As with this beautiful congregation of eggplants, more is always merrier.
For a fairly new blogger, there’s nothing more exciting than logging into Google Analytics to see a big spike in traffic.
After only seven days of having this little ol’ blog up and running, I actually brought in 916 unique visitors in a single day. I swear I’m not bragging. There is a point to all of this.
How does such a new blog attract so many people? Pull up a chair and listen closely.
1. FoodGawker, TasteSpotting, PhotoGrazing and other “food porn” sites. I discovered these sites early on and immediately realized their power. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using them:
- These sites can be very picky with the images they accept. I’ve already spoken about the virtues of having a good camera, and it’s my belief that if you are serious about food blogging, you should invest in one. Food and aesthetic are directly related—it’s no coincidence that the most popular and well-known food blogs have beautiful pictures. I use a Canon Rebel XS, which is a great digital SLR starter camera.
- The more interesting your submission, the more traffic you will receive. One of my biggest traffic drivers was my Top Ten Photography Tips post that appeared on TasteSpotting. People see a million recipes for banana bread (mine included), but this particular article caught their eye because it was unique and helpful.
- If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. If your submission is declined you have three choices: a) sulk and beat yourself up for being an awful cook/photographer; b) get back on the horse and submit your post again with a different image; c) Submit your image to TasteStopping. TasteStopping is a blog that accepts all the food-porn site rejects and pairs them with clever little headlines.
Don’t get discouraged. I thought these were pretty good, but the editors at TasteSpotting weren’t so convinced:
2. SEO, SEO, SEO. I repeat it thrice because this is very important. Thanks to Dave’s SEO-guru coworker at Cars.com, I’m getting a significantly higher amount of traffic from search engines. SEO should really be a post in itself (and hopefully it will be soon), but here are the basics:
- First and foremost, if you host your blog through WordPress, download the All-In-One SEO pack. SEO is a piece of cake with this plugin, and you can use it to do almost everything you need in terms of basic SEO.
- Check your title tag. This is what showa up in the frame of your browser when you are on a site. It should be your blog name, as well as a few descriptive words. Mine is “Better With Butter, A Blog About Adventures in Food, Recipes, Eating Out and Entertaining.”
- Update your meta description (I did this with the All-In-One SEO plugin). This is the sentence that you will see in Google when your blog comes up in a search (after the title tag). By default it’s usually the first few words that appear on your home page—not ideal.
- Make sure your URL structure is optimized. By default, your permalinks, or the links that go to each individual post, will usually start with your blog URL and end with a series of numbers/letters. Google and other search engines use these URLs, along with meta descriptions and title tags, to decipher the content of your blog. You can typically change your URL structure in the settings area of your blog admin page. Change it to “title” or “date and title” for best results.
Here’s an example: http://betterwithbutter.com/guac-it-out/. This is a good example of a post that has a more inconspicuous headline. In this case, I’ll add a more logical title tag to the individual post so Google will see “Guacamole | Better With Butter,” rather than “Guac it out” which, needless to say, probably isn’t an oft-searched phrase.
- Name your images accordingly. For a while, I was adding images with the file name “Image 1234.jpg,” for example. Naming photos, I soon found out, can be good for SEO when it comes to Google Image searches. An image titled “Guacamole” will come up in an image search for the term, where as “Image 1234.jpg” will not. And to think, all this time you thought that Google was actually SEEING your images.
3. Blog communities. I am a FoodBuzz featured publisher, and I also contribute to Yahoo Shine’s Food Blog—both offer additional exposure for my blog by allowing me to publish my posts. Putting your content on other sites may seem counterintuitive, but it can actually drive traffic. Especially if you try this little trick: link to back to your blog within the content you publish on other sites. Because most of these sites do not have your blog name and link in plain view, readers would actually have to click on your name and read your profile to get your blog’s URL. If you have a link back to your blog within the post however, you are much more likely to get traffic.
See that “food pick of the day” below? That baby got me more than 200 unique visitors in one day. There’s no telling how much less that would be if I didn’t have a link to my blog in the post.
Oh, and the “Gorgeous” part of the headline came from the Shine editors. OK, now I’m bragging a little.
4. Social Networking. Yes, it’s an overused buzz phrase. But you may be surprised by the amount of traffic you can get from sites like Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious and more. Add social media buttons to your posts so readers can easily add your posts to these sites, and don’t be afraid to be a little self-promotional. “A LITTLE” being the operative words. I use Twitter and Facebook to occasionally, but only when I have a post I’m really proud of that I think other people will actually enjoy.
5. Comment on and link to other blogs. The foodie blog community, like most niches in the blogosphere (Did I really just say “blogosphere?”), is fairly tight-knit. I find new blogs through Tastespotting and blogrolls/links on blogs I read.
Start commenting now. And don’t stop. You’ll not only get traffic from the blogger, but they may return the comment love.
So what are you waiting for? Go get blogging.
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Very informative article, I believe I did click over for your photography tutorial as well. You’re good! You certainly know how to grab the attention of someone and make them want to click over.
I can’t believe those images were not accepted by Tastespotting. That baffles me since at least once or twice a day I see a pretty horrible picture on TS or FG that surprises me it made the cut. -Especially when there are photos like that to be had. Interesting.
I would love, LOVE to have a bigger blog following. And I think my blog warrants it. But I can not self-promote to any degree beyond posting on FG/TS. I just don’t have the time for it, nor the interest in promoting my blog, and doing so makes me hate blogging. So, for the most part, I am content to have my tiny enclave enjoy my blog -but it does irk me a little bit that people gain huge followings because they are willing to be shameless. Especially if what they are putting out there is ‘crap’. And sometimes I wish there was something I was willing to do to help myself to gain the readership I think I should have. It’s a battle for me!
Anyway, this was great, thanks again for an informative, well written post.
Thanks! I totally agree about the shameless self promotion of not-so-great blogs! I was very hesitant at first to promote my blog at all to people I don’t know (and even those I do!). I got a lot of really great initial feedback, so I was confident in putting out messages to my facebook friends or twitter followers every now and again : ).Try the Yahoo Shine thing. All you have to do is register and then copy and past your posts to the “food” feed–just as easy as submitting to TS and FG. If I think a post is good, I’ll post it there, and it paid off when the editors agreed and chose one of my posts as the pick of the day! I think you have a great blog that deserves a big following–although time is an issue, don’t feel guilty testing out other ways to promote it! I subscribed to it after reading the fruit leather post–love that! Thanks for the great comment!
Well I definitely have NO problem shamelessly promoting my blog. In fact, if I’m not handing out flyers to strangers at the grocery store, well then, I really feel like I’m just not doing my job-that-actually-isn’t-a-job-since-I-don’t-get-paid-for-it.
That said, I realize there are many more effective and strategic ways to get my blog name out there!! So thank you for the always helpful advice!! And now that I’m just waiting around until next Friday (my last day of work), I should have plenty of time to get myself out there.
P.S. Do you know of any SEOs for blogger??
Wow, I wish I had known all these things after 7 posts. It took me almost two years before anyone told me about tastespotting even….anyway, great informative post!
Not sure about blogger. I would try and Google it?
Hi Jada, great post and very helpful! I haven’t figured out how to go through blogger and change the actual search title (like your guacamole example), but I’ve managed to change all the other stuff before. i’m not sure how wordpress works, but i’m not aware of individualized editing in html template for blogger.
for blogger peeps, here’s a helpful site: http://www.devilsworkshop.org/how-to-optimize-your-blogger-blog-for-seo/ . if you know a little about html you can work through the tweaks.
Thanks for the tips Heather!
Thanks for the great tips! I picked up on some of these over my year of blogging, but it’s great to have them all in one place. Plus, you inspired me to put the post title first in my title tag.
Great site…keep up the good work. I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks,
A definite great read…
-Bill-Bartmann
Thank you much for that useful blog post.
Thanks for very nice tips! Keep up this type of good work. I like your steps. You are inspired me to put the post title first in my title tag.I picked up on some of these over my year of blogging, but it’s great to have them all in one place.
Really nice posts. I will be checking back here regularly.
hey ya good and useful article
thanks for posting it
Thanks for the excellent tutorial. I will refer friends to your site.
Thanks for the much needed tutorial, I’m also a new blogger and I think that it’s time for me to take the many advice that you gave and put it to good use.
Again thank you for the deep info.
Thank you so much for this information. It’s already helped. I’ve just gone and changed most of my permalinks and will work on the SEO. Really appreciate this post.
[...] I am seriously pondering here at TasteStopping. Recently I ran across a great article on the blog Better with Butter, which gave five excellent tips on how to drive more traffic to your food blog. Several of the [...]
Great article on improving SEO. Just started my blog so this is extremely helpful. Many thanks for sharing! (I’m trying out your tips now…)
Thanks for the tips. I just setup my blog about a month ago and after reading this post, I took your advice and submitted my photos to FoodGawker and TasteSpotting. Although only 1 out of 4 were admitted, my page hit went from 24 to 305 in one day!
Hi there,
Great post, but I have some questions.
How do you contribute to the Yahoo Shine site? I couldn’t find a way to contact them?
Also, how do you become a publisher at Food buzz?
Looking forward to your advice.
CHeers,
Lara
You have to get a Yahoo account and then sign in. When you are signed in you will see “write a post” on the right side of the page when you are on the blogs. Click it and go! Go to the foodbuzz site and there should be a section about becoming a featured publisher. You submit an application, they approve you, and then you put a bit of code that they give you on your site. Good luck!