Episode 588: New SEO Strategies – How to Diversify your Brand with an SEO Content Calendar with Laura Arnold

EBT588 – Laura Arnold

Supercut  00:00

Hey, food bloggers, check out our new SEO supercut, a bonus 15 minute episode capturing highlights from SEO episodes we have recorded recently. Go to eatblogtalk.com/SEOsupercut to get access today. 

Intro 00:10

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

Megan Porta  00:53

I always appreciate a fresh perspective on SEO as it relates to our food blogging businesses, especially when it comes from someone who has a deep history and connection with food. Laura Arnold, from Dang Good Digital, knows food in and out. She went to culinary school. She has a long history of working with food, so she really knows how food bloggers should be putting together recipe posts. In this episode, Laura talks about the importance of creating an SEO content calendar to diversify your brand. Learn why this is important. How much content you need to create, how you’re going to find the content you create, how to put a recipe post together. She gives some main tips for that, and she gives her opinion on whether or not you should be focusing on social media. Toward the end of the episode, she gets into tracking your keywords and how to go about that. It’s really very easy, probably a lot easier than you think. This is a value packed episode sponsored by RankIQ. 

Sponsor  01:59

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Megan Porta  03:30

Laura Arnold is a New York City based Emmy nominated culinary television producer, cookbook consultant and award winning content creator with over a decade of experience. She currently is the supervising culinary producer for Food Network’s the kitchen, and has worked previously at ABCs, the chew dot dash, Meredith, Good Housekeeping, food 52 kitchen.com and with many more brands. After learning about SEO through several food clients and brands over the past several years, she kept hearing from clients that they wished a food media expert had an SEO consultancy. She then founded danegood Digital, her own SEO consulting business, specifically for food creators and bloggers to help them grow their brands, sites and social media exposure. Laura’s key words of wisdom with her clients are to always ask the question, why, and to understand that in this modern digital era, diversification of content is most important. Diversify or go broke. 

Megan Porta  04:29

Laura, I am so happy to have you on Eat Blog Talk. How are you doing today? 

Laura Arnold  04:35

Good. Thank you so much for having me. Megan, I’m a huge fan, and always have been. 

Laura Arnold  04:39

Oh, thanks for listening. We always love new SEO perspectives, and I think this one is going to be really good. We’re going to talk about creating an SEO content calendar and just being able to diversify your brand that way. Before we get to the topic. Do you have a fun fact to share with us Laura?

Laura Arnold  04:57

I was trying to think about this because I’ve obviously been a. Listener in the past. And I guess my fun fact that even a lot of my, you know, friends in my adult life don’t even know about me, is I was a ballet dancer for close to 18 years before I went into food.

Megan Porta  05:14

Oh my gosh. Do you dance anymore? Is that something you kind of shed once you get older, I have no idea. I’m not a dancer at all. 

Megan Porta  05:22

Let’s just say I have no desire to take a ballet class tomorrow, but I love going to see the ballet still, so I’m still staying active, but seeing the ballet is definitely one of my favorite hobbies, and I live in New York City, so I’m hoping to be exposed to some of the best ballets at my fingertips, which is so amazing. 

Megan Porta  05:43

absolutely, you have an appreciation for the art still.

Laura Arnold  05:46

Yes, for sure. 

Laura Arnold  05:47

I would love to hear a little bit about your business, which is dang good digital. Would you mind telling us a little bit about it, of

Laura Arnold  05:54

course. So just a little bit about me. I, before I went into SEO consulting. Actually, was in the food media industry, and I’ve been in the food media industry in New York City for, oh my gosh, it’s been over 10 years now. And I’m a little bit of a different, you know, side of an SEO expert. I actually have been to culinary school, worked in restaurants, and then went into food magazines and food television with different shows, like ABC is the Chew, Food Network’s The kitchen, and then working for magazines like Good Housekeeping, different brands at Dot Dash Meredith, and as a result, after, you know, working in the industry for several years, we started hearing about SEO, just like everybody in the blogging world, and just learning about it, trying to absorb it, how it would work for a massive company, and how we could develop recipes around it in the kitchen at these companies. And over time, you know, I just, I do content planning for food for a living for these brands as a recipe developer, and more and more, I was hearing from bloggers in the New York City area that had actually been previously in the food media industry, that they needed some SEO and content planning help, and they wanted to see if I could maybe assist them. So that kind of grew over the past few years into more and more bloggers, site owners, as well as social media influencers, also wanting content planning and SEO help too. And as a result of that, Dang Good Digital was founded, pretty much to help everybody with their food content and grow your business. And it’s been so much fun. I’m having an absolute blast. 

Megan Porta  07:38

I love that you’re immersed in both worlds. So food and SEO, I think that is kind of a unique perspective, right? I mean, there aren’t many of you out there who really, really know food and really, really know SEO. 

Laura Arnold  07:52

Yes, yeah. I’m definitely a different perspective, I think, than a lot of people. Especially my clients, tell me, when we dive deep into a recipe, they’re like, wow, you know how to deglaze a pot and you know how to broil correctly, or how long something should be browned if it needs an egg wash, which then all ties into SEO, the nitty gritties, as well as the overall themes we can then kind of find as well for the recipe. 

Megan Porta  08:18

Absolutely and user intent, too. I feel like that’s so important right now with food. And if you didn’t know food, the user intent might get a little cloudy, but you would be able to dial into that

Laura Arnold  08:30

Yes, and that is probably something we’ve seen change so drastically with Google over the past, really year, I would say, two years. But the past year, Google has become so smart, and I think that’s what people aren’t realizing when they’re developing their recipes. They really need to start honing in on the details of the recipe and what that is based on search intent and the competition out there and who else is posting a similar recipe. You can’t really phrase a recipe with a general term anymore, just like a client came to me saying they ranked for skirt steak the other day for years, years and years. Well, let’s type skirt steak into Google. It’s no longer really recipes. When you type that phrase in, it’s where do I buy skirt steak in my area? It’s where can I get it online? And then there might be one or two recipes sprinkled in between, so we have to rephrase that recipe and see how it’s going to actually pull up in the queue correctly based on the search intent of the user.

Megan Porta  09:33

Yeah. Like, a little bit of tweaking can go such a long way right now, I feel like, yes, yeah. Well, you’re here to talk about creating an SEO content calendar, and you feel this is really important right now for just diversifying your entire brand as a food blogger, can you tell us what an SEO content calendar is? 

Laura Arnold  09:51

Yes. So to a lot of people, this probably sounds very basic, but I want to just explain how it can kind of help you actually strata. As your brand, and especially if, whether you’re small or large, it just keeps your content rolling fresh and growing, which are the three most important things that we do in SEO every single month, as you know, a brand. So with the SEO content calendar, this is what I pretty much do for my clients. So we set up this beautiful air table, and this is their blogging plan for every single month. And we talk about their goals, what kind of content they want to produce. I analyze their site and tell them what categories or topics they’re currently ranking for, how we could flush those out compared to competitors, as well as new recipe topics that they could add to current content pillars, or even see if we could branch out and start creating new content pillars within their site. So the SEO content calendar is based into two core topics, post updates and new recipe ideas. So with the post updates, we aim for eight to 10 a month. And with new posts, we aim also for eight to 10 a month. I have tested so many different numbers of how many to update, how many to do new recipes. Bloggers ask me all the time, because we love finite numbers. We love exact directions which there aren’t exact directions when it comes to all of this. But if you want a general theme of how you really want to stay in growth mode, be relevant and keep changing at the pace that Google is changing, I would say, aim for the eight to 10 of both updates and new posts every month.

Megan Porta  11:34

Okay, yeah, I think for some that might seem like a lot. Yes. Do you find its overwhelming number for your clients? Are they like, oh my gosh, or is this kind of just, you know, a standard, no? 

Laura Arnold  11:47

It’s overwhelming at first. I think once they start to see the results, they understand. And then if some people can’t do it, we go with what their workload is, and we still get great results. It’ll just varies. We try to pick if it’s just five of each per month, then we try to pick posts that really will help us level up at the end of the day.

Megan Porta  12:06

So how do you strategize and pick the new content and decide what to update? 

Laura Arnold  12:12

Yes, this is so important, and I think especially if you’re running a blog as a business and you want it to be a successful one, we need to make sure we’re choosing new recipes that we’re actually going to rank for, especially with how competitive everything is now, and also have fun doing it at the same time. So a lot of people get scared when they start working with me, saying, Oh my gosh. Am I going to enjoy my recipe development anymore, if we’re just trying to only pinpoint SEO? And I say, Yes, we will. It’s all, you know, still fun. We can still have target goals, desires, types of recipes you want to do and make it also into a business at the same time. And people start to see that after a couple of months, and they get excited to see their new recipe list and what we’re going to discuss when I usually present it to them every month. But in terms of choosing a new recipe, I follow three main rules that really everyone should kind of jot down real quick if you have a pen, whether you’re, you know, a season blogger, or you’re just starting out, they’re all still extremely important. So the first thing is choosing recipes with a high search volume and a low competition score. So you’ll hear it from SEO experts all over. Don’t worry about the competition score. You know, look for different search volumes. Some people have formulas. Other people just say target low, medium high, based on, you know, your domain authority, how long you’ve been blogging, all sorts of things. Those things are all great to follow depending on where you are in your blogging journey. But in my general rule of thumb and thought with my clients, just look for something that has high volume when searching and low competition. And you usually will do great

Megan Porta  13:59

And obviously something you are passionate about. So not like, I don’t know, I’ve gotten into the trap of picking things that do have high volume and low competition that are just like drudgery. I don’t want to, I don’t want to do them. And you can’t do that too much because then you burn out. 

Laura Arnold  14:15

Exactly. So you still have to have fun with it and be able to speak to it, because at the end of the day, that’s going to come through in your writing as well. And you know, Google is getting smarter and smarter, and we’ll talk about that more when we talk about how to write a post a little later on. But yeah, exactly. The second thing is looking at your content pillars. So you need to go into your analytics and look at the past year and start jotting down themes that you see, is it cupcakes? Is it tequila cocktails? Is it so specific, like you have ten flavors of pimento cheese, and you should keep making more? Is it southern recipes, casseroles, pastas? You will start seeing trends if you just take 10 minutes to look at your analytics from the past year. Sure it’s very, very simple.

Megan Porta  15:01

So if you do see like pimento cheese, you have 15 recipes that did really well. Do you still keep doing more pimento cheese? Or do you do something that’s complementary of pimento cheese?

Laura Arnold  15:14

That’s a great question, and that really depends, once again, on search intent. So that’s when we go back into the research phase, both for recipe development and SEO, to see what’s online, what’s in our keyword search tools that we use, whether it’s a Keysearch and SEM Rush, et cetera, to see what could add to our content pillar, or if maybe that content pillar is full for now, and we should focus on other areas in the meantime, just kind of depends on the recipe and how vague or specific it starts to get. And just from there, we start rounding out content pillars and then also trying to build new ones. So if you’re great with casseroles and say they’re southern based, then maybe we start doing southern slow cooker recipes and see how they trend. And that’s just a new content pillar for us that we see, if your community likes to keep growing the brands, growing the blog and getting more topics that we can rank for and have domain authority over at the end of the day. 

Megan Porta  16:12

When we build new content pillars, can we just, like, pick and choose? Do you recommend building them based on others, like, oh, this kind of relates to pimento cheese. I’m going to start this. Or can we just, like, pick anything that we’re interested in and start that? Is there a good strategy for that?

Laura Arnold  16:30

I think it depends on the age of your site and where your content is at the time. So if you’re a newer site, obviously we’re going to start experimenting with your general theme, and there’s going to be a lot more just trial and error to see what your community is going to respond to most and what Google will respond to as well. But if you’re a larger site, then I would look at your core and an older site, I would look at your core topics and see how you can kind of relate them to similar recipes that are, you know, a new content pillar in and of themselves.

Megan Porta  17:01

Okay, kind of unrelated, but not what if there’s like that anomaly post that really doesn’t have anything to do with any of your content pillars that just does so well, do we build out something, or do we just let it kind of sit and do its thing? 

Laura Arnold  17:15

In all honesty, I usually let those sit and do their thing. 

Megan Porta  17:16

That’s what I’ve done.

Laura Arnold  17:21

Yes, I totally agree with you on that everyone has them in their top 20 to 50 posts. You’re like, why does that one cupcake so well all year? Or that strange mashed potato recipe I made on a whim. Like, what’s going on with it? We call those the golden unicorns. They stay where they are, we just keep tabs on them to make sure they’re still ranking well and still doing well for your site overall, okay, but they may not be something you should round out into a full category, if that makes sense. 

Megan Porta  17:51

Okay, that makes sense and kind of what my gut was telling me. So appreciate that. Anything else about content pillars before we move on to your number three?

Laura Arnold  17:59

I will just say because this is something that, you know, we all hear from time to time, but I preach to my clients on every call, whenever you are developing a new recipe, the first thing before you even start thinking about how you’re going to make it is you type that recipe into Google and you look at the top three posts. I do that with every single post for every single client, whether it’s an update or a new recipe, and that’s how we find our analysis to begin, and it is unbelievably helpful and also completely free, so there’s no reason not to do it.

Megan Porta  18:31

Yeah. So we’re basically looking at our competition and just scoping out what they are posting about the same content.

Laura Arnold  18:40

Yes, and this should be a guiding force for your recipe. So you know, if every recipe in the top 10 posts is a one pot, I think maybe we should go with a one pot version of that recipe that’s being typed in so that you aren’t then filtered out, because Google is associating that with one pot. You just need to be careful with how nitty gritty you get with the details to, obviously, not recipe, plagiarize, yeah, that would be terrible. But just trying to get those guiding themes and what people are, you know, wanting to see when they type that in to search.

Megan Porta  19:13

How deep do you go? So do you recommend opening the post and kind of scrolling through and getting details there are you just looking at the actual excerpt that you see on Google.

Laura Arnold  19:23

I always look through the whole post, I think it’s important just to see where they’re coming from as an expert with this recipe, how you’re going to show Google and your community, how you’re going to level up and be the expert over these people who are already ranking for the recipe. And give your perspective, which is also very important if you’re going to go and take the time to, you know, develop, shoot, film, this recipe for the what?

Megan Porta  19:48

Yeah, I like that you mentioned. It’s free too. You don’t have to invest in anything. You just literally type in the keyword in Google. It’s right there. And you can do your own little investigation.

Laura Arnold  19:59

Yes. It’s truly the best tool out there. Beyond anything else, it’s just researching already what Google is telling you, because that’s telling you the most information already as to what you need to do for the recipe.

Megan Porta  20:10

So this is your strategy for new content. You search high or you pick high search volume, low competition. You round out your content pillars, or you build new ones, and then you do a competition analysis.

Laura Arnold  20:24

Yes, those when we’re looking at the basics of how to strategize new content, those are definitely the three top tips I can tell anyone starting out or even the seasoned bloggers still need to hear this from time to time, too, that I work with as well.

Megan Porta  20:38

And then, how far in advance do you plan? So if we’re we’re in like, mid ish, August right now. Are you helping people to build out Q4 content, or how far ahead do you look?

Laura Arnold  20:50

So that is honestly based on, usually, the client and their comfort level. If someone is asking me to plan it for them and give my expert opinion, Google is very smart. They can index a post in six to eight weeks if we need them to, and it will still be ranking and be gaining traction. So right now, with most of my clients, I’m planning Thanksgiving content currently, and it’s August. 

Megan Porta  21:16

Yeah, so a little bit of time. But I think you’re right. Like with Pinterest, you have to plan so much farther in advance. I feel like with Google, you said it perfectly. It’s Google is so smart that it really doesn’t take as much time as it used to. Am I right by that? I feel like it used to take, we used to have to plan a lot farther in advance.

Laura Arnold  21:36

Yeah, the rule of thumb before was generally almost three months in advance. You would want to get the post up there. And then, you know, all my clients were coming to me saying, Why am I having turkeys on my website in July? Doesn’t look good to my community.

Laura Arnold  21:52

No one’s in the mood. Do I brand it as Christmas in July? Just because I’m trying to get, you know, content ready to go for the fall. But no, no, we can now, and this goes into tracking, which we’ll talk about more. But I start tracking a post, and I know this is not the general rule of thumb. When I hear SEO experts of all different industries talk about it, I start tracking post updates and new posts one month after their live, okay, on the web, and that is a very different strategy than most people, but shockingly, Google is already indexing things usually, and you can see the track that it’s on. You might not want to necessarily change anything. I usually don’t, but we just want to see that it’s trending towards the right direction, or if it’s really wrong to start out, which tends to not happen as much, then we can go in and fix.

Megan Porta  22:42

I have noticed in the past year, if I post and publish a new piece of content that is High search volume, low competition, like really low competition. Sometimes, within a week, I’ll see it like on page one on Google. It’s crazy. I’m like, wait, what? How did this happen? Yes, yeah, no.

Laura Arnold  23:01

I see those wins with my client clients, month after month, and it is helping their sites continuously. You know, see the little green arrow on Google Analytics, and they’re all excited. So it is possible.

Megan Porta  23:13

Yes, it is so exciting to see that. Yeah, so fast. It’s like, oh, thank you, Google. You did well this week.

Laura Arnold  23:21

Exactly. It’s great.

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Megan Porta  24:55

Okay, so once we’ve done our research and we’ve decided what we’re going to write about. Is, how do we actually put it together? Do you have tips for putting actual recipe posts together? Yes,

Laura Arnold  25:06

And I have so many, but I’ll just touch on, you know, the key ones that I think are the most important and what I see the most often when clients come to me, okay, for a content audit. So the first thing is, we always talk about keyword stuffing, but I am not sure if people understand exactly what that means. I think it’s just a lot of people think it’s using the primary keyword over and over in the post, which is true, yes, but the biggest thing these days is the H2s, and I’m still seeing it time and time again. We do not need the primary keyword in every single H2 or an iteration of that primary keyword in every H2 it is too much, so we need to stop doing that. I recommend one to two times. Okay, so one to 2H. It’s all we need that there’s a great primary keyword that’s high, high volume, low competition, as well as a secondary keyword that’s also high volume, low competition. Then plug that secondary keyword also into the H2 I mean, you’ll see great results with that, but no longer needing to state that primary keyword in every single H2 on your page.

Laura Arnold  25:09

Okay, I like that. You said that. I feel like the optimizers, like a really good optimizer can help you with this, because it can provide some of those kind of secondary keywords that you can put in H2 otherwise it’s so redundant seeing like, how to make crock pot chili, how to store crock pot chili, how to freeze crock pot chili. And it’s yes, yes, just so much for the user. But I’m sure Google is like, Okay, enough already.

Laura Arnold  26:39

Yes, yes, Google is smart. Google is very smart. So when I see that on the page, it starts to make me cringe a little, but that we fix it, and it gets better. So and to bring up secondary keywords, as you were saying, these, you know, these are your little gold coins that you want to sprinkle throughout your post. So look for that primary keyword. Make sure it’s throughout the post a handful of times, but sprinkle in those secondary keywords, or, you know, the longer keyword phrases that are really going to elevate the post even more.

Megan Porta  27:09

Yeah, I feel like this is something that really good bloggers are really good at, because you’ll type in, like, crock pot chili, and then you’ll type in, I don’t know, chili with beans, and you see that the same people are ranking for all of these keywords. And you’re like, wait a second, why can’t I get any of those? Do you know what I mean? Like, there’s so many different versions variations of the keyword that the same people, the same URLs, are ranking for.

Laura Arnold  27:36

Yes, and that is all secondary keywords, yeah, just domain authority and building building that link so.

Megan Porta  27:44

Yeah, what other tips do you have for writing recipe posts? 

Laura Arnold  27:47

We already talked about researching your competitors. That was number two, interlinking. This is great just for your site in general to grow, because if you’re already bringing people to a popular recipe, let’s also advertise some of your other recipes on your site, but with interlinking, I see people want to use the exact recipe name when it comes to linking a post. So you know, Caprese frittata with basil and chilies. Let’s not name it that. Let’s just call it a caprese frittata, or frittata with tomatoes. Try to just think of the generalized name of it, just to attract people to that recipe, and also to help Google categorize that recipe in the post as well. It’ll just help, kind of for a higher volume search term for an interlinking recipe, something basic, but a lot of people don’t know.

Megan Porta  28:39

How much interlinking is too much?

Laura Arnold  28:42

Great question. So I always suggest you should have probably five to six of your own posts interlinked within a recipe, just throughout it all should not be in one block, so maybe a couple in the intro. It’s also great to link a category in the intro to your category of dinner recipes, if that’s what that recipe is for dessert recipes, cookie recipes, etc, based on the recipe itself. Then usually I also interlink pretty heavily in a what to serve section. So what to serve with your grilled turkey breast. Then we’re going to link some sides to that. Now, every post does not have a what to serve section, so don’t start writing a what to serve section in every single recipe that’s just based on analysis and what’s most important for your reader, and that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day.

Megan Porta  29:28

So something I never think about, rarely think about, is adding a category as a link. But I’ve heard people say that more and more, just like you said, cookies, if you’re highlighting a cookie recipe, just like, hey, check out my other cookies here, or something like that. Do you recommend doing that toward the top of the post usually?

Laura Arnold  29:48

Yes, I usually have that towards the end of the intro, or in the why you love section, I like to I kind of give my clients, like a post format. I know some people love that. Some people don’t. Don’t, but a lot of people need some guidance. So there are some post formatting skills we can use that aren’t set in stone. And linking a category is one of the tips I tell them, just because, once again, if someone comes to your site and they’re like, oh, maybe I want to make cookies and cream cookies, and then they see your category page and scroll through it and go, Oh, never mind. I want to bookmark these three recipes, yeah, and follow everything. See that they love your cookie content, then maybe you’ve won someone over to come back to your site and be in your community a little bit more.

Megan Porta  30:31

Does Google ding bloggers for having too many links? Like I have old posts where I have, like, literally 20 links, or something like that. It’s ridiculous. Is that bad? 

Laura Arnold  30:41

It’s not highly recommended. I would say, okay, kind of, yes, you know, refine those, make sure they’re spread throughout the post, not just in one section. There’s a lot of talk over whether linking is bad right now. I’ve seen it in several different chat groups and people talking about it. And I would just kind of, you know, do it as much as you can, five to really, 10 links throughout the post, but five to eight is my sweet spot. 

Megan Porta  31:09

Is this something you think we should do, like going back into post just to make this fix? Or is it something just like as we update to make the fix as we go.

Megan Porta  31:19

As we update? Because I will say the most important thing when with updating posts with Google is that we need to make the update worth it. So we don’t want it to be just a couple small changes to update for Google. We really want to show Google that when we are providing an updated post date on that post, it is worth it, and it is we are showcasing new expert tips, value content and a new perspective in some way.

Megan Porta  31:46

Okay, super helpful. What else do you have for writing? Recipe posts,

Laura Arnold  31:50

we will talk about writing as an expert, which I’m sure everyone’s been hearing the buzz, because this is all SEOs talk about right now. When I hear about it from all different industries with SEO. So we need to phrase ourselves as being experts when it comes to developing a recipe. And we can do that gently. We can do that more forcefully, but there are some key phrases that you just need to start thinking about. And I actually like to have my clients sit down and open a Word document and start just writing down phrases that you can use throughout the post, especially when you may be having, you know, a little bit of a brain dead moment when you’re writing to make sure you’re you’re showing your expertise through the recipe. These are words like foolproof, tried and true, tested, 12 times, things like that, that are going to show your reader and Google that you really have worked through this recipe, and this is why people should trust you at the end of the day.

Megan Porta  32:44

Yeah, I have heard to put those words kind of toward the top of each post. Do you agree with that? Just so that people it can kind of catch people’s eye right away, like, oh, they made this 200 times. Like, that’s really impressive. And then they keep scrolling.

Laura Arnold  32:59

Yes, correct? Because you know, most people, they’re going to spend, you know, 30 seconds to a minute reading through the top of your post. And you want to impress them, it’s your elevator pitch for your recipe. So you need to tell them why they should keep reading, or press the jump to recipe button to actually, you know, follow that, print it out, email it, whatever they need to do. So your meta description is your elevator pitch, and so that’s why looking at your competitors making sure you have an edge on your recipe, whether it’s one bowl 10 ingredients, that’s all based on, you know, competitor research 30 minutes or less. These are all great expert phrases that it’s important to really show people exactly what you mean. 

Megan Porta  33:42

That description right above the hero image, I think that’s what you’re calling the meta description, correct? 

Laura Arnold  33:48

Yes, I call that the post meta, which is different from the Yoast meta. With my clients, the post meta can be a little bit longer and more detailed than the Yoast meta, so that’s kind of how we phrase it when we’re working together.

Megan Porta  34:01

Is there a length that’s too long? Do you recommend, like, a certain number of sentences?

Laura Arnold  34:06

Yes, two to three, Max. No, no more. You can’t make it too long. So, yeah,

Megan Porta  34:12

awesome. Okay, what else for recipe posts?

Laura Arnold  34:15

The other big thing we need to discuss is the topic of storytelling in posts right now, because it’s having a bit of a moment as well, and bloggers are a little confused what to do. 

Megan Porta  34:26

Very confused. 

Laura Arnold  34:27

Yes, yes, yeah. When blogging first started, obviously it was all about storytelling. There wasn’t really SEO, or we didn’t really know what SEO was, so we just wrote about it, whether it was for from a family vacation, you served it to you know, your son every week for two years, like whatever the story was, that’s what you added in to kind of draw people into your recipe. Then it kind of became more of this formula at Google SEO, just write to the recipe almost kind of like a robot. Is how I kinda think about it sometimes, and now we’re kind of getting back into a hybrid, which I’m loving because it’s, of course, making it a little bit more fun again for everybody. So you can add storytelling back into your posts. And you need to do this cautiously, and you need to do it from an expert perspective. And that basically means think about this recipe and maybe where you first had it. Was it at, you know, restaurant in New York City, and you were inspired to go back to your kitchen and try to recreate that. And that is telling your readers, as well as Google, that you’ve experienced this dish before and you’ve tasted it, and therefore you’re trying to create your best version of it to make it home that would be a restaurant worthy and quality recipe as well. So you just kind of think about the storytelling and how you can incorporate that into showing you’ve done your research and you are an expert at the same time.

Megan Porta  35:54

So it’s kind of like hinting at expertise and authority and all those words that we try to remember while telling a story. It’s kind of an art

Laura Arnold  36:05

Yes, yes. So I just tell people to, you know, think about recipes that you want to make, and we can see if they’re, you know, SEO keyword friendly. And then you also were inspired to make them as well. And now you’re also incorporating a bit of fun into it again, too, and not just making those bland cookies that just have a high volume and low competition just because.

Megan Porta  36:30

Yeah, I kind of feel like the more experienced bloggers who have been around for a while have an advantage because we’ve just seen the spectrum of writing like you mentioned. It started out as merely a story, and then it became like robotic and now it’s a hybrid, where we have to just think about all of those words as we tell the story. I don’t know that I would be able to do that if I hadn’t been blogging for 14 years. I feel like it’s an art that you have to just kind of journey through, does that make sense? 

Laura Arnold  37:02

Yes, yes, that totally makes sense. And yeah, it’s hard to strike the balance and make sure it’s not too much of a story and not too much of being an expert, and not every post will also have a story, and that’s okay. I mean, not everything can be inspired by your life with the amount of content that is indeed to be pushed out these days 

Megan Porta  37:23

Is so hard to find that balance too? 

Megan Porta  37:26

Yes, yes, yeah, so just try to make it as personable as possible, because at the end of the day, everything is all about building your community, whether it’s on Google, social media, etc, and that word will just be thrown around more and more, especially with the developments of AI, that’s how we differentiate ourselves, is we are community based and speaking to our audience directly.

Megan Porta  37:49

And we are still human. So we have to acknowledge that we are not robots.

Laura Arnold  37:55

Exactly. So yeah, the human emotion, which is definitely found in the stories and showing how much you love this recipe and why.

Megan Porta  38:04

Yeah, it’s a balance. And just like I said earlier, like a journey, we just kind of grow through it and learn through it as we evolve as bloggers. But appreciate all of that. Okay, now, what do you think about extending past the actual blog into social media. Is this something that we have to do when we’re thinking of SEO and building out content?

Laura Arnold  38:28

Yes. So when it comes to social media, I know it’s a little bit of a him and haul with some bloggers. Some bloggers love it. It’s, you know, the fine line of am I an influencer? Now? What am I? I think there’s a lot of questions about social media in regards to blogging. So at this point in this day and age, which I know it’s painful to hear, I am all about advertising your recipes on social media, and this can be through a reel that’s probably the preferred but static posts are also doing well too. And I think what I’m here to kind of tell everyone is this is just another avenue to keep growing your community, and that’s how it needs to be thought of. It’s not trying to be an influencer or maybe that’s your goal. I have clients that like to do both, and that’s great. So just the getting the recipe out there, on Instagram, on Facebook, reels, on YouTube, whatever it is and whatever platform you want to use, whether it’s one or all of them, that is a great start. And what we’ve been seeing is, with a lot of my clients, these SEO strategies and these keyword search terms are also starting to apply to social media as well, and we’re getting viral recipe videos, which has been unbelievably exciting. So we’ve been seeing for smaller bloggers, 10,000 views on a reel is huge. That’s great, and that’s just going to keep us propelling forward. And we’re seeing that with some bloggers. I’ve seen some clients get a. Million views to 10 million views, and that’s, you know, small, medium sized blogs just based on creating that recipe video that then also can be double used for your post on Google, which is also extremely advantageous right now, and it just opens the door for diversification, kind of setting you up on multiple different channels and platforms so that you’re safe, you know, during the next algorithm update, be it on whatever platform you’re using, Google, Instagram, YouTube, etc. So it’s really important to diversify the stage, stage and kind of where we are with everything for a digital brand. And I’m a full proponent that social should be involved in your strategy on a daily basis.

Megan Porta  40:44

I’ve had this feeling lately, like the more kind of projects you do, or tools or platforms that you use, the more Google, and kind of not just Google, but every platform recognizes you as kind of a whole, complete brand. Does that make sense? Like, if you have a cookbook, that’s great. That’s like, bonus point, if you have a YouTube channel, even better, if you’re creating reels on Instagram, yay. Amazing. If you have a podcast, whoa, that’s cool. Like, the more you can diversify with all of the different platforms, the better off your blog is going to be. And this is kind of what you’re saying here. I think. 

Laura Arnold  41:21

Yes, exactly, just diversifying all the different platforms, and yes, we are seeing great returns for my clients who are growing on social, great returns to their organic traffic, as well as their direct traffic with Google, specifically for their sites, it’s been huge to also have that as a component, and definitely advantageous and helping them at the end of the day. 

Megan Porta  41:45

I love that you look outside the blog and that you’re considering all of those things too. I think that’s really cool as an SEO person, so thank you for bringing that perspective. Laura, yes, of course, yeah. And then you mentioned this a little bit earlier tracking, so we’ve got all of our content put together in an awesome plan and we’re creating it. How do we actually track it? 

Laura Arnold  42:06

Well, there are so many ways to track and it can get complicated and very confusing very quickly, but the easiest way to do this is also through some free tools, which you already have. So go on to your Google Search Console, your Google Analytics. Within Google Search Console, you’ll want to search that post. It just kind of depends on the amount of time you want to search it for. If it’s a new post, maybe you’re checking it after a month or two. If it’s an update, same situation, checking it as a month or after a month or two, and you are looking for that primary keyword, and you’re seeing if that position improved for what you were trying to rank for previously, or maybe you have some new primary keywords you had no idea would pop up, and you want to analyze those based on Google Search Console. So you kind of just want to look at that. And once again, that is a totally free tool, which is fantastic and really going to show you and your business what’s going on. And then you can plug those primary keywords into an SEO tool that you pay for to track monthly, or you can just keep them in a spreadsheet. It just kind of depends on where you are with your business and and what you’re looking to do. But that’s kind of just the main, the main thing to see. And then also, I tell people to really look at the number of impressions, and if that’s growing, and this is as a result of, you know, secondary keywords, those little golden coins, were kind of filtering through. We want more and more impressions to be able to appear more and more search results so that we get more clicks. And that’s kind of the basic motto at the end of the day.

Megan Porta  43:42

Okay, so our impressions growing over time. How often do we look at this? Do we do it weekly, monthly? What do you think? 

Laura Arnold  43:49

So, I kind of look at it from a perspective of what did we focus on the previous month? So as I said, before I start tracking posts, both updates and new posts after one month of being published. If this is overwhelming for you, I totally understand. Just start at two months. I do SEO, you know, all the time, so it’s a little different for me, but I would just start tracking and making sure it’s on the right page. You’re seeing an upward trend in that growth and seeing those keywords drop in position over time. And then I usually track for a consistent three months just to make sure we’re, you know, kind of trending in the right direction. You can track for longer than that, if you want to, or shorter. It just depends. But definitely the three month mark is where we want to see us hitting a sweet spot. And then usually I will stop after the three months and check in just casually at six months to make sure everything’s still going okay. But for your top posts, you need to check in, I would say monthly at this point was Google.

Megan Porta  44:49

So what if, after six months, it’s going in the wrong direction? Do you redo the post? You abandon?

Laura Arnold  44:56

just kind of depends on how you know what you’re. Seen are the keywords totally off, and you’re not even closely, remotely ranking for anything related to the recipe. You could try to do a full on rewrite and use different keywords and then watch it for another two months and see what’s going on. Or you can just if you want to move on, some people do just rather abandon the post and move forward. I usually try to always save the post once and just track it for another two months, and then if it just doesn’t seem to be trending for whatever reason, then we might just want to move forward in general.

Megan Porta  45:34

I kind of use my intuition with that a lot of the time. Like, do I really feel confident about this post, and if I do, I tend to keep trying and hope that something will work. But sometimes it just doesn’t pick up. Sometimes it does. You just never know 

Laura Arnold  45:50

For sure. You definitely want to trust your gut, and that’s important, because you want to have a blog and content that you are proud of and really want to show off, and that’s extremely important as well.

Megan Porta  46:02

Okay, we’ve covered so much. Is there anything just in the whole scope of creating an SEO content calendar that we need to cover Laura? 

Laura Arnold  46:10

Those are definitely the basics. Just to set you up for success, I would just say the biggest thing with SEO is consistency and just making sure you are doing your tasks monthly, staying up to date with it, on top of the million other things you have to do, and then also just making a content calendar that actually is something that you can keep up with and is manageable for you. And I think that’s the biggest thing I see when working with clients, is making sure the workload is manageable, and we then address that appropriately and make sure they’re set up for success. So

Megan Porta  46:44

if that eight to 10 new post that you recommended in the beginning of the episode is not manageable, it’s okay to go down, as long as we’re being consistent.

Laura Arnold  46:54

Exactly. Consistency is key, both for Google and both for social media. That is the most important. 

Laura Arnold  47:01

This is so helpful. Thank you. I love all of this. I have mad notes here that I’m gonna look through and yeah, just appreciate your time today and your perspective, Laura.

Laura Arnold  47:10

Yes, thank you.

Megan Porta  47:12

Such a great conversation. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with?

Laura Arnold  47:17

I have two, actually, one is one that I tell my clients. It may sound a little abrupt, but so many of them say it now my biggest thing when coaching them is diversify or go broke. So that is where we are in this day and age. It’s a little, you know, tough to say sometimes, but we just have to stay true to ourselves and know, you know, keep trying new things. That’s how we grow as a business and as a person. My second quote is, as an entrepreneur, you’re only allowed to quit on your best day. And this is from Ryan Serhant, whether you’re a Million Dollar Listing fan or not, but he is amazing at just, you know, coaching entrepreneurs and understanding how to keep going even when you feel like nothing is happening, and it is so important, just consistency is key, that is the most important thing. 

Laura Arnold  48:06

Oh, great words to end on. Thank you for all of that. We’ll put together a show notes page for you. Laura, if you want to go look at those. Head to eatblogtalk.com/danggooddigital. Tell everyone where they can find you. And I know you have a program coming up, or, yeah, talk to us about that. Yes. So

Laura Arnold  48:25

I’m so excited. I’m announcing a new membership program with me and my business and dango digital. Basically, this will be a monthly SEO community, and it’s going to be launching at the end of September, early October, just in time for the start of Q4 when all the questions are going to be coming out, and we’re just going to, I’m can’t reveal all the details quite yet, but there will be a waiting page to get updates and all the different news about it’s coming soon, and it’s going to just be able to be a community for bloggers to come together and ask questions to me monthly about what’s going on in the SEO world, trending topics, how social media is relating to all of this, just all the burning questions in one place, and we’ll have a lot of fun. I’m so excited to get started with everyone.

Megan Porta  49:15

That’s so amazing. I love it. 

Laura Arnold  49:16

How do we get on the list? Just go ahead and visit my website. There will be a link there under membership program. And my website is www.dangoodigital.com.

Megan Porta  49:28

Awesome. I’m super excited for you. I hope it goes well. I’m sure it will.

Laura Arnold  49:31

Thank you. 

Megan Porta  49:33

Yeah, that sounds very valuable for food bloggers. Well, thank you. Is there anything else you want to mention social media? Anything else at all, Laura, before we say goodbye. 

Megan Porta  49:42

Yes, if you want to follow me on social media, I do give tips. It’s at dangooddigital, and you can also DM me there. If you have any questions, I’m always happy to talk to food bloggers and help them with their business make their content even better. 

Megan Porta  49:57

Thank you again, so much for being here, and thank you listening food bloggers, I will see you next time. 

Outro 50:05

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Don’t forget to rate and review Eat Blog Talk on your favorite podcast player. Thank you and I will see you next time