[Article by Guest Contributor]
The food blogging niche has always been a crowded and competitive marketplace. But with the right ingredients, you can succeed by helping people discover and enjoy your recipes.
And what is the secret sauce for food blogging success?
Well, it’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO), of course.
Here are a few proven SEO tips and strategies for the beginner, as well as tips for the expert-level bloggers in the house.
Table of Contents
12 SEO Tips for Food Bloggers
- Consolidating a Proper Keyword List
The most important part of the process is finding the right culinary-related keywords to use on your website. Keywords are the basic building blocks of a successful SEO campaign.
You can build on your keyword list through your campaign, but it is important to get the basics right.
Taking a bit more time with this step is okay because you must get it right first for everything else to fall in place. Source your culinary keywords from tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and semrush. These tools allow you to identify high-value keywords and analyze your competitors’ profiles.
- Choosing the Right Recipes
While there is no right or wrong recipe, what we mean by this is that you should choose food recipes that are more in demand. For example, how to bake a Black Forest Cake will have more hits than an article about Pithivier. I love Pithivier, but Black Forest Cake is what the public wants.
It’s a great idea to introduce recipes that cater to specific dietary preferences, like keto, gluten-free, and dairy-free, to mention a few examples. It also helps to discuss quick and easy-to-make recipes because they are a big hit among the “instant gratification” crowd today.
- Creating Flavorful Meta Descriptions
Writing meta descriptions is an acquired taste. It’s easier for some and harder for others. The key ingredient to a good meta description is to write naturally and let the keywords flow into it. Forcefully fitting keywords into meta descriptions makes them look awkward.
Include ingredient names and other unique aspects of the dish, but keep it concise. Using actionable phrasing like “how to…” and “5 easy steps to…”.
Last, avoid copy-pasting descriptions in the hopes search engines won’t notice. I’m here to inform you, they are watching, and they will notice.
- Capturing Professional-Quality Images and Videos
One of the most underrated tips in the entire lineup is choosing the right visuals. You must get the imagery right to entice people to your food blog. Using stock photos and videos just won’t cut it. Take your pictures and shoot your videos for maximum impact.
Lighting can make or break visuals, so invest in a good lighting setup to ensure the output looks studio-worthy. The imagery should focus on the food, so keep the background as minimalist and clean as possible.
- Opting for Spicy Alt Text for Images
Staying on the subject of images and videos, alt text is something that hardly gets talked about. Many people don’t realize that search spiders don’t see images as pixels but as information. “Food-blog-image1.png” simply doesn’t convey enough information to the search engine to index your images.
Rather, choose the dish’s name or ingredients in a unique arrangement to ensure the best results. A good example would be something like “pecan-pie-brownies-closeup.” Don’t be afraid to do a bit of A/B testing here to find out what works for your website.
- Leveraging Mouthwatering Content
Images are important, but they’re like the cream on a cake. You still need a cake to slather all that cream. This is where content comes in. The importance of high-quality content cannot be overstated. It is what gives the entire food blog its foundation to grow.
Tailor your content to the post. For example, if you’re writing a How-To-type article, keep it short. For longer articles, break sections up properly, and use storytelling techniques to connect with your audience.
- Ensuring Proper Mobile Optimization
With the plethora of screen sizes on mobile devices, mobile optimization is now more important than ever, so much so that Google has even stated that it is one of the primary metrics for website search ranking.
Websites should adapt to different screen sizes dynamically. Also, it is important to remember that on mobile devices, less is more. Use a theme that loads quickly and does not have too many distracting elements. Focus on image and video optimization that can help reduce website loading times.
- Understanding Schema Markup
Schema markup is an important part of the SEO process. The goal of creating a proper schema markup for your food blog is to help search engines understand what your website is about. The better it understands your schema, the greater the chances you will be ranked higher in searches for relevant dishes and recipes.
Highlight important aspects of your recipes, like cooking time, ingredients, and general ratings. This step is important because it can feature in Google’s rich snippets area at the top of searches when properly executed.
To find out if your schema is good enough to be featured, check your schema on the Rich Results Test on Google Search Console.
- Optimizing for Long-Tail Search
Food and recipes are niches where people are more conversational regarding searches. People will search for “vegan party food options” and “how long can I store shepherd’s pie.” The key is to include keywords naturally in your content, including images and video.
Have a structured approach to your blogs. Use headings and subheadings in the proper order. Including a table of contents at the start of the post is a great idea. Again, the key here is to write naturally without forcing keywords into your content.
- Scheduling Social Media Posts
Social media platforms have more than 5.22 billion users and are a valuable resource for getting more people to your blog. Most social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, and X have business metrics built into them. These metrics can help analyze your posts and images to see what worked for you.
When posting on social media, it is important to have a schedule and stick to it. Post a mix of content like text, images, and videos. Carousels with attractive images and instructional content are a big hit among foodies.
- Making User-Friendly URLs
Another key part of the SEO process is to ensure that your website URLs are readable by people. When choosing URLs, it is important to keep them short yet descriptive. Drop unnecessary stop words from URLs like the, and, of, a, etc.
Maintain proper formatting when creating URLs; the most popular format is all lowercase, with hyphens used as separators instead of spaces. It is a good idea to incorporate keywords as necessary into URLs.
Take care that you decide on the URL structure before you publish because changing it can harm your SEO progress.
- Revamping Old Recipe Pages
If your website has older recipe pages performing well, consider updating the content for even better numbers. This could be as simple as updating an article’s keywords or more detailed as reshooting a featured video.
You could also add more information about the recipe, such as dietary preferences and nutritional data. Another great tip is to crosslink to other pages on your website that are not performing as well as this one. But ensure that it is relevant to the current topic, and you’re not doing it without adequate research or reason.
Climbing the Ranks with Food Blogger SEO
SEO has been around for a long time but has only become more relevant to businesses. Over 90% of all brands have dedicated teams to improve their SEO; it’s that important.
Small business owners and bloggers also need to up their SEO game to get noticed in the huge platter of food enthusiasts.
We hope these tips have helped you get the most out of your food blogging experience!
