SEO for Food Bloggers – 9 Steps to Optimize Your Food Blog

In my last post, I shared how to start a food blog and now I am sharing “SEO for food bloggers” steps that will help you to optimize your blog on a search engine. It’s simple and easy only need to target right keywords for your blog post.

So Food bloggers are you ready to have a look!

Let’s start now…

First of all, we need to understand What is SEO?

SEO basically stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’. It helps to improve your website ranking on a search engine like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. So if you want to get big traffic on your website then you need to target some high quality keywords that will bring traffic to your site.

If you are a newbie and making an understanding regarding SEO then think; ‘You have a website and you are working hard to create good content but nobody is visiting your website.

How will you feel? certainly, giving a non-ambitious feeling…

So don’t be dishearted, SEO techniques will help you to grow as a professional and serious food blogger. SEO for food bloggers steps mentioned in this post will help you to fix your keyword in your blog post.

How to Start SEO for Food Bloggers

Step by Step

SEO – Search engine optimization is all about learning techniques to grow your blog traffic using competitive keywords on your blog. So let’s take a look…

Step 1: Research Targeted Keywords

The first step starts with targeted keywords like how can find those keywords that can rank your food blog. Basically, keywords are the demanding words on your website that people searching on the internet. So if you know about those keywords and you place then this is a high probability to discover your food blog in a search.

Now think, thousands of blog posts regularly published on the internet then how do you stand your post on 1st page of Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Every person who writes a blog post wants to be first on Google. Yes!! but it’s a miracle..

There are a strategy and complete understanding of search engine algorithms to keep the content index high on search engine.

There are some tools that you can use to find targeted keywords.

Basic Tools to Search Target Keywords

If you research on the internet then you can easily find top-notch tools that will help you to refine your search with targeted keywords. Below are the few ones that you can use to calculate your keyword demand.

1. Google Keyword Planner: It’s a traffic estimator tool provided by Google to know the worth of keyword. Here you can find how the words are being searched on the basis of competition. Personally, I use this tool as it’s easy and simple and give you targeted results if you follow the keywords provided by Google keyword planner.
2. Ubber Suggest: It’s a little bit different from Keyword planner as it gives you long tail keywords that help to write an exact sentence of keywords to grow your post content.  
3. Google Trends: It also widely use keywords search program provided by Google that shows how a specific keyword searching the internet in the different time frame from the different location. If you want to write about trending articles in food category then you can easily target the right keywords from Google Trends.
4. SemRush: By using SEMRush you can easily find profitable keywords. It’s more matured tool and provides complete support as digital marketing toolkit. You can use it to optimize your website content and get organic traffic in no time.

Easy Way to Find Keywords for New Food Bloggers

SEO for food bloggers sometimes become difficult if you are non-techy. But if you take it in a lighter way then it’s simple and easy. Let me give you simple tips to explore your Keywords through Google Search.

For example; you have a mouthwatering “breakfast food recipe” like “How to make scrambled eggs” Now you will go to google and simply write the keyword. Google itself shows you the complete result along with the suggestions.

You can check it here…

Now you know how to find the long tail keywords just by using above example. If you want more results then you can use Ubbersuggest SEO tool to find more targeted results.

To maximize the chances of content visibility on a search engine, it’s recommended to use combinational keywords (long tail keyword) rather using single keywords. Combinational keywords provide more consolidated results as compare to single which might be generic and must have high competition.

2) Use Keywords in Your Blog Post Title

Now another step begins with the use of keywords that you find. First, you will place the keyword in your blog post title. This is mandatory and you can’t ignore it! Make sure to write the word only once. Don’t make a repetition otherwise, it will harm your SEO strategy of content writing. Content title/post title should comprise your main keywords so the search engine crawler easily finds your content.

Tip to Write SEO-Friendly Post

For effective blog writing on WordPress, I recommend you to install Yoast SEO plugin as it will help you to manage your SEO throughout the blog post.

Here is some free SEO tools list that you can also use.

3) Use Keywords in Blog Post Body

In the same way, as you did in blog title now you have to use the researched keywords in your blog body or content body. You can use it multiple time throughout your blog post. But don’t overflow the content with the same keyword. Try to use the keyword in a paragraph and also make a heading 2 title within blog body using the same keyword.

4) Use Keywords in URL/Slug

Also, add the main keyword in blog post URL/slug but don’t make it long and avoid stopping words in your post URL as search engine avoids these words.

5) Use Focus Keywords in Image ALT Tag

When you upload an image to your blog post then you have to use proper Alt tag and image description using focus/main keyword. It’s recommended to add because this is the only way to identify the image by search crawlers. For example; if you upload ‘scrambled eggs’ recipe image by using a random keyword like ‘food134’ then how the search engine will categorize the image. So, it’s necessary to use a proper keyword in your image Alt tag to get index on search engines.

6) Focus on Link Building

Quality and useful link building are important. So let’s focus how can you do it for your blog. Now there are two things that we have to understand:

1. Internal link building
2. Outbound link building

Internal link building basically links content within your website. Like you make an anchor link to one post to another post of your blog/website.

In the same way, outbound links are those links that you connect to another website. Whenever you use the outbound link, make sure to connect website with quality and trusted websites otherwise it will harm your website reputation.

7)  Use Quality Backlinks/Inbound links

One of our fellow blogger Brian Dean owner of Backlinko has wonderfully described the concept of backlinks. It basically the links that other website points to your website. If you have some quality backlinks then your page rank will improve. Now the question is how do you assess the quality of backlinks then it’s simple if it’s linked by reliable and trusted websites then you get quality backlinks. Links from same category blog or website has more weight and improve link quality.

8) Add Meta Descriptions

Always use meta descriptions in every blog post. Don’t ignore it. It will improve your ranking on search engine and use focus/main keywords in your meta descriptions. If you are using SEO plugin then it’s easy to add meta descriptions. Don’t make longer descriptions.

9) Reduce Bounce Rate

Bounce rate specifies that how much time a visitor stays on your website and get engaged with link content with your website. For example; if a visitor comes on your post and leaves without getting required information then your bounce rate will be high. On the other hand, if the visitor stays on your website and clicks on related products then the bounce rate will be low. You can easily review bounce rate statistics from Google Analytics.