, I said, if I came away with one really actionable thing, it was worth it. If I came home with three, it was bonus time. So if you can improve something, it’s a worthy expenditure. I also dived back into Pinterest cuz Pinterest has been.

Megan Porta: Oh, you did. Okay. Let’s hear about that. How’s that going?

Chef Dennis: Just started. Yeah. With Pinterest you can’t expect nightly results. But I hired a new Pinterest person and we’ll see where that goes. But word on the street is that Pinterest is starting to drive traffic again. 

Megan Porta: Okay. And are you doing idea pins, static pins, video.

Chef Dennis: She is doing idea pens and static pins. There was an option for live pins or social pins. I questioned that and said we’ve done both and there really is no difference. Live pins just take more time and really aren’t showing any greater return. At that point, go with the static. So we’re just starting. It’s beginning. One thing I liked about it was they didn’t charge me. They had been working on it for three or four days before they finally sent me a bill. That was Pinfluence. So I’m, I know they’ve been around, it’s new to me, but I’m sure other people heard it. I have an account manager that works with me, so if I have questions, I have a place to go. Again, resources. Again, it’s baby steps. It’s not like this month, I added everything. I’ve added a lot over the past probably four months because I could, because I’m making enough money. So I don’t want people to be overwhelmed and think they should. I’m also trying to get it to a growth point where I don’t have to do as much too. If you can hand things off, if you can afford it, hand things off and you can just write content, that’s really the sweet spot you want to be at. 

Megan Porta: Oh yes. I think that is everyone’s ideal scenario.

Chef Dennis: Yeah. Yeah. Again, I love my old post, but if I can get someone else to take the pictures of ’em and they’re decent, I can add all the step by steps in, and then that gives me incentive to rewrite the post a little and hopefully get it to rank.

Megan Porta: Yeah, that is true. So I just started dabbling in that. I’ve never hired someone else to take photos on my site until recently, because I just don’t wanna do it anymore. I know there were those glory days when it was like, oh, I wanna get better photos. I’m just not there. That ship has sailed away. It’s a lot.

Chef Dennis: It’s a difficult proposition to find someone that you’re comfortable with that kind of gives you the look, it’s not gonna be yours. I look at their pictures and like staging, oh, it is so much better than me. Cause I don’t stage.

Megan Porta: Same. 

Chef Dennis: Somebody had one time and they wanted me to do a table scape and I wrote back and said, have you ever seen Chef Dennis do many tablescapes? Seriously?

Megan Porta: Or what is a tablescape? 

Chef Dennis: So anyway, like really, have you looked at my blog? I use white plates. But they put napkins in and tools and I go, Hey, it looks really nice. But everybody wants to use electronic light. I hate that. Hate it. It’s difficult to find someone that can use it properly. That’s where I struggle. I’ve just hired two new photographers on a test basis. Again, some of ’em I wrote back says, I’m sorry, I can’t use you. You have to pay ’em up front. I can’t even use these images. They’re that bad. 

Megan Porta: That’s not good.

Chef Dennis: I’ve only had to do that twice. 

Megan Porta: But you definitely want to incorporate it into your brand. That’s the point. 

Chef Dennis: Yeah. Again. So finding the right person isn’t always easy and sometimes finding the right person means that they’re gonna cost twice as much. That’s, again, something you have to take into account. You have to come to terms with. Because I tell people who write to me, who say we want you to post this. I say, this is my price. They go, oh no, we only wanna pay you this. I say have fun, good luck. You know what I want. 

Megan Porta: You have to stick to your price. That’s not cool for someone to say you’re not worth that, but I’ll give you this. 

Chef Dennis: Yeah. I, oh I yelled at someone the other day. I suppose it was not the other day. It was after I had my knee surgery and I was in a little bit of pain. I was in a good mood and I told what the price was and they said, I’d like to talk to you about it. I says, okay, great. He says we don’t wanna pay you. We just wanna give you this. I said, I told you what the price is. You just wasted my time. I think I ripped him a little and my wife says, what happened? I said, I’m in a little bit of pain. That’s all right. You can only hear that so many times. We’re like, why are you wasting my time? 

Megan Porta: Absolutely. That is not okay. Not okay. 

Chef Dennis: But in terms of paying others now, so when she says, it’s $300 or $350 with a reshoot, I gotta go, if it’s worth it, that’s what you get. Cuz this is what I get. How can I tell you you’re not worth that? Pay them what they deserve.

Megan Porta: Absolutely. Yep. You were saying this earlier, that when you find someone who takes great images for you, it’s like a little nudge to update those old posts. That’s my strategy. If I wait for myself to get around to taking the photos, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. But if someone else is delivering brand new photos to me, I’m gonna go in and update my old content.

Chef Dennis: I have probably 10 sets of images that I haven’t gotten to yet. I’m gonna have back surgery, so if I have back surgery and I can’t do anything, I can sit here and do my images and I have posts that I can rewrite and redo. But yeah, that is definitely number one, because like when I was doing posts before and I had maybe three pictures in there of all finished images, there wasn’t a lot of text. There were no H2 tags. There was no call to action. There were no questions being answered. No FAQs. So again, I go back to my philosophy of the template, and how I learned to write according to the picture from being a travel blogger. So I know how I started, you give him a little bit, this is what I’m making, yada, picture of the food, another little Quip about the food, and then what do I use? Then I just start the template. So it goes pretty quick. Number one, the recipe’s already done. So the hard part for me is done. I’ve gone in a couple times and adjusted the recipe a little bit based on how I know I have made it since. It’s something that’s an old post, that’s not ranking, it’s ugly as hell. It’s short, and I have a couple that are ranking that are ugly as hell and short. I’m like, whoa, I gotta fix them. There’s money in the banks sitting with these posts if I make ’em longer. 

Megan Porta: Exactly. The thing is that when things sit in either in draft or on your computer, it’s oh my gosh, I have to get these out. This is money.

Chef Dennis: Money in the bank. And again, think of that in terms of when you hire a photographer. If they want $300 and your RPM is $30, that means you have to get what 10,000 sessions to pay for that 10,000 clicks through. So if you can rank, that’s not a lot. 

Megan Porta: I like how you translated that to math. I would never have been able to do that.

Chef Dennis: Yeah. If your RPMs are higher mine or higher, then you make it up faster. It’s the same thing with Top Hat Rank. Okay. They tell you what keywords you should add. Like I added fried shrimp and they said, you have to put the word crispy in there a few times. You have to put this word in here a couple times. One thing they told me that conflicted a little with Casey was the SEO title and your blog title don’t need to be the same. See now, Casey swears they do. But they said they should, but they can be off, so I changed a word. Like instead of authentic or easy. They had me put, they had me put it easy on my terms. So I said it is easy, I never thought of it in those terms.Because people are looking for it easy. Like I added a new section to my blog with 30 minute meals because half of ’em are, but I never thought of telling people that they were. Yeah. So it’s a matter of finding a process. If you look at it all at once, you’re gonna go, oh my God, just gimme that alcohol quickly. I can’t deal with this. So it’s the old, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Take a deep breath and pick something. I always tell people before when you’re updating posts, do five at a time. You don’t have to do it all of one time. Five, so let’s do these five, let’s get them done. That’s where I used Google analytics to see what was ranking and the real smart thing to do was see what was ranking in May last year. Then let’s fix those posts. Five here or five here. So when May rolls around in that time, and that’s part of what Reconalist gives you too, it tells you when to fix those posts. So you don’t have to worry about the whole elephant. You only have to nibble at its leg a little bit.

Megan Porta: Oh, I like that. Because it is overwhelming being a food blogger. I feel like we have to do it all immediately. So just having that permission to do little chunks here and there.

Chef Dennis: It’s like painting a bridge. We get to one end and we gotta start again. 

Megan Porta: Exactly. It never ends. You have to go in with that mindset, knowing that it will never end. This process goes on forever and ever. 

Chef Dennis: Yes, but the checks still keep coming. 

Megan Porta: Yes, exactly. Great. 

Chef Dennis: We’ll be gumming our food in fashion when we get old.

Megan Porta: Oh, my gosh. You’re so funny.

Chef Dennis: Mai Tai and it depends on me.

Megan Porta: Oh my goodness. Okay. I feel like there’s so much here. I need to follow up with you on your Pinterest because I wanna hear how that goes for you. 

Chef Dennis: Absolutely. 

Megan Porta: So I might be sending you an email in a few weeks or months. 

Chef Dennis: Oh, please do. Again, the last thing I want to talk about, and I think we talked about it before was your email list. I remember going to a conference. Oh, it’s probably been about five or six years ago. The guy was talking about creating raving fans. How important it was to have 100 raving fans, because you can have 1 million followers, but 100 raving fans will do more for your brand than having 1 million followers. Your email list is an opportunity to create, maybe not raving fans, but really steady fans. People that appreciate you and really enjoy what you do. So finding a way to get that message across. I have an amazing email person. I was asked if you’d like to have her on your show one time.

Megan Porta: Oh yes. 

Chef Dennis: Like I said, I’m with her help and with her guidance and again, it’s a two way street it’s communication. She’ll send something. Like the email this week was, are you feeling lucky? And I’m like, what? Usually she’s on the money. I said, how about everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s day instead of you feeling lucky? Cause I dunno if I get that. That email might go to spam instead. 

Megan Porta: That’s hilarious. Yeah, exactly. That might go to the wrong spot.

Chef Dennis: But she has set the drip campaigns up. Now we’ve got a new thing, I’m done with people that don’t open my emails. I’m done with people that open them, but never click through. I want raving fans. I want people that actually make my recipes. That are gonna leave me comments. That are gonna make it because once they make something, they’re gonna go back and make something else because it works. It’s never just a one for. That was really good. Let’s see what else he has. I have a couple that write to me every week and says, I’m making this week. I’m making this week. Oh, I made that last week. It was wonderful. Or have you ever made it in an air fryer? I said, no, Chef Dennis doesn’t use an air fryer. I tried. I really wanted to like it. I really did. 

Megan Porta: You tried, you gave it a shot.

Chef Dennis: Not my wheelhouse. It stunk up the house. It was like, oh my God, stuff was delicious, but no, let’s just use the oven. But she’ll tell me, I made your roast rack of pork. I said, how did you do it? Tell me more, write it down next time. included in my recipe. 

Megan Porta: Oh, for sure. That’s great. 

Chef Dennis: Again, that’s when we talk about updating. You may not necessarily have made it in an Instant Pot or an air fryer, but a lot of it is just common sense when you give instructions. You know, how long or what it should be like. I used it just, so I would get familiar with it and would understand how it worked and how things could be made in it. Same thing with Instant Pot. I did that and then I sold the Instapot.

Megan Porta: Oh, you did? Oh my gosh.

Chef Dennis: I don’t want this thing if you like it, that’s fine. Like sous vide. I never got into that. But if you like it, embrace it. 

Megan Porta: Embrace it.

Chef Dennis: Use it, run with it. 

Megan Porta: Do you recommend people go through their email lists and just do a cleanup so they get higher open rates and engagement and all of that good stuff?

Chef Dennis: Yeah, absolutely. Because those are the people. Why spend money? Again, I used to think of having all these things in my blog, my Instagram pictures, my facebook or Twitter thing and different stuff. It was junk. Just when we used to have those big pictures across the top of our blog that moved. It was awful.

Megan Porta: I remember that 

Chef Dennis: Yeah. Everybody had him, but it was terrible. First thing Casey did was just turn that off right away. Yes. Master. Okay. I call them ego things. It’s really not doing anything for anybody, but you. When you look at it. You go, oh, aren’t I a good photographer? Look at that. Oh, look at all the followers I have. Oh, worship me. 

Megan Porta: So indulgent, but it’s pretty. 

Chef Dennis: Yeah. At the end of the day, I think I hyperventilated the first time I looked at my blog on my phone and went, oh my God, what is that? I went in and just stripped it bare, except for what I needed. So same thing with an email list. Get the people that are actually doing you good so you don’t have to pay for the ones that aren’t. 

Megan Porta: Ooh, that’s good right there. 

Chef Dennis: Now once you’ve stripped it down, let’s start a campaign. Facebook is a great place to start a campaign for followers. I ran a heavy duty over the top one November, December, and January. Then I turned it down and turned, cut the costs on it and brought it back down to a reasonable level. But I was running at a really high level, spending a lot of money. I was getting 150, 200 subscribers a day. Only problem was most of them didn’t really engage. So out of that I think I kept about 20%, but still that was a good 20% because they turned into readers. They turned into people that are opening and clicking. My best open rate was 67%. I cut it down. I’m down to 9,000 subscribers now, which people will look at this, say that’s all you have? They’ll laugh at you, but if 5,000 of those people every week are opening your email, that’s pretty good.

Megan Porta: That’s amazing. Yeah. You can’t argue with that.

Chef Dennis: I’ve been keeping track and I see how it increased and almost doubled since I started the campaign on Facebook. So that tells me that it was money well spent. Because I went from having 3000 opens to 5,000, almost 6,000 opens. 

Megan Porta: Wow. That’s great. I feel like there are all these little subtopics, Dennis, that you’re so knowledgeable in that we could separate out and do more interviews. What would be a main takeaway if you had to give up on one thing?

Chef Dennis: If you could only do one thing, I think with what I’ve seen so far, I would say go with a Reconalist for now. If you could only do, if you can’t afford that much money, I would say work on your email list because she ‘s a bargain. She writes ’em every week and does maintenance and Lauren Gross. She’s just amazing. But that would be the least expensive. But if you really wanna see some growth, I think Reconalist might be just from first glance. When you see that growth, if you haven’t had a Casey audit, do a Casey audit. But once you start making money, then you know, have fun with some of it. But then put it back into the business. Put it back into the business because that’s gonna come back. Spend money to make money. So then once you’ve seen some growth and you’re making some money, then buy the next service. Because theoretically, Top Hat Rank should pay for itself within about three months. We’re just coming to that range right now. If it does wonderful, if it doesn’t well, then it was a nice experiment.

Megan Porta: Looking at it like that. If it doesn’t work, fine. But you learn from it and you’re growing through it. So that’s great. I’m going to follow up with you on a couple things. So expect an email from me because you’ve peaked my interest with a few of the topics we’ve talked about. But thank you so much for your time. Chef Dennis, this was so fun. I feel like I could talk to you all day. 

Chef Dennis: Absolutely. I feel the same way. I had a good time. My wife says you love doing these because you get to talk about yourself for an hour. 

Megan Porta: I love it. Okay. Do you have any words of inspiration or a favorite quote to end on today? 

Chef Dennis: I think one of the first things and it goes back to when I was in high school, and it was my wrestling coach who had given me this, it was, “if you think you are beaten, you are”. Okay. If you think you dare not, you don’t. Okay. That’s how you have to approach things. If you don’t do it, you’re gonna fail a hundred percent. If you do it, you might fail, but you have a chance of not failing. Don’t go into that, thinking that it’s not gonna work or that you’re beaten, be positive. When I first started learning to make desserts, I would make them alone. No one else was in the restaurant. If it didn’t work, it never happened. 

Megan Porta: No one has to know that right. That’s a great thing about blogging. You’re in your kitchen alone. Nobody has to know.

Chef Dennis: Try it. If it doesn’t work, don’t be discouraged. Try something else because the people that try, succeed. The people that never try, fail. Never succeed ever, because you never try. You never try. Oh, that’s it. That is beautiful. 

Megan Porta: I love that you’re ending that way. I think that should be a subtitle to food blogging. You just gotta put yourself out there. Oh, thank you so much,Dennis. I hope you have a wonderful day and I will put some show notes together for you, by the way. If anyone wants to go look at all of the things we’ve talked about, you can go to Eatblogtalk.com/askchefdennis2, since this is your second time here. Why don’t you just tell everyone where they can find you online and on social media, Dennis? 

Chef Dennis: I am askchefdennis.com and you can find me on just about every social network, including TikTok that I think I’m up to three posts now, but as Ask Chef Dennis. So I’m LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Pretty much everywhere there’s meant to be . 

Megan Porta: Thanks again for being here and thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode. 

Outro: We’re glad you could join us on this episode of Eat Blog Talk. For more resources based on today’s discussion, as well as show notes and an opportunity to be on a future episode of the show, be sure to head to eatblogtalk.com. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll be here to feed you on Eat Blog Talk.