Episode 500: SEO Expert Compilation – Strategies for Success in 2024

EBT500 – SEO Compilation

Intro  00:00

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  00:37

When I started Eat Blog Talk over four years ago, I never thought that I would get to Episode 500. I mean, maybe I knew deep down that I would get to Episode 500. But I didn’t actually think about the day when this would actually come. So here we are, we are at episode number 500. I cannot believe it. This is a pinch me moment. It feels surreal. It feels exciting. And I am thrilled to deliver you kind of a unique format today. In this episode, Every 100th episode, I like to do something a little bit unique, whether that’s inviting a guest on who is extra special to me or just doing something different. And this year, I really didn’t know what to do. So I started looking inside of my analytics. And notice that you guys love Seo information. It’s always the top content on a blog talk. So I thought what better way to honor that what you guys love, then to put a very special SEO focused episode together. So I reached out to a few SEO experts, ones that you may not typically hear from in our space, I wanted to give voice to people who have a bit of a unique perspective and who might be new voices to us. And I asked them all the same types of questions along the lines of what should food bloggers be focusing on in 2024? What should we not be focusing on in 2024? And how afraid of SEO and blogging in general should we be this year? So that is what you’re going to get in this episode you are going to hear from Ty Kilgore, Steve Wiideman and Samantha Blake, and they all have uniquely awesome different things to say. I hope you can pick pieces out from what they say, and incorporate some of these things into your business this year to make it grow in awesome ways. And I can’t leave this intro without saying thank you for being here. 500 episodes would never have happened if you guys didn’t show up to listen every week and give me feedback and just be the awesome listeners and guests that you are so thank you. With that said here is episode number 500 sponsored by RankIQ.

Sponsor  02:57

Are you tired of falling through the cracks as a seasoned food blogger? It’s just assumed that once a food blogger gets to a certain number of years or a certain level of traffic, that they don’t need resources or direction any longer. We’re good, right? No, we’re not good. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Seasoned food bloggers need guidance and relevant information too. There are ways to find the guidance and support we need such as high quality mastermind groups and retreats. But if those options don’t align with your budget, or your schedule, then you’re kind of out of luck. We are relegated to sorting through all the information in Facebook groups when we don’t know how trustworthy the sources of information even are. All of this is exactly why my friend Melissa, the blogger behind Mama Gourmand and I have decided to put together a workshop style summit geared specifically toward advanced food bloggers. We are gathering no more than 50 people in Denver, Colorado in May 2024. To give monetized food bloggers the love and support they need and deserve. Go to flavormediasummit.net to get all the information you need about speakers, dates or vision for the event and to fill out an application. This experience is going to be highly valuable and one of a kind. We cannot wait to see some of you there. Many of the spots have already been taken for this event. So if this is intriguing to you fill out an application today. Go to flavormediasummit.net. Follow the link to tickets and application and apply today. 

Megan Porta  04:26

Ty Kilgore has been geeking out on SEO and digital marketing for over 14 years. He loves getting results in his successfully increased rankings for over 150 major sites in over 40 industries. He founded Everything Digital Marketing in order to share his passion and to clearly instruct guide and help influencers overcome the frustrations related to SEO and digital marketing. He has been married for 12 years with three awesome kids and he is enjoying life with them in Austin, Texas. 

Megan Porta  04:55

So yeah, I guess we can just get started. Is there a topic or some subtopics under SEO that you feel like food bloggers should be focused on as we get into 2024? 

Ty Kilgore  05:10

Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me has been with the amount of information that’s so easily available, the uniqueness of your perspective is going to be highlighted more in the search results, then just generically giving the answer. So most food bloggers are very talented at creating recipes and content that is available from many different people. And so for me, I think, you know, especially with with AI being a focal point, not just for people using it, but also for the search engines, they are starting to incorporate AI into their search results and provide results that have AI information. I think there’s a lot of people who are just worried about what the future holds. So for me, I think if you’re going to stand out in 2024, I think that you have to create content that yes, answers the question, but provides a unique understanding of how your unique take on it is important, right? Because if I have a snickerdoodle recipe, and so does 100,000 other people, how do I reach the user in a way that distinguishes me from the other 999? Right. And so for me, I think if you’re going to write content, you have to research your competition, find out what they’re writing about how they’re writing about it, because it’s not just about the flour and the eggs and the way it’s mixed. It’s about how it’s presented. And so I think food bloggers are going to have to become better marketers in 2024. In order for them to become better marketers, they need to know what their customers are looking for. And more specifically, what’s already out there for them, I find that a lot of food bloggers get frustrated, because they find a lack of SEO success, because they will write content, they will publish it, and then realize without doing the research prior, that their article is exactly like so many other articles that already exist. 

Ty Kilgore  07:28

And so don’t just create content, just to create it, you have to create content with the mindset of how am I improving on what’s already out there? What unique perspective in my giving people that they can get from someone else? And why would somebody come to me over a competitor out there. And so if you are creating unique content, it gives you the best opportunity to rank in Google. I think, as I’ve done this now, for 15 plus years, the thing that constantly stays the same is that if your content is written in a way that people enjoy reading, get the information that they want, then you have a much better chance of success than if you simply try to take what somebody else’s done, regurgitate it in your words, and try to pass it off as your own thing. You really have to create uniqueness and what you write in every single blog post. So it’s gone away from, “Hey, this is for my family and friends”, to “Hey, I’m going to put certain keywords in certain places”. And now it’s “How am I better than what’s out there?” And a lot of times, bloggers, when they create content, they have an idea. They’ll put together their thoughts. They’ll put it together in a draft, they’ll put the photos, videos, etc. They’ll follow a template, and they’ll hit publish, but rarely do they go and look at the page one results, read through those page one results and say, Okay, this is what everybody else is writing. How can I make mine better? What unique perspective can I offer? That’s, you know, uniquely different, you know, I like to think of it like a grocery store. Like if the grocery store had all of the same milk there that was available to purchase. And the only option was just a whole bunch of the same thing, you would get bored really fast. And so I think the search engines are trying to give people variety, and helping them so it doesn’t necessarily mean that the recipe has to be different, though that can help. But I think more importantly, it’s, you know, what’s the different perspective? What’s unique thing about yours?

Megan Porta  09:40

So this just kind of backs the point that we should not have AI completely right our posts, right? Because for a while it was like, oh gosh, is AI going to take over and write all of our content. So this really supports that just making it yours and I love what you said about becoming a marketer. It took me so many years of blogging, Ty, to think like a marketer and to really understand how my content stood out from others. But once I got it, I was like, oh, right, like this is five ingredients, like all of those things that really stand out to my user. So I think, yeah, that’s refreshing, no complete AI written content, and then just starting to see your content in a new light and see what really stands out. It makes you unique. 

Ty Kilgore  10:25

Yeah, I think so many bloggers, they they read people’s content, and then they just write the same thing, right? Like, they look at it. They’re like, Okay, this is what so and so wrote, this is the top three, this is how they wrote it. And they don’t think a step back and like, Okay, what other information can I offer, like, even today, I was talking to a client, and we were discussing a review post, in the review post, this particular client has been ranking number one for a long time. And now they’re ranking you know, position five, so they’ve been displaced. And so we’re looking at the top people, and they have a unique, different, different perspective. So one of the things was okay, you know, if you subscribe to this service, this is what it would cost. If you went to the store, and you bought the same items at the store. Here’s the things that are cheaper. Here are the things that were within $1. And here are the things that are more expensive. So if you do subscribe to this service, here’s what you would be spending if you didn’t, and you just went and bought it at the store. Yeah. And here’s the breakdown price wise. Well, my particular client didn’t have that. And so in my perspective, I’m like, Yeah, that’s a unique perspective. Right? So thinking through like, it doesn’t have to necessarily be review posts can be around, it can be an individual blog post, but how does your post provide something that isn’t there? And sometimes that’s a harder content piece to write, than just simply saying, Okay, I’m going to write a snickerdoodle recipe. And this is what you need to know, this is how you write it, and boom, now it should rank well, the saturation of the market. Now you need to stand above the rest. And you can’t do that if you just create the same thing that’s already there. 

Megan Porta  12:05

Now, that was well said. Okay, anything else? That should be a focus? Or do you feel like that is top of mind what we should keep at the forefront?

Ty Kilgore  12:14

I think the other thing, the focus is that you need to analyze your site from a perspective of okay, if I have, you know, let’s say 500, blog posts, and my posts that bring in SEO traffic are less than 15, then that means you essentially have 485 posts that don’t bring in any SEO traffic. So maybe the answer isn’t they don’t bring it any, but they don’t bring in significant. So a lot of times I find the paradigm shift has to occur with many people I work with where I’m like, Yes, you should be creating new content. And new content is where many bloggers spend most of their time because they’re socially driven, they’re socially charged. And in order to be relevant and social, you have to create new stuff. And I’m not suggesting that creating new stuff is not a good idea. What I am suggesting is that perhaps it might be better served, going looking at that 485 and an analyzing those 485 to be more strategic meaning, Okay, which one has the best RPM which one has the best opportunity for search volume, and which one of these if I optimize and gotten better results for what I immediately be able to make money from? Oftentimes, I think bloggers are in this false sense of, I have to go and create 20, 15 10, whatever the number is new blog post a month. And instead, they don’t look at it from a business perspective, they look at it from a recipe creation perspective. So meaning like, I need to round out my cookbook, or I need to round out my offering, I don’t have enough desserts, or I don’t have enough of this, or I don’t have enough that I have frequent conversations with people were like, Okay, what’s next? What else do I need to create? I think I want to go into this area, or I think I need to go into that area. And so many times if they research it, and this is one of the things I’m gonna be talking about at your event is, is how do you identify content that’s going to be biggest return on your investment? Sometimes, even though you might have a great recipe, if people aren’t looking for it? And you don’t have a unique perspective? How do you set yourself up so that every time you hit Publish or Schedule that you’re going to see positive results within a 30 day window, not just from social but from SEO. And there is a pattern there is a template there is a way that if researched and done correctly, just like with recipes, if you mess up the recipe, most bloggers have comments and respond to comments about how so and so didn’t get their recipe. It didn’t work for them. Right. Well, did you follow the steps? It’s the same thing with SEO. I find that when bloggers follow the proven method of if you research, if you think through this, if you publish it and you do it this way, you are much higher of having success and getting, you know, posts that maybe were published a month three months ago, bringing SEO traffic in. And replacing some of those posts that have been your stalwarts for years, I have a couple of clients who like their posts that were ranking for one to three years have now dropped. 

Ty Kilgore  15:26

And it’s great, because now they have new posts that have just replaced it. And so now it’s not much of a sting, if it wasn’t, and so there’s a lot of bloggers out there who have to rely on 5, 10 posts, or maybe even less for 80% of their revenue. And it’s just a not a smart decision. So the other thing I would focus on, is looking at your site like a complete business and saying, okay, my business has been running on four to five to 10 URLs, I don’t want at the end of 24, for my business to be reliant on those same four if I had, for whatever reason, rankings go away for all 10 or all 15, or however many URLs I have, and how would I replace that? Or how would I double that? So that way, you know, at the end of 24, I can wake up and say, I’m okay, I don’t feel as panicky, I don’t have as much anxiety, I sense that there’s a lot of feelings of man, I wish that this was better. I wish I had better hear better there. I wish this post wasn’t the only only post that was doing. I wish this keyword wasn’t the one that I had to have in order for me to make the money I need to make. And so yeah, just the variety of content that’s ranking sometimes don’t necessarily look at it from it has to come from new posts, but it can come from posts that I’ve had for a while that just haven’t been ranking

Megan Porta  16:53

For someone who has a ton of content, do you have a certain ratio? Like you should do eight updates in one month versus so many new posts or anything like that? Or does it vary per person? Do you think?

Ty Kilgore  17:06

Yeah, I mean, obviously, you’re talking to the person who’s going to swing you in the other direction as the SEO person. So with that caveat and grain of salt, the main thing for me, is, let’s say you have, I don’t know, 40 hours a month to work on your site. Okay. So then I started asking you questions, how long does it take you to write a brand new post, you know, maybe you have a team, maybe it’s all you, whatever that number is? So let’s just reverse engineer it. So let’s say you tell me you have 40 hours? Well, great, let’s say if you spent all 40 hours on creating that new content, how many posts? Can you create an understood a number? Let’s say it’s 12. Okay, so if you had 40 hours, it takes you 12 new posts with 40 hours, okay? And I said, Okay, what if you created six? And how many posts could you optimize if I gave you the template of how to optimize it. And then knowing that my template, you can optimize one post and every 30 minutes, and again, these numbers are going to be varied depending on your ability, your level of detail, how much time it takes you how comfortable you feel, etc. So to answer your question, I would back into it that way. And I would say, Okay, I would think that do an experiment, let’s experiment where we say, instead of creating 12, let’s create six. And let’s spend the other remaining time the 20 hours on optimizing that new. And let’s do that for a quarter. And let’s see the result. Because I think a lot of times people don’t believe me until they see it. And once they see it, then it really has a paradigm shift for them. And they’ve completely reassess how they want to address things. 

Ty Kilgore  18:45

Because if I can get you better returns, in those 20 hours of optimizing old than you can get with creating 20 hours of new, then all of a sudden, it’s a business decision. Right? And how can I do that more effectively? How can I eliminate the things that take the longest? How can I outsource the things that I hate. So as entrepreneurs, you have to be constantly reassessing how you allocate your time and what you love doing what you would love to give to somebody else, and then find solutions for those for those because so many people think that they just have to work more. And that’s not necessarily the case, what you have to do is work smarter. And once you understand some of the basic concepts of, okay, if I’m going to work on a post that gets $1 RPM, compared to a post that gets $20 RPM, that makes sense, I’m going to work on the one that gets an $80 RPM, but then you have to factor in the search volume you have to factor in your current rankings. So it is somewhat analytical and most of the time the people who I work with are not naturally analytically inclined, they’re creative, and so I get that it’s not their strong suit, which is why I love working with them. Because if I show them the data, they’re like, Okay, this makes sense. Why didn’t I do this? Right? Well, because that’s not what you’re worried about. You’re worried about how to make the blueberry muffin moist and amazing, right? And I don’t know how to make it moist and amazing. But I can tell you if it’s dry, right? And but I do know how to look at work a great spreadsheet and say, Hey, this is how you would optimize these posts. And here’s the order in which you optimize them. So many times I asked this question like, if I were to tell you, Okay, Megan, I need you to look at your blog posts, I need you to create 50, blog posts, 50 URLs that currently exist on your site, and I want you to optimize them for SEO, the way you come up with your 50. And the way that I come up with my 50, are going to be completely different. So you present me 50 URLs, I present you with 50 URLs, and I show you why my 50 URLs are going to work out for your advantage or why I pick them. So I’m going to have like several data points. And then I’m going to show you the use of the reasons why. So then, once you identify how are once you identify what then it’s then the question becomes how, right like how do you optimize them? So it’s a lot of steps, but it’s once it’s broken down and understood, it changes, it changes things I have many people who I work with are like, you know, I only optimize or only created like less than 10 posts in a whole calendar year. And I made more money this year than I ever did, creating, you know, hundreds of posts a year. So it’s all about where your business is, and what your business needs. That really makes the decision for you. 

Megan Porta  21:37

So many factors, right? 

Ty Kilgore  21:39

Yeah.

Megan Porta  21:39

I love your idea of just figuring out the number of hours and working backward, because so often we’re like, I you know, we come up with some arbitrary number like eight, I’m gonna create eight new recipes. And then we like you said, we work harder to fit that into our lives instead of just figuring out the time and working backward from there. I think that’s really smart. No, no, I’ve never thought of it. And I’m so excited for you to talk it Flavor Media and to learn from you and I know you’re going to talk about like keyword tracking and some other SEO stuff. So if you want to go hear Ty talk there sign up or fill out an application, is there anything, Ty, this year that maybe shouldn’t be on our radar that has been in the past or something that we should just maybe not pay so much attention to an SEO realm?

Ty Kilgore  22:26

I would say, if you have confidence in your hosting company, you have competence in your theme slash developer, and you have confidence in your plugins that you’re using. I field 60 to 70% of the questions that I have asked to me are related to technical questions about SEO. And I’m not going to say that if you don’t focus on technical SEO, it absolutely needs to be focused on but in my opinion, in where we are now. And this is a broad statement, and people might pick it apart, and that’s fine. But where we are now, as long as you are utilizing the main things that most people are utilizing, I have done technical deep dive audits. And I have found that of the top five things, many times and these are, it’s different for if you’re a beginner compared to if you’ve been blogging for you know, three plus years. But at most points, SEO is a focal point for many of the designs of these developers, they’re the focal point for many of the plugins that you’re going to be using. So following best practices, but becoming obsessed with technical things is where I think a lot of bloggers start down a rabbit hole that would serve them better if they would spend time creating unique content as compared to worrying about every technical thing that Google publishes and trying to spend hours upon hours making their site compliant. Because in my opinion, I think the best example I’d give is SSL certificates. Back in the day, Google came out and said, Hey, every site by this date has to be SSL certificate, or we will not rank you for as high as you could if you have this. Well, that date came and went. And I found that there were many people in the search results that didn’t have an SSL certificate still. And Google still ranked them. Right. And so my viewpoint over the years has changed a little bit. Yes, I pay attention to what Google says And yes, I will recommend, hey, Google suggested this, let’s do it. But it factors into the complete strategy. Not it dictates the strategy. And I think that’s where many bloggers incorrectly spend enormous amounts of time worrying about and thinking that that is what is causing their decline instead of looking at their content holistically compared to their competitors and see, How’s mine different? How is mine unique? Why would Google put me above these people who have 10 times the authority of me? Right? When you create content that’s similar, it becomes an authority race, and there’s always somebody more authority than you. So you have to create content that’s uniquely different, and provide a reason why Google would say, even though you are lower in authority, because of your unique perspective, and this is what people are looking for, so I will rank you ahead of so and so Allrecipes, Delish, Food Network, etc, because you have better content.

Ty Kilgore  25:35

And so, a lot of times bloggers focus on things they can’t control, instead of focusing on the things that they can. And so for me, if I’m a blogger, I’m going into 2024. Yes, pay attention to technical considerations, but don’t become obsessed with them. And don’t think that those technical considerations are the reason why that post isn’t ranking. 

Megan Porta  25:59

It’s not gonna make or break you. 

Ty Kilgore  26:00

Right? It’s not, it’s not this light switch situation. Google has been googling our Google has been completely indexing the internet for a long time. There’s a lot of people out there who do not have good technical SEO, but rank. And it’s because of the content. So if you can control what you can control, which in Google in SEO, there’s so much you can’t control, right? Don’t focus on what you can’t control, but focus instead on what you can. So of course, pay attention and stay abreast to the technical comings and goings and statements that are made. But don’t have an obsession, where you think that if you don’t follow everything in Google, there’s no chance because I have too many examples where so many people are not following with Google, but Google still ranks them because their content is so good, 

Megan Porta  26:48

Great answer. That leads to my last question, speak on the fear, kind of floating around our space. I’m sure you hear it with your clients. There’s fear of AI, there’s fear of losing search results, a lot of things under the umbrella of SEO. So just gonna speak on that for a second. 

Ty Kilgore  27:07

Yeah, I mean, the search results have drastically changed since I started working in SEO. And I’ve heard this complaint in fear for over 15 years. Most people are still using Google from where they were 15 years ago. And I had a conversation 10 years ago, where somebody was telling me SEO is dead. And Google is going to change and ad networks are not going to be utilized. We have businesses that absolutely can come and go, Google absolutely could change things. Again, it’s focusing on being proactive versus being feared based. I personally don’t know what the future is going to hold. I don’t know how people are going to continue. But I will say this, Google is in the business of making money. Okay, so Google definitely wants to have ads continued to show because that’s how their business makes money. So in my opinion, as bloggers, majority of you make money through your ads, they have invested interest in making ads themselves. So they are thinking about what you have in common with Google, not how much Google is going to take from you from AI results or etc, where you’re not going to be utilized. So I know a lot of bloggers are fearful, read articles follow people that say, Hey, this is happening, this is not happening, etc. I personally feel like Google is the business that they are because they can sell ads. And so until that business model fundamentally changes. I don’t see, I mean, the way it’s delivered might change, but there’s still going to be options, there’s still going to be workarounds and and those things have changed in the last 15 years, I expect them to change in the next five to 10. But there’s still a place. So be aware, don’t ever feel like you have to be one size fit all and be ready to adapt when you know what those adaptions are. So I don’t think it’s a matter of being fearful, but rather of hey, I’m in this, this is my business. I’m going to make sure it’s successful. And how do I do that by staying abreast of the things that are changing and and being ready for those changes? 

Megan Porta  29:15

Being adaptable is like the subtitle of food blogging, right? You have to be adaptable, not just with SEO, but with everything. I feel like everything changes all the time. Thank you, Ty. This was so great. We appreciate you and all of this information. So thank you for your time. 

Sponsor  29:32

Hello there food bloggers. Are you wanting to tap into additional revenue and improve your site experience for your users? If you’re saying yes to all of this, then Chicory might be a really great fit for you. Chicory is a leading monetization platform for food bloggers, enabling you to integrate highly relevant shoppable ads into your recipe content and earn revenue from top CPG brands. chicories Hyper content Extra ads and shoppable technology will help you improve your site experience and engagement allowing your readers to go from inspiration to checkout in just a few clicks. Enjoy easy installation and ongoing access to the Chicory team at zero cost to you. Chicory makes it easy to track your earnings optimize your blog content using recipe insights and connect with its team. Here is a testimonial from a happy Chicory user. “Cooking and baking is my passion. Chicory makes it simple and easy for me to share that passion with the where is my spoon audience providing a seamless purchasing journey for my readers, and an effective monetization model for my blog,” that is from Adina Beck from Where’s My Spoon, head over to eat blogtalk.com forward slash resources scroll down to the Chicory logo and click that button that says learn more about Chicory or you can go to chicory.co/ foodbloggers to learn more and to sign up. Now back to the episode. 

Megan Porta  31:04

Sam began a web design and SEO business after food blogging didn’t go as planned for her. While she still enjoys cooking and baking as a hobby, she learned that she truly had a love for web design and SEO. When it comes to business. Sam particularly loves designing and developing websites and coming up with SEO strategies for food bloggers. It’s the best of both worlds. She loves sharing her experience and knowledge about SEO to help more food bloggers grow their blogs. Hello, Sam, I am wondering if you can speak on this. Just what are your thoughts about what food bloggers should be focusing on in the realm of SEO in 2024? 

Samantha Blake  31:42

That’s a great question. So there’s two key things. And the first is high quality content, which probably does not come out as as a surprise. But I cannot emphasize the importance of this enough. So going beyond just providing the recipe and the instructions, providing the variations, the tool, the right tools, you know, do you want to use a nonstick baking pan? Do you want to use a glass you know, 9×13 pan, like getting into all of the nitty gritty specifics, I think is going to be so so powerful, as well as providing the recipe in a video format and in a in a vertical social media format. Because people love to digest content in different ways. And so I think providing that and being as comprehensive as possible in your post is going to really, really help in 2024. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean give your whole like childhood experience growing up about talking about these cookies. It’s more so just providing value to the user. So anything that you think that could make their experience cooking your recipe, more valuable, provide that information.

Megan Porta  32:51

I have a question about the vertical social media format. So are you talking about inside the post? Are you talking about just having that created so that you can use it for social media?

Samantha Blake  33:02

Oh, great point of clarification, it’s a great way to promote it on social media, I don’t think it’s necessarily relevant to include it in your blog post, because you do have the kind of YouTube esque video. So I do recommend providing one or the other so that the user does have a visual, as they’re, you know, reading the recipe.

Megan Porta  33:20

And do you recommend having a video for as many posts as possible? And is there a preferred format? Do you think in 2024? 

Samantha Blake  33:28

Good question. So yes, I would say the preferred format is probably vertical. However, if you can take the time to convert that to be four, horizontal unlike YouTube, I think that’s very powerful as well. And really, the best way to decide if you should make a video is to check the search results. So if you search for, you know, best chocolate chip cookie recipe and there’s videos in the Search, then that is a clear sign that you absolutely need a video to be competitive. Versus if it doesn’t have a video in the search results, I still recommend taking that extra time to make your post as comprehensive and competitive as possible. Because realistically, you’ll just need to go back and edit later. And if it’s something you could knock out at, you know, the initial publication, my personal workflow, in my mind, I tend to think why not but you could always save it for later if you’re kind of in like a grind to pump out your content. But as complete as possible, I think is going to really, really help you stand out. 

Megan Porta  34:27

Everything you’ve mentioned so far has to do with a user right? So are we just really honing in on what our user needs?

Samantha Blake  34:35

Absolutely. Yep. We want to be able to provide everything they need so that when they’re reading their post, and they get to the point where it’s like, oh man, I don’t have like, you know, whole milk I only have half and half like they shouldn’t have to go back and find another recipe they should be able to see okay, can I make this with my half and half or do I need to go find a different recipe? So answering all of those kinds of thinking through you know, common what if questions I think it’s so, so helpful. 

Megan Porta  35:01

And then for existing content do you recommend in 2024? Keeping that in mind? So going back and thinking about our user when we go through our old recipe posts?

Samantha Blake  35:12

Yes, absolutely. I love any SEO campaign that I start, I always start with the existing content, because really, you’re sitting on a goldmine of opportunity. So starting with all the posts that are ranking from about position three to 20 to 50 maybe focus your efforts on optimizing them and doing everything you need for the user to push that post up the rankings. Because if you’re in that position, you know, three, two to remain really three to 50. Google saying you’re doing the right thing, but you’re just not quite there yet. So really honing in and saying, Okay, what are these other posts that have that I don’t have, whether it’s in the form of backlinks or a content delivery methods? So for example, a video or are they providing instructional images for each of the steps of the recipe? So really kind of taking all of the subjectivity out of it and being very objective and like going through your kind of posting checklist, like, am I checking all of these boxes? 

Megan Porta  36:09

You mentioned backlinks? Is that something that you feel we should be focused on this year, too? Yes, good

Samantha Blake  36:15

question. But that was actually gonna be my second big thing. And that that was a perfect segue that food bloggers in particular should be focused on. And so just focusing on creating that shareable content, and so when I say shareable, and this can sometimes kind of go outside, just general food bloggers, like what makes something shareable, it can be funny, thought provoking, unique data driven. There’s so many different ways that like we find come across content, or like, we want to share this. And so, you know, thinking through, like, what makes this recipe different, like, am I, you know, are all of the other recipes in the search results for? Let’s see, chicken parmesan, like, are all the top recipes, you know, have this elaborate list of ingredients? What can I do to make mine different? Maybe it’s, you know, ready in 20 minutes, or one pan or baked, not fried, something that makes us different and able to kind of stand out in the search results will not only help our click through rate, but also make it more shareable. 

Megan Porta  37:16

Okay, that’s really great to talk through anything else we should be focused on this year. 

Samantha Blake  37:21

So those are the two big ones I say, if you just double down on high quality content and backlinks, then that will be you’ll be well on your way to succeed in 2024.

Megan Porta  37:30

Great, I like the simplicity there. Okay, Sam, is there anything in 2024 in the realm of SEO, that we should either not focus on or maybe reframe in some way?

Samantha Blake  37:42

Ooh, yes. So one common bit of SEO advice that I see is, you know, focus on putting your focus key phrase in the title in the URL in the meta description, maybe your first H1. And I recommend moving away from this kind of approach to SEO, because it’s really about looking at the whole picture and the whole piece of content. And to me, those are just your entry, you know, your ticket to play the game of SEO, those are just absolutely foundational so that Google’s algorithms can understand at a very basic level what your post is about, but in order to be competitive in 2024. And I mean, really, probably even sooner than that, it just simply isn’t enough for long-term success. So by focusing on the user through writing high-quality content, and then taking your time to promote that and acquire backlinks is really going to set you up in 2024. 

Megan Porta  38:40

Okay, so it’s more taking a step away and looking at the blog post from a really far away perspective versus Okay, here’s my focus key phrase, and I’m just going to plug it here, here here. That’s not the strategy anymore. Exactly. Yep. Okay, anything else to reframe in this coming year? Or I guess this year, 2024?

Samantha Blake  39:02

I think that’s it. Yeah. 

Megan Porta  39:04

Okay. Anything that you feel like food bloggers should know anything new on the scene? I guess that’s a good question, too. 

Samantha Blake  39:12

Oh, yeah. So one thing that I do anticipate seeing more of is creators that are starting on social media. And, you know, focusing primarily on short form video, I do see more and more of these social media creators wanting to branch out into blogging, because they realize social media is a space that they don’t own and to start building out their brand on a platform that they do own, like a WordPress website is just insanely valuable, especially long term. So I do see more and more, you know, social media creators, especially in the food niche to start kind of branching out into the blogging scene.

Megan Porta  39:50

So if somebody’s listening and they are just on social media, do you highly recommend that they start a blog ASAP? Yes, absolutely. Okay. And then what are your have thoughts about AI and cookies and kind of the fears? And all the chatter surrounding those two things?

Samantha Blake  40:07

I love this question. So personally, I do not want to make a chocolate chip cookie from a robot, I want to make a chocolate chip cookie from somebody that has baked it, and eaten it and has tried all of the different chocolate chip cookies and know what a good chocolate chip cookie tastes like. And not just rely on an algorithm to provide what they think may be, you know, the best combination of ingredients and, you know, procedures to perfect a chocolate chip cookie, I’d much rather make one from somebody that has first hand experience creating a cookie. And I think that’s really what, you know, the E A T Concept at Google is all about experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. These are elements that, at least at this point in time, and I don’t see happening and 2020 for the next couple of years, that AI will really be able to compete with and so making sure you’re bringing those elements into your blog post, I think will certainly help. And I do I am of the opinion that food bloggers are, in particular, are a little bit more so kind of separated from some of the fears around AI because, you know, I think people like to eat food that was created by real people, not a robot. 

Megan Porta  41:23

Oh, that’s a good point. Yeah, like giving us kind of an advantage over other types of creators, because food is so descriptive and delicious. And people want to read, you know, about the equipment and all of that, where for travel or something else, that might not be the case, right. But food has the advantage a little bit?

Samantha Blake  41:44

Absolutely. Like I could definitely see AI coming up with fantastic travel itineraries. I mean, it’s already doing that. But with the food and the texture and the taste, I just, I just really see that that being better kept to, to us as people that just love food and eating and baking and experimenting.

Megan Porta  42:03

This leads perfectly to my last question for you, Sam, which has to do with fear. Because I see it in this area of just SEO in general, a lot of fears being tossed around, we really don’t know how this is going to affect search results for our recipes, the cookie thing is playing out, we have no idea how that’s gonna play out. I mean, there’s so much that we could be just so afraid of, so will you speak to that for a minute?

Samantha Blake  42:32

Sure, totally. Well, what I like to remind myself of is number one is Google’s number one objective is to make money. And so, you know, they’re not going to hurt their bottom line just for the sake of providing, you know, AI generated content. And so ads are crucial in, you know, Google’s world, they still need to be able to display ads, they still need to be able to have a source of their content, original original content. And so I personally see AI being kind of similar to what we already have in, you know, the rich snippets, like sometimes Google will just provide the answer to a question like, What time is it? You know, in Washington, DC, you know, you don’t need to go to a page like you used to, it’ll just provide it right in the search results. And so I do anticipate in seeing that happen. But I do think the target, the traffic that does come to your blog, will be kind of more high quality traffic that like actually wants to read your blog posts actually wants to go the next step in creating the recipe and won’t just rely on AI results. 

Megan Porta  43:37

Okay, love that. That gives us permission to release some of those fears. And absolutely set them aside. I believe that when you can set fears aside, that I mean, they’re all out of our control. Anyway, most of those things that we’ve talked about. So what’s the point, right, there’s no point in stressing over them. Let’s see how it plays out. Just do what Sam recommended creating that high quality content, keeping the user at the top of your mind and focusing on backlinks. 

Samantha Blake  44:04

Yes. Well said well, summarized.

Megan Porta  44:06

Perfect. Alright. Is there anything else before we say goodbye, Sam.

Samantha Blake  44:09

That is all thank you so much for having me.

Megan Porta  44:12

Awesome. Thank you so much for all of this. We really appreciate you.

Samantha Blake  44:15

Thank you,

Megan Porta  44:16

Steve. Wait a minute. The Orange County California based Strategic Planning Specialist, also founder of the Weetman Consulting Group is renowned as SEO Steve, for the extraordinary breakthroughs he helped achieve for Fortune 500 companies and local small startups alike. Steve, can you start off by telling us about some key SEO strategies to just getting ahead in the content creation space? For example, using AI tools?

Steve Wiideman  44:42

Of course, I think there’s so many ways that we can as content creators, food bloggers or otherwise can use AI to really enhance what we’re doing. I think the other thing that we should be paying attention to, I think there’s there’s kind of two angles. One is kind of where the buzz is isn’t where the conversations are happening. So using social listening tools to, to better understand what, what everyone is talking about in the moment and then being able to create our own content based on what those hot topics are, and have a voice in those conversations, not just on social media, but through our food blogging, I think the other place that we can pay attention to is our competition. I think, if you haven’t already, as a food blogger, finding those content gaps, looking at those top competitors, maybe 10, or 20 of those top competitors, and just kind of analyzing what, what pages whether using the XML sitemap or just running up a crawl of their website, what pages the competition has, that we don’t have, and of the pages that are similar, what makes their pages better, if any than ours. So I think we have an opportunity to take our current pages and really kick them up a notch based on our learnings from that content gap, as well as identify new content opportunities that we haven’t yet thought of. One of the things I’ve seen a lot of my peers doing lately is, is basically capturing anytime a competitor posts something new, whether you’re using Feedly, or any other blog reader, being able to get kind of What’s New among the competition, will help us match up whether we have similar content available, and whether or not it’s better or worse than what the competition is doing. That’s one way to do it. Another way is simply scanning the XML sitemap periodically once a day, once a week to see what’s new, comparing side by side and saying, Oh, look, the competitor Launce launched 10 new pages on this topic, let’s take a look at what they did. And see if we can create something that’s even better. And then where where people are mentioning and linking to competitors, new content, we can piggyback on that, you know, again, by setting up alerts when the competition’s mentioned, and saying, Hey, that is a really good article, we did something very similar on ours that you might want to take a look at, we went a little bit deeper on this particular recipe on this particular attribute related to, you know, keto, or diet or nutrition, or whatever the topic or subtopic happens to be. So I think, I think there’s the two kind of opportunities to stay ahead, you know, listening to, you know, what’s going on in the, in the overall food dining industry and having a voice in it and to, you know, picking up on, you know, what the competition is up to and, you know, making sure that we’ve run that kind of gap analysis that we have everything that the competition has, 

Megan Porta  47:25

Where do you recommend finding the perfect competition to look at when we’re comparing our content to theirs? Do you have places to start with that?

Steve Wiideman  47:34

Oh, of course, I would say pick whatever your business objective is, right? If your business objective is around recipes, look for the types of recipes that you like to write about and promote. And, you know, take those top three or four search results in Google, you know, and use them as you know, kind of your your top competitors for that particular objective. The objective is to write about health and diet, health foods or diet foods and nutrition. On the same note, find those topics that you’re really interested in performance search, pick up those top results in Google and, you know, put those into your monitoring queue so that you can keep an eye on what they’re up to.

Megan Porta  48:12

And then for the monitoring queue, do you have recommendations on that? I think you mentioned Feedly. Is there anything else in addition? 

Steve Wiideman  48:19

Sure, well, there’s there’s software that you could use on your computer without having to spend hundreds of dollars on SEO suites. Obviously, if you’re using an SEO suite, there are tools within them. Semrush will have its own monitoring and competitor monitoring that you can do. I like to use and some of our monthly reports that we do with our clients, we use Visualping, you know, to pick up any changes that a competitor might make to specific pages. If there’s, I don’t know, 20 pages that drive a majority of our traffic, we’re going to look at the 20 pages of the competitors or maybe 100 pages, you know, have multiple competitors, when you kind of combine them all, using Visualping, it’s a free extension up to like five monitors. After that it gets really cheap, still a few bucks a month. And it basically sends you an alert and says, you know, the competitors just made a change a change to an H1 tag, or they added an image to the page, you can see that in real time. I like to put it at the end of the presentation so that our clients can not just see what we’ve been working on and how things are improving. But they can also kind of eyeball what the competition’s doing, you know, to try to get their pages to you know, to flank ours. Other tools like Screaming Frog are things like 100 $200 a year, you can crawl the competitors website, you know, and then just run some comparisons side by side, what’s different? Did they change titles, you know, subheadings on their page, the alt tags change. You can kind of keep an eye on those. There are bigger tools as well. If you’ve got a budget, such as Ryte, R Y T E. It’s a fantastic way to crawl the competition’s website and really garner insights as to what’s changing and what they’re working on.

Megan Porta  49:55

That is awesome. Okay, and then you mentioned earlier about just paying attention to where the buzz is all right, so where do where do we go to find that? 

Steve Wiideman  50:03

Oh, there’s so many different social media monitoring tools that you can use that are that are out there. What was one of the big ones? Is it Hourly, I can’t remember the name of all these social tools, but but they’re out there. They’re just social media marketing tools, you can just do a search and explore the different ones that are out there. Perhaps use G2Crowd is one of the sites that sort of does side by sides of different kinds of tools that you can use to monitor what you know, terms are being used and who’s talking about what in different industries, there’s quite a few that are out there. The other way to do it is there’s a service called Spark Toro, you can basically punch in a term into Spark Toro such as I don’t know, food, or eating or dining or nutrition. And you can see the top brands that talk about those topics the most, to pick those up as part of your your monitoring and see the kind of posts that they have sparked Joe’s fantastic Insights tool for understanding, especially in social media, you know, who the top conversation folks are, and you know, to keep an eye on what they’re up to.

Megan Porta  51:04

I love that that’s something I literally never think to do. It’s just to see like, Oh, what is actually trending? What are people talking about, but it’s really smart, because that changes so much, right?

Steve Wiideman  51:13

I gotta get another tip too is we keep the national calendar on our wall. And we try to see where there are alignments in what our clients do and what’s on that calendar, you can just do a Google search for national calendar day and find a few different examples. For an attorney, for example, they might have perfect alignment with National Seatbelt Safety Day. And there are a lot of food items on that calendar. So getting ahead of it, maybe two, three months in advance of the dates gives you time to put creative and video and, and audio content together so that you can have a voice on that National Day, a it’s National Ice Cream day, check out this video we did with 31 flavors, 31 flavors innovator, you know, on whatever right you can, you can get really creative and, and collaborate with the folks that some of these big brands, and when they see you posting and promoting their brand, of course, they’re gonna retweet you or reacts you, whatever they’re gonna call it here and mention you and be grateful for that. And if there’s a URL that guides the user back to the website, that’s huge for brand awareness, and, you know, trying to get in front of more people. 

Megan Porta  52:20

I have a question. So you started the conversation with AI and how that’s such a great opportunity for bloggers. Do you foresee AI or chat GPT or is it Google Bard, I believe it’s called changing the way that users search for recipe posts?

Steve Wiideman  52:37

It’s possible you can you can start doing some tests using the labs.google.com search generative experience testing, you can get in that little sandbox and kind of see what shows up for particular recipes, you can see how they’re they’re using some of the difference structured markup to show different results in different appearances, you might see three or four blocks of text, and maybe three tiles off to the right hand side. For some types of queries, others you might see products displayed. So I think I think a great way to just to kind of get ahead of the game is get into that labs.google.com experiment, run some searches and see if your brand appears. And if it doesn’t, then you know, take a few minutes reverse engineer the pages, the recipes that are showing up to try to understand the differences now and look at their their pages, I would look at some of the markup they’re using, there’s a free extension you can use for Chrome, by Marketing Syrup, it’s called the SEO PRO extension, click on the different tabs within that extension, when you’re on, you know the the competitor page to kind of get an idea of of what they happen to be doing on the page, the next thing I would do is I would take a snippet of text from the recipe, maybe six or seven words, put it in quotes, and then paste it into Google to see what other websites are curating or copying those particular recipes, because those syndication points might play a role and why they’re appearing in the generative search results. And it’s likely a reason they might be appearing as the Featured Snippet in a Google web search. It’s not just what’s on your page, but it’s also the votes from other websites and webpages that, that curate that content that sort of gives you credibility to earn that featured snippet. And a lot of times we see the Featured Snippet as the same or similar results that we’d see in that chat result at the top of the new genitive results. 

Megan Porta  54:32

Oh, interesting. Okay, I didn’t know that was lining up. That’s really interesting. So it sounds like you do just a lot of reverse engineering and research and just like, why does this work? Let’s kind of replicate that. That sort of thing.

Steve Wiideman  54:43

Of course, yeah, it’s a little nerdy, but I mean, why reinvent the wheel? And that way, you’re not guessing you can actually use data points and say, here’s, here’s what we noticed or similarities and what you know, the competition’s doing, and let’s do some testing and see if it works for us. 

Megan Porta  54:56

Yeah, it’s hard data, right. So learn from that. I don’t think it’s nerdy at all, I think we can all learn from that. And then just speaking to this collective fear that a lot of us feel overall with 2024 being here and SEO, and it’s scary, and where’s my traffic gonna go? And all of that? Do you have any thoughts for us about that just dealing with the fear?

Steve Wiideman  55:16

I do, I do. And as somebody who’s been optimizing for Google for 25 years, I can say it’s time to stop obsessing over Google, and start thinking about our other publishers and the other places that people are going to find us, our clicks are absolutely going to continue to go down, especially in a click free search ecosystem, where people are going to be using more hands free devices, and chat, and other ways to search. So we need to make sure that we’re, you know, we’re coming up with a plan to make sure we’re everywhere our potential customers are going that includes, you know, Tik Tok and includes, you know, those still lingering around on Facebook, those on Twitter, we need to think about display and native advertising and other ways to get in front of audiences than just Google alone. And Google is going to be important and should continue to be, you know, a primary source for where most of our traffic is coming from. But you know, as as we continue to untether ourselves from physical devices, you know, it’s going to be, it’s gonna be important to think of a more integrated strategy across all the different ways that we can, you know, market our brands so that when they do perform a search, if they do perform a search, they’ll recognize us because they’ve seen us elsewhere, because we weren’t being myopic on just Google. I think that’s the that’s the message, I think, to digital marketers is, you know, if you haven’t already been exploring, not putting all your eggs in one basket, this is the year to do that.

Megan Porta  56:41

Yes, diversifying is so important, more than ever, I believe. 

Steve Wiideman  56:45

Absolutely. 

Megan Porta  56:45

So do you have any thoughts about where to start with that? Because when you say, market, your brand across all platforms, that seems to me a little bit overwhelming, like what does that mean? Does that mean I need to create video, audio? Like, how do you interpret that?

Steve Wiideman  57:00

Of course, I think everyone recognizes that the new medium for content, the ones that really matter, are really centered around video, you see a lot of short form video content, you can see Reels, and YouTube shorts, get significantly more engagement than just a standard YouTube video. So it’s important to you know, to put a plan together, put a whether you’re going to put a marketing calendar together and come up with some really creative ideas. Or maybe just sit down, you know, with a team of college marketing students and and brainstorm a content plan, create a column for each of those distribution points and how they might vary. And what we’re sharing a column for Twitter, for example, and a column for Instagram, Instagram, you know, Reels, YouTube, YouTube shorts, you know, all those different distribution points, and then test and see where we get the most engagement watch over the course of a month of distributing, you know, bits and pieces of varied content across those different publishers, and see, you know, where we’re seeing the most success. And then, at the end of 30 days, look back at the data and, you know, and shake the etch a sketch a bit, and then start right over and jump right into the next month and try something new. Yeah, I think that’s kind of how I would approach it. 

Megan Porta  58:17

Okay. And then do you foresee anything coming up here in the SEO world to maybe really drastically shift or not pay attention to any more, anything that’s really changing for us?

Steve Wiideman  58:29

You know, I would think some of that upper funnel content that we spent a lot of time and energy and money on to answer questions, as people do evolve to more of the chat based search, I think I’d want to put a little bit more of my time into the lower funnel, and into into different media, as opposed to spending, you know, three $4,000. On a skyscraper post, I don’t feel like people are going to be clicking on a lot of that content as much in the future. I think when when users are searching for answers, you know, they’re going to use chat. And when they’re searching for options, they’re going to search web. So I think that would be my my little bit of my shift is, the less emphasis on, you know, spending 1000s and 1000s of dollars on big upper funnel skyscraper pages, and a little more emphasis on just, you know, trying to provide value and brand awareness and, you know, really, really put myself out there other things in terms of old school SEO, you know, I think including important search terms and our contents not going to change web crawlers, bots, Googlebot and Bing bot are still crawling the web, as are the chat bots. You know, they’re they’re crawling the web to make sure that you know, they can find identify and, and test relevant content. I wouldn’t change your keyword strategy, as you’re, you know, making sure your search terms are in your titles and headings and subheadings and internal links. I think that’s still going to be important, you know, for quite a while, at least for the next three to five years. But if you’ve been doing Any sort of techniques that aren’t really strategic that are just kind of, you know, trying to game search results, I think you can probably start letting those go. So avoid, you know, private blog networks and you link to me, I’ll link to you type techniques avoids, you know, trying to pay third party vendors to build links for you avoid paying for guest blog posts. You know, I think Google’s kind of figured that out and disavowed quite a few websites that are randomly linking to random sites that don’t really align with what the, you know, the core of the website is, and focusing on some creative things of tools and resources and data that that other websites would want to reference. I think those are, those are going to be the the link bait, if you will, that continue to drive the links that supports search engines finding and indexing and testing our website and the results.

Megan Porta  1:00:52

Do you have any final words for food bloggers, just looking for SEO kind of general information, Steve, before we say goodbye?

Steve Wiideman  1:00:59

of course, I would say start with a strategy, whether you’re creating one in house, or hiring, you know, an agency or consultancy, come up with a 12 month kind of big picture plan, start with a technical audit of the website, make sure that you’ve aligned all the technical attributes with what Google’s looking for. And in terms of accessibility and speed, and, you know, and so forth, I think doing a competitive baseline, where are you now versus the competition across multiple SEO metrics is important, so you have something to measure against next year. I think having a link audits and, and putting a strategy together for how you’re going to attract links is going to be important to look at those top links that you know competitors have earned and what pages they’re using to get them. And then lastly is an actual content strategy, do that, that keyword gap analysis, figure out, you know where the opportunity is, and maybe even you know, consider restructuring your website instead of putting your best content on blog posts that are you know, going to age and, and to get buried in an RSS feed over time and start creating more evergreen content around some of the top categories that are important to you. I think having that strategy in place with those four attributes is a great way to give yourself and your team peace of mind and set some KPI goals, use Looker Studio as a means to measure your performance across your different you know business objectives or, or categories that are important to you and every month, get together with your team and see how you’re performing across those different areas.

Megan Porta  1:02:30

We’ve hacked a lot of value into this little snippet of time. So we really appreciate you Steve, thank you for delivering value to food bloggers.

Steve Wiideman  1:02:37

Absolutely. I’m here anytime. All right, thank you. 

Outro  1:02:43

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of V BlogTalk. Don’t forget to rate and review a blog talk on your favorite podcast player. Thank you and I will see you next time.