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Episode 270: SEO Strategies For Quick, Organic Traffic Growth with Isabel Leong

In episode 270, we chat with Isabel Leong, SEO coach and blogger, about how to get the most out of your online presence and move towards financial freedom with the least amount of effort possible.

We cover information how to build backlinks naturally, sprinkling in keywords, including LSI indexing in and what to think about when using Google as a tool and providing comprehensive content for your audience.

Listen on the player below or on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.

Write Blog Posts that Rank on Google’s 1st Page

RankIQ is an AI-powered SEO tool built just for bloggers. It tells you what to put inside your post and title, so you can write perfectly optimized content in half the time. RankIQ contains a hand-picked library with the lowest competition, high traffic keywords for every niche.

Guest Details

Connect with Bel Around The World
Website | Facebook | Instagram

Bio Full-time travel blogger and SEO coach roaming the world at whim, Isabel draws energy from being outdoors. An explorer at heart, the world is her playground. She is helping aspiring bloggers and brands get the most out of their online presence and financial freedom by ranking on Google faster w SEO and exposing millennial travelers to experiences beyond their imaginations.

Takeaways

  • You’ll have the most success with SEO because it gives the greatest return with the least effort on your part.
  • Get focused on SEO rather than different modes of social media promotion for continuous year round traffic.
  • Backlinks can come naturally if you produce the right content without you having to go search for them.
  • Have your target keyword as close to the front of the title. Include the number in the title for listicles. Have a mixture of keywords throughout the post as well as LSI keywords, which is short for latent semantic indexing. These are words related to your main keywords, but are not synonyms.
  • If you really want to get serious about blogging and getting your articles ranked on Google, you have to invest in a keyword research tool. 
  • Break out your paragraphs because a lot of users are mobile readers. Include images, optimize with alt texts.  Site speed is a very important factor.
  • Fixing broken pages, broken links, irrelevant information, or outdated information, and optimize the meta-description of each blog post.
  • It’s all about honing in on keywords because Google looks at the overall keyword density of your site.
  • Each blog post should be as comprehensive and all encompassing.
  • Cater to your audience’s needs and preferences. 
  • The formula is = always high demand, but low competition.
  • Google analytics and Search console are tools you should be using to hone in on your search terms.

Resources Mentioned

FREE SEO Training

Transcript

Click for full text.

270 Isabel Leong

Isabel Leong: Hi, this is Isabel from Bel Around The World, and you are listening to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. 

Megan Porta: 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. I so very much appreciate your efforts with this. Thank you so much for doing this. Okay. Now onto the episode. 

Hey food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, sponsored by RankIQ. I’m your host, Megan Porta, and you are listening to episode number 270. Today. I will be talking to Isabel from Bel Around The World and she is going to talk us through how to grow traffic organically via SEO, as well as how to brainstorm and validate topics in your niche. Full-time travel blogger and SEO coach roaming the world at whim, Isabel Leong draws energy from being outdoors. An explorer at heart, the world is her playground. She is helping aspiring bloggers and brands get the most out of their online presence and financial freedom by ranking on Google faster with SEO and exposing millennial travelers to experiences beyond their imaginations. That is such an exciting bio. I love it, Isabel. Before we get started, do you like being called Isabel or do you prefer Bel?

Isabel Leong: Yeah, Isabella is fine. 

Megan Porta: Okay. Do you have a fun fact to share with all of us today? 

Isabel Leong: Yeah I have been traveling full time since October, 2020. I came back home to Singapore for a little bit, for eight months during the pandemic, and then I decided to get out of there and get out into the world. I’ve been on the road since then. Right now, I’m in Cusco and I never had any plans to stay longer than a month. So I would never have thought of adopting a cat, but lo and behold, I have a pregnant kitty with me in my house right now. Yeah, just taking care of her. She came at a time when she was abandoned and she needed a place to..

Megan Porta: Yeah, a safe place.

Isabel Leong: Yeah, be in a safe place to have a baby. So I’m really excited for her to give birth, hopefully in the coming week. 

Megan Porta: Oh, that’s exciting. How nice of you to take her in and be her safe spot while she’s getting ready for a big event.

Isabel Leong: Yeah, it’s been a joy, like working from home and then traveling, doing day tours and still coming home to her jumping around. 

Megan Porta: That’s so sweet. I love that. I also love your traveling. I love that you have such an adventurous spirit and you’re roaming around the world. Now that things are opening up a little bit more post pandemic, are you finding it easier to get around?

Isabel Leong: I feel like it’s been a little bit more complicated with the vaccination rolling out because more and more countries are making it mandatory to have a vaccine. Because I’ve been moving from place to place, I haven’t really had the opportunity to get one yet and I’ve been able to get around to places with less restrictions like Mexico and Columbia and Costa Rica in the past. But now moving from place to place, usually they would either require you to have a vaccine or you are not allowed to visit Machu Picchu, for example. 

Megan Porta: I didn’t think about that, but that definitely complicates things, doesn’t it for a lot of travelers. So yeah. Hopefully you can continue exploring, and I love that you are just doing this adventure. Thank you for being here. I’m excited to chat about SEO. It’s a really huge topic for food bloggers. In fact, some of our top rated listened to episodes here at Eat Blog Talk are SEO themed. So this could potentially be one of those. Do you just want to talk to us about, I know you have a few case studies that you’ve put together that have some information about increasing traffic that I think could benefit my listeners. Why don’t you just dig into those if you don’t mind. 

Isabel Leong: Yeah, of course. I’m a huge advocate. Maybe I can explain why I’m a huge advocate of SEO first. I’ve been blogging since 2015. I had this travel blog, Bel Around The World. In the beginning of blogging, you are just trying to get traffic from any kind of source. Either Pinterest or social media or Google. I’ve just found the most success with SEO because it gives me the greatest return with the least effort. What I mean by that is as long as you write a SEO optimized post and it ranks on Google for the keywords that you’re targeting for, you can get continuous traffic every year, even if you left it, even if you left it on its own, without touching it without any kinds of promotion. So I started becoming more and more focused on SEO rather than different modes of social media promotion. I found really great success with it. One example, this is one of the most recent examples of a post that went viral just from me writing the article and posting it, publishing it on my blog and leaving it on its own without any active form of social promotion whatsoever.

So I first published this post somewhere in the middle of May, 2021. Then I left it on it’s own. No social media promotion. No reposting, no trying to get backlinks. I don’t think I even index it on Google search console. So everything was really left on its own. Then recently as I went back to my Google analytics to check on its traffic, I found that within 2, 3, 4 months, I started seeing this increase in traffic. So I published it in the middle of May and from August onwards it started increasing in traffic. As of the end of November, I’ve found that 90% of the traffic came from just organic search on Google, just from people searching that particular keyword that the article was targeting for. So, just looking back at what I’ve done. I can pull out a couple of different factors that contributed to this growth in traffic. When I went deeper into the research, I found that it has even gotten back links just organically without me going out to hustle to do any outreach. I have earned 10 back links of which six of them are unique to different domains and it ranks for 924 keywords. It gets a monthly average traffic of 2,500. 

Megan Porta: So those backlinks can actually come naturally if you produce the right content without you having to go search them down. 

Isabel Leong: Yeah, absolutely. 

Megan Porta: So what is your strategy? Can you talk us through it? 

Isabel Leong: Yeah, for sure. I’ll list a couple factors that would contribute to having an SEO optimized blog post. So for those that are relatively new to SEO, some of the most fundamental SEO on page SEO tips are to have your target keyword as close to the front of the title as possible. If you are writing a listicle, include the number in the title. So, for example 10 best vegan recipes. I’m just pulling it off my head now. So to include the number in the title, rather than just listing best vegan recipes.

Megan Porta: Why is that? Why would you need a number there?

Isabel Leong: It has been shown to drive better clicks. People tend to click on titles with numbers better than those that don’t. 

Megan Porta: Okay. Interesting. Then here’s a question I have, if I go back and change it. So let’s say I start a round up with 10 and then I increase it to 13, do I just put 10 plus or do I change it to 13? Or what do I do there?

Isabel Leong: I would say to put that in. So then the readers already know what to expect when they click on the post. But you can always experiment and see what your readers prefer. 

Megan Porta: So what else, what are some other tips for onsite SEO? 

Isabel Leong: For sure. Of course you want to sprinkle your keywords throughout the article. If you are trying to rank for vegan recipes, for example, you want to sprinkle it throughout the article. You want it to be in your introduction and the body. In your H2 and H3 headers, in your concluding paragraph as well. So I really have a mixture of keywords throughout the articles and also use this term called LSI keywords, which is short for latent semantic indexing. These are words related to your main keywords, but are not synonyms. So just for example, let’s say I was talking about where to go clubbing in Amsterdam. Then some LSI keywords would be nightlife or drinking or party and music. Because all these words I use frequently together, it helps Google understand the context of the article. Instead of just pasting Amsterdam clubs throughout your whole article, which might backfire because that’s a way of keyword cannibalization. A way to combat that is to use LSI keywords, which are keywords related to your main target keyword. 

Megan Porta: Is there a way to figure those out easily or are you just guessing with those?

Isabel Leong: There are a couple of SEO tools that do suggest these LSI keywords. I know there’s one called Surfer SEO, but apart from that, you can do a Google search and when you do a Google search of the keywords you’re trying to target, you can take a look at the competitors, those sites that are ranking on the first page and get a general idea of what type of topics they are talking about within that main topic.

Megan Porta: Don’t tools like SEMRush do that. They have optimizers, I know RankIQ, which is a keyword research tool that I use and absolutely love, does that as well. They optimize your content within their tool so that you can see some of those words or keywords or phrases. Exactly what you’re saying. They’re related, but they’re not the same thing. 

Isabel Leong: The keyword tools are really good. I really suggest it. If you really want to get serious about blogging and getting your articles ranked on Google, you definitely have to invest in one keyword research tool. 

Megan Porta: Do you have preferred keyword research tools? 

Isabel Leong: I always like to suggest for a very entry level bloggers to start with Key Search, because I think it’s around $10, $11 a month and it’s the most entry level keyword research tool out there and the barrier to learning isn’t as complicated as most other SEO tools I found. SEMRush, when I first tried to go on it, it can be a bit overwhelming to people who are completely new to SEO. 

Megan Porta: Yes. I agree with that. I find SEMRush personally, extremely overwhelming. Looking at itK that’s just not the way my brain necessarily works. I know a lot of people who use KeySearch and they absolutely love it and it’s affordable. I mentioned RankIQ. I could not speak more highly of that. Have you worked with RankIQ at all? 

Isabel Leong: Actually, no. I will have to check it out. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, it’s amazing. It actually focuses on low competition keywords. For me, it’s been more effective than any other tool that I’ve used. I have ranked so much higher, so quickly with a lot of the keywords that I’m using from there. So I just wanted to mention that. 

Isabel Leong: Yeah I’ll have to check it out. 

Megan Porta: Yes. Everyone should go check it out. What are some other tips that you have as far as onsite SEO? 

Isabel Leong: Yeah. I would say to try to break out your paragraphs. Because a lot of users these days are mobile readers. So if they see huge chunks of paragraphs, they’re just gonna be put off and leave your site. So try to have shorter paragraphs, maybe two sentences, and then the next paragraph, two sentences, two or three sentences. Another way to make it more readable as well, is to include images, which you should optimize with alt texts as well. So it’s putting your target keywords into the alt text of your image and the description and the title.

Megan Porta: That’s great. Is there anything else before we move into your specific case studies? 

Isabel Leong: No, I think that’s about it for those that are trying to start out to write and optimize SEO, optimized posts. 

Megan Porta: All right. Awesome. Those are great tips. So tell us about these case studies that you have. 

Isabel Leong: Yeah. So I was working with this travel tour company sometime in April. So I was in Mexico then and I was working with them as a travel blogger to promote the adventure tours. When I was speaking with them, I realized that because of the pandemic, a lot of people are not traveling, and tourism has been really hit hard. So all these tour operators who used to have brick and mortar stores, they no longer have that audience who would come in to inquire about tourists these days. So this tour operator, he realized the need to be more present online. So when he found out that I specialize in optimizing websites to rank on Google, he reached out. So I jumped on and helped him with his website traffic, just to optimize his online search presence. When I first started in April, yeah, it was really fixing everything. I was doing an SEO audit and fixing all of his website, the back end side of things, as well as the front end side of things. So April, May, June, I was working on a lot of that. Then when I was doing a review a couple months back, I realized that his organic traffic, and by that traffic coming from Google searches are like Yahoo searches. It has tripled since April. 

Megan Porta: Wow. Since April. So not even a year. 

Isabel Leong: Yeah, no, it’s been maybe between six to eight months. 

Megan Porta: Do you have any details about that? Specific content or what you feel contributed to that the most? 

Isabel Leong: Yeah, for sure. So like I usually do for every client, I would go through a couple of stages. The first stage is to do an SEO audit to make sure that their website runs smoothly. Site speed is a very important factor for SEO as well. So optimizing site speed. The easiest way to go about it, if you’re not keen on the technical side of SEO, is really to look at your images to see if they’re optimized in size. So for example, if your blog post is only showing a maximum width of 800 pixels, there is no point uploading a blog post that’s 3000 pixels, which is usually the size of a normal picture that you take with your camera or when you take with your phone. So whenever you try to upload pictures onto your blog post, make sure that it fits just the width of your block post layout and not anything bigger than that, because then it’s going to take up space. It’s going to take up space within your block server. So all of that, if you have 10 images, it’s going to really weigh down the site speed of the blog post. It’s the easiest to fix. It’s the easiest to do in order to optimize. 

Sponsor: Let’s take a really quick break to chat about RankIQ, a powerful keyword research tool that every food blogger should be using, in my opinion. It contains a customized library filled with keywords that actually apply to specific food blogging niches. Some of the niches included are appetizers, chicken, chocolate cupcakes, gluten-free, keto, meal prep, sous vide, air fryer, barbecue, sides, leftovers, and so many more. That is just a handful of them. You go into the tool and you can select a niche within the keyword library and browse through a manageable database of keywords that are all low competition.

One of my recent strategies is to select the sauces and condiments niche because I’ve found great success with sauce recipes in recent months. I sort by lowest competition to greatest competition. I pick some of those really low competition keywords so I can see what I will most easily be able to rank for. After that I browse through the keyword phrases and I see what stands out to me. What will align the best within my own content. I select a few and I either use those keywords to redo old content that I have sitting in my archives, or I use them to create new posts. This has been a really effective strategy for me. I’ve found an absolute ton of traffic over the past 10 months by doing this. If you are looking to up your game with keyword research and get ranked on the first or second page on Google, and even in some cases I’ve been ranked very quickly on the first spot on page one on Google. No joke. Check out RankIQ. It’s a really powerful tool worth considering in 2022. So I hope you find as much power in it as I have. Go to rankiq.com for more information, or you can check out the resources page at eatblogtalk.com/resources to get your link to go over there. Okay. Now let’s get back to the episode. 

Megan Porta: What else did that case study focus on? 

Isabel Leong: Yeah, and we also went into fixing broken pages, broken links, irrelevant information, or outdated information, and also to optimize the meta-description of each blog post, each page, things like that. 

Megan Porta: So lots of little details. This has been my journey. I started blogging 11 years ago, so I did everything wrong in the beginning. So I’ve spent the last few years doing everything that you’re talking about, but I have so many posts that it’s oh gosh, just so overwhelming. So I’m very familiar. It’s a lot of little things, but they definitely all add up as far as time commitment goes. It can be a super overwhelming project. 

Isabel Leong: Yeah, for sure. That’s why I always encourage, usually maybe once every half a year, I would encourage people as well as my car students to take on this five day re-optimizing five days blog post re-optimizing challenge that I’ve created. It’s completely free for them and it takes away the overwhelm because it’s broken down into five days. So they can tackle each problem, each audit issue day by day. 

Megan Porta: Oh, I love that. Is that something we can share later? Or did you want to share it here?

Isabel Leong: Yeah, I think I can send you the link later on or in the show notes. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, we can put it in the show notes for sure. I think that sounds really helpful. Did you have another case study you wanted to chat about? 

Isabel Leong: Just briefly. This case study alone, there’s a lot to be learned. Doing an SEO audit is really important. Also having to look at keywords to optimize because in the beginning, they didn’t know anything about SEO. They just knew that they ran all these tours. So I really helped them to hone in on the keywords to focus on. I know some bloggers or some small business owners, when they first start out, they want to talk about everything. If you are in food, you would talk about everything related to food, rather than honing in on maybe just slow cooker type of posts. So it’s really all about honing in on keywords because Google also looks at the overall keyword density of your site. So for example, if I’m a travel blogger and I wrote about fashion and I wrote about skincare and I wrote about travel, then Google is going to have a hard time understanding what my blog is actually about. They want to rank blogs that are an expert in a certain topic. If you blog about Scotland travel, you only write posts about Scotland travel and Google will recognize that you’re talking about everything related to Scottish food and culture and all that. So then a Scotland travel blog is going to be ranking much easier than for Scotland related searches, as compared to a general travel book. 

Megan Porta: I love how you explained that. I haven’t heard anyone explain it quite like that. So thank you. This is why we want to establish credibility on certain subtopics, right? We’re food bloggers. Obviously we create recipes and food. But figuring out what those subtopics are and really focusing on those is what you’re saying. 

Isabel Leong: Absolutely. 

Megan Porta: Okay, that is awesome. Is there anything else you wanted to say about that side of it? So the organic growth through SEO, or should we move on to validating topics?

Isabel Leong: Yeah, we can go on to validating topics.

Megan Porta: So what do you think, how do we brainstorm and validate those topics that we want to write about within our niche? 

Isabel Leong: So say for example, I’m actually currently working on an article about things to do in a post about Bolivia where I was living for the last three months. I want to create a blog post about it. Say, if you didn’t have an SEO tool right now, you can always go into Google search because it tells you so much. When you go into google.com and you hit on the search bar, you want to search a generic term. For example, I would search LA Paz, Bolivia. Before you hit enter, there’s usually a dropdown that lists different variations of that keyword phrase that you’re typing out. So for example, La Paz, Bolivia population La Paz, Bolivia weather. La Paz, Bolivia altitude, and then when you actually hit enter, and the result page shows up, there are different features, snippets, for example, people also ask. They would have a list of different questions related to that target keyword phrase that you just typed in. That’s not all. If you scroll down, sometimes you can see the video featured snippets that show different topics related to that keyword phrase. If you scroll all the way down, you can usually see a box with even more long tail keywords that you can think about within that target keyword phrase. I know a lot of bloggers struggle with content, with writer’s block and not knowing whether or not that topic that they want to write about is worth writing about. So this is one way to see what people are asking, what people are talking about related to that main keyword phrase. They are also different. Keyword Chrome extensions. I know Keyword Surfer has a Chrome extension, it’s a free extension. Once you install it, they will have a sidebar that shows you what the volume of different keywords related to that main keyword phrase that you typed out and the different volumes of searches each month.

Megan Porta: Keywords everywhere, I think is one of those too. I D I know you do have to pay very minimally. I think I pay like $10 a quarter, but I use that pretty often too. It does the same thing, I think is what you’re saying with Keyword Surfer. So I have a question about using Google. So I think it’s such an underrated strategy just to go on Google. It’s free. It’s easy. Everybody knows how to use Google. We should be utilizing it more often. How do we prioritize what we’re seeing? So we see all those different boxes with the questions and do the first questions that pop up mean they’re the most popular? Do we include those questions as H2’s within our posts? How do we organize all of that information? 

Isabel Leong: Yeah. So you want every blog post that you create to be as comprehensive and as all encompassing as possible. Because that’s one of the main factors that Google looks at to decide if you should rank higher than others. That’s why I like to, even on top of doing keyword research in individual keyword research tools, I like to just type in the main keyword. For example, I was looking for pad thai. Let’s say I was writing about pad thai recipes, I would just key that into Google search and then scroll down. I would look at maybe the first three posts and see how they are structured. What kinds of questions they’re answering, what kinds of topics they’re writing about. The people also ask for feature snippets. It’s really important to try to answer some of these questions because these are questions that people are asking when researching that pad Thai recipe. So what is pad thai sauce made of? How is pad thai traditionally made? These questions you would try to incorporate them into your blog posts when writing it, because back to being a comprehensive resource. You want your blog posts to try and answer as many questions that people have about that topic. 

Megan Porta: So let’s say you take the top three posts on Google for the keyword pad thai, and you take note of what they’re asking inside their posts, but you do want to be unique too, right? So you don’t want to copy and paste everything or use the exact same questions within your blog posts. So how do you differentiate yourself while still including all of that same information? Do you know what I mean? 

Isabel Leong: Yeah. Because some of the questions that I read are generic, or rather commonly asked. I wouldn’t say that you can answer the same questions that those people are answering. It’s just that you can have a unique take on how you write it out, as well as including some of your own personal experiences. Maybe you can talk about how you’ve been to Thailand and spoke to local cooks and tell the story of how pad thai was formed. Really just have your own unique take. Definitely be original, definitely not plagiarize any of the blog posts that you’re reading. 

Megan Porta: So adding your voice and using your own questions, but just taking note of the important pieces of those top posts. Then featured snippets. Do you have any insights about how to get your information inside those featured snippets?

Isabel Leong: Yeah. I’ve had a couple of successes with that, actually. So I found that some of my posts that rank on featured snippets are those that have proper structure. So there was one post that I was writing about things to do in Lisbon, I believe. I would have different headers where I talk about the weather in Lisbon. I would talk about how to get there and things like that. When I have those headers in my H2 or H3 heading, Google would pick up those and they would actually when I searched incognito and those target keywords that I was trying to target that blog posts for, I have found that some of these headers ended up appearing below my meta description. Even when you’re answering the questions on the featured snippet, what is pad thai sauce made of, you can turn it into a H3 heading or H2 heading and then put your answer below that and so sometimes it can appear in the featured snippet. Because Google copies and pastes. If they see what pad thai sauce is made of in your posts, it’s easier for them to detect the question and show the answers. 

Megan Porta: Then I always had this question. I don’t think I’ve ever asked anybody. Do you need to be exact word for word with the question? So the questions you see that pop up on Google and maybe also on a tool, Answer The Public. Do you need to exactly post word for word? 

Isabel Leong: I would say it increases the chances of it being picked up and being shown in the featured snippet, because that’s how people are asking. So I know different countries have different ways of speech. So when Google goes back to detecting the keywords. It’s easier for them to detect it if it’s asked wholesale.

Megan Porta: Because sometimes it’s awkward the way the question is presented. It’ll be something like, instead of what his pad Thai sauce is made of, it’ll be something like what pad Thai sauce is or something like that.

Isabel Leong: I think, yeah. When it comes to that, then you definitely want to be as coherent as possible and not just regurgitate things that Google is pulling up. It helps with user experience, which is also another factor of Google SEO. Having a good user experience when people are enjoying and staying on your site longer, that is a signal for Google to show that oh, people are enjoying this blog post, they’re answering the questions that they are typing on Google search. So that helps to prioritize that. Google prioritizes these blog posts.

Megan Porta: I like that the way you said that. That kind of just gave me permission to not do everything word for word, because I feel like this is the Bible as far as what an H2 should read. So I tend to just put it word for word in, but it makes more sense to me that we’re catering to the user ultimately. So we need to actually make sense with our language. 

Isabel Leong: Yeah. For sure. User, it’s always number one. Be catering to your audience’s needs and preferences. 

Megan Porta: Do you ever use Google search console as a keyword research tool?

Isabel Leong: Yeah. But usually for optimizing my old blog posts. So I would pull in the keywords that that particular blog post was already ranking for and go back to re optimize their blog posts with what Google search console is showing me. For example, I realized that there are certain keywords on Google search console that are getting traffic to my blog post, but I haven’t been including a lot of those keywords. When I go back to re-optimise their blog posts, I would incorporate those keywords from Google search console, which helps with re-ranking that older post to a higher search result. 

Megan Porta: So going to maybe like a specific page on Google search console, and then checking out the queries.

Isabel Leong: Yeah, for specific blog posts. 

Megan Porta: I think somebody else gave me this piece of advice too, because I remember doing this for a handful of my top posts. But I would go to queries and then I would just peruse what was there. If I saw something that I did not have inside of my post, I would try to organically include it.

Isabel Leong: Yeah. That’s another way to just look at your whole, as a general re optimization, you could just look at the main page and see what are the top queries. But my other suggestion was, if you already know that a certain blog post was ranking, maybe in the eighth or the 11th position, and you want to bump it up to the first result of that particular keyword, then a very powerful method is to really plug the whole blog post URL into Google search console and see what it already is ranking for the different queries, the different keywords, and then go back to re optimize it with those keywords that have not been included in their blog posts. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. I feel like there’s so much you can do to optimize content, that it just gets a little overwhelming. There’s obviously a handful of different tools you can use, whether it’s old content or new content. You’ve got the standard free options – Google search console and Google. So where do you recommend starting if somebody is listening and they are just getting started out with food blogging, what do you recommend they start with?

Isabel Leong: If you went up for free tools, I would say start with the free Chrome extensions. Doing a basic Google search to see if they are in demand. Also there is this website called answerthepublic.com where if you input a general keyword topic, it generates hundreds of different questions that people are asking for, but that’s broad because it gives you topic ideas to do when you are trying to brainstorm that broad topic, but it doesn’t really hone in on the demand of each long tail keywords. So that’s a starting point. If you are looking to just expand the number of topics that you’re writing about, because it shows hundreds of different kinds of questions that people are asking about related to that topic. 

Megan Porta: I personally use Answer The Public for my FAQ sections in WordPress. So if I’m just doing something really broad, FAQ about lemons, I’ll type in lemons and then I’ll just get like the top search questions, I guess that are asked about lemons. Are lemons acidic? Can you bake with them? Then I’ll put those within the post, within the FAQ block. So that’s personally how I use Answer The Public. 

Isabel Leong: Yeah. But I would say, I think Google search is good enough for beginners who don’t want the overwhelm of having to learn the different ranking factors and domain authority and page authority and long tail keywords. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, that’s such a great point. It’s free. It’s easy. Everyone knows how to use it already. So you can start there easily if you really want to dig into keyword research. 

Isabel Leong: The formula is always high demand, but low competition. That’s where anyone can start. 

Megan Porta: Oh, that’s a great formula. Is there anything we’ve missed Isabel about any of this? Do you have anything else to add before we start saying goodbye? 

Isabel Leong: No, I think we’ve covered quite a number of topics within SEO. There’s just so much to learn and it’s always a continuous learning journey and that’s what I like about it. Once you experiment and implement different tactics within SEO. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, definitely. There’s such a big, I think you said this early on, they’re such a great return for a little effort if you actually put the effort in and do that keyword research upfront, and don’t just push something out and hope that it does well. But put some thought into it and some research into it. Now you mentioned your SEO training course, which is free, and we will link to that in the show notes. But do you want to tell us just a little bit more about that here? 

Isabel Leong: Sure. It’s for bloggers who already have a blog and that they know that SEO is important, but they don’t know where to get started. So this little training, this little video training shows some more specific steps on how you can implement SEO to your blog without all the overwhelm. 

Megan Porta: Great. Everyone should go check that out within the show notes, for sure. That sounds super helpful. Your show notes, Isabel, can be found at eatblogtalk.com/belaroundtheworld. And bel is just B E L. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to share with food bloggers today? 

Isabel Leong: Yeah. I always like to say, just do it. Because I know through talking to different people who want to start a blog, who want to start living a more independent and travel, a digital nomad life they’re always worried about, oh, what if I don’t do this? What if I don’t get this? What if? A lot of what is, but if you really want to make it, you should really just do it. Just start a blog, just start writing and everything else can come after.

Megan Porta: Simple yet so powerful. I love it. That’s such a great way to end. Thank you so much for being here. It was really fun to talk to you and I always love getting different perspectives on SEO from people who really are passionate about it. So I really, we all really appreciate your time today as well. 

Isabel Leong: Thank you so much for having me. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, it was so fun. So we’ve talked about this a little bit, but will you tell everyone where they can find you online? Where’s the best place to go – website, social media, all of that. 

Isabel Leong: Yeah. Sure. So my travel blog is Belaroundtheworld.com and I write all about travel. I write about digital nomad, which is the life that I’m embarking right now, as well as tips on solo traveling, food travel, and a little bit about blogging as well. If you want to find out, if you want to sign up for the free SEO course, it’s belaroundtheworld.com/sign-SEO.

Megan Porta: Awesome. Are you on Instagram? 

Isabel Leong: Yes, I am. So if you go on my main travel blog, you’ll be able to find all of my social media handles on there as well. 

Megan Porta: Great. I think I just found you. All right. Thank you again, Isabel so much for joining me here today, and thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode. 

Outro: 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. .


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Megan
Megan

Megan started her food blog Pip and Ebby in 2010 and food blogging has been her full-time career since 2013. Her passion for blogging has grown into an intense desire to help fellow food bloggers find the information, insight, and community they need in order to find success.

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