What are you giving away for free on your blog? It’s an important question, because giving things away for free is one of the best strategies for increasing the income you’re earning (all while building backlinks to your food blog).
Giving things away for free in order to increase your income? Seems a bit backwards, doesn’t it? Let me explain.
Note: It’s important to know that I’m not talking about giving something away to encourage people to sign up for your email list or use your affiliate link. Those are effective strategies, but today we’re focusing on things that are truly free, no strings attached.
Traffic vs. Links
I’ve already written a post about the idea that you shouldn’t think about building traffic to your site but rather building links to it. It’s a small (but important) shift in thinking.
Traffic is about clicking. Links are about sharing. If you focus on the person that will share vs. the person that will click then you’ll be in a much better place to build traffic to your site. The same thinking will get you more pins, more bookmarks on Instagram, etc.
Question: What’s one thing that people are likely to share?
Answer: Free (and awesome) content.
The process looks something like this:
- You take the time to make and test a recipe, take beautiful photographs, write a post, and publish it for free on your blog.
- A visitor sees the post.
- They think “Wow, this is awesome.”
- They like the recipe so they share it to social media and maybe even post about it on their blog.
- Other people click on that link and visit your blog, but more importantly…
- Google takes note of the link back to your site, rewarding you with some “SEO juice.”
I’d like to focus on the benefit of item #6 in that list.
Google takes note of the link back to your site, rewarding you with some “SEO juice.”
One of the most important factors with SEO is the quantity and quality of links that you have pointing to your website.
How to build backlinks to your food blog
Here are some examples of food blogs that are effectively using free content or resources to encourage linking:
1. Create a guide or tutorial
As a food blogger, creating a comprehensive guide is one of the easiest ways to put together a shareable resource. What is your expertise? Make a thorough, one-stop shop resource for your readers around that topic. Need some inspiration?
The Beginner’s Guide to Sourdough from Maurizio at The Perfect Loaf.
How to Properly Measure Baking Ingredients (Video) from Sally’s Baking.
2. Answer a FAQ
What are you always getting questions about in the comments? Write a blog post or article around that question. Make it a resource so helpful that other creators would want to link to it.
How to Freeze Cookie Dough (& Bake From Frozen) from Handle the Heat.
Easiest Packed Lunch Ideas from Yummy Toddler Food.
3. Share the behind-the-scenes of food blogging
One of the reasons we wrote the traffic and income reports on Pinch of Yum was to grow our backlink profile. While the traffic to those posts was relatively low, the links we got (from other blogs and websites) were relatively high, and the quality of those links was usually pretty good (meaning the links were coming from other established blogs and websites).
How could you do this? Share your photography resources, your favorite cooking equipment, your tips for brand partnerships, etc.
Food Blogging Resources from Barley & Sage.
Recipes vs. Other Resources
So why not just continue making awesome recipes and encourage people to share them?
It’s not a bad idea, actually. But you can do better!
Recipes are a great place to start, but my challenge to you is to think outside of the box a bit. What are some tools, resources, or “pillar posts” that you could create that other websites would be likely to link back to?
Said differently, (this part is important) ➡️ try to think about things that other bloggers will share on their blog. Like we said at the beginning of this post, it’s essential to think about building links to your site, not just building traffic to your site.
Because increased traffic comes from links…
…and increased income comes from increased traffic.
You said hence.
It was originally “thus.” 🙂
Well said, as always Bjork! I’ve found that adding a free resource has really helped increase my traffic and has actually increased my engagement! My free resource is a free ecookbook with some of the top recipes from one of my series, and I’ve found that it really gets the conversation going. I now have readers email me and say ‘I tried one of your favorite recipes and now it’s one of my favorites too’, it’s such a great feeling, and really goes back to the point you made about leveraging your strengths through sharing a free resource 🙂
So true Bjork! I created a free food photography ebook on my food photography blog to build my email list and get new readers. My email list went from a sad 39 people to about 3000 in less than a year. My list is growing faster every month and my page views are going up accordingly. It’s still a long process, but I’m getting there.
I have been thinking about making an e-book for my blog. I am very new to this so I have to find out how to do it. It will be free.
Great tips Bjork! It is really great when I see other bloggers linking back. I always like to go back to their blog and thank them. I am in the works of putting together a free gift for signing up to my monthly newsletter. Love your articles! Ester
Though I do not have a food blog this has worked well for me. I post free decorative painting tutorials which have proved very popular and people love to share them. The really great part of it, I am finding I love making the video tutorials that go with them. They are very amateurish but still a lot of fun!
Awesome info! Is there a time when you’d give away content with no strings attatched to generate traffic vs content to use as incentive to build your list?
Yep. I’d do both. You’ll need to give people a good reason to get to your blog in the first place.
As always, thank Bjork for the detailed, thought invoking post.
Is it OK for me to share a link to my site here for a guide I wrote on where’s the best place to keep your favorite recipes, to get your opinion if this is something along the lines you mention here?
Sure!
Thanks!
Here it is:
http://www.veganhightechmom…
You would be proud of the progress I made today! I signed up for mailchimp to start building my email subscribers list, and I am offering a free copy of my eBook to encourage people to subscribe. You can also read the free eBook on my blog as .html pages, but I think many readers would rather download the entire eBook all at once.. Hopefully offering something free will indeed increase income… Thanks again for the good advice!
Good stuff Doc! Keep it up.
Hi Bjork, I agree and for my blog (not a food blog but following my passion) – it is for small business. Like this series for registering your physical store locations… the content is out there but most of my customers just don’t know where to start. So this is one way I help them – and of course if they need assistance I can setup everything for them (my consultant business). Not as glamorous as a food blog but I do hope to one day get enough income to help small companies 24/7 – well maybe 24/5.
Here is the example: http://www.zebdiel.com/2015…
Hi Bjork, this is such a good advice and it took me ages to work out what my Freebie could be and then I realized it was staring straight at me, I just had to ‘package it up’ even though you can actually find it on the site, but not in the succinct way subscribing to the email list gives you. I’ve popped my sign up form with a clear call to action, smack bang in the middle of my home page now, and since I’ve done that, subscribers have been so much better. Thanks for all you do in this space!
Great post Bjork. Thank you. Lots of good ideas. This has got me thinking. What are your thoughts on giveaways / contests? Are they beneficial in driving traffic?
In reference to #3, I thought linking to other sites weakened your authority with Google?
No, not all you. You WANT to link out and to sites that provide value to your audience
If u reference a topic or a recipe or place/thing that could naturally be more defined for the reader, link out accordingly.
Problems arise when you link out sitewide with footer links, badges, or with affiliate partner links that bleed authority out and provide no value except to the linked partner.
What Bjork is talking about is just making sure that you think FIRST about the user.
If u can naturally link out within your content to a resource, site, example, or guide that helps expand topical awareness for the user do it. And do it often.
This is some great advice… not to just make a game plan for how to get people to link back to me! I’m also working on figuring out how to build my email subscription list because I’ve got some good ideas for what to do with it once it’s built up. Thanks again!