Welcome to Part 3 of our Republishing Content blog series!
So far in this series, we’ve covered why you should republish content, as well as how to identify the right posts to update and republish.
And last but not least, we’re going to discuss what to update when republishing content! We’ll explore how to actually republish a post, some key areas you might want to consider updating, and more.
Welcome to Part 2 of our Republishing Content blog series!
In the first post of this series, we talked about the why –– why is updating and republishing old content a solid strategy for online creators?
That’s a great place to start when you’re thinking about your republishing strategy, so be sure to check out that blog post first!
But today I’m excited to talk about the process of identifying the right posts to update and republish.
Hello, hello, and welcome to Part 1 of our Republishing Content Series!
Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be focusing on why you should be republishing posts on your blog to get the most out of your existing content.
We’ll be covering:
Without further ado, let’s kick things off by going over a few reasons why you should consider republishing content as a food blogger:
Since you’re reading this article, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you probably love some of the elements of producing content for your blog. You might love the recipe development process, the photography, or the cooking. Or maybe all of it!
And I’m going to go out on another limb and say you probably have a lot of content on your blog (and are generating more and more every month). Maybe you have over 50 posts on your blog. Or over 500. Or over 1000 like we have on our sister site and food blog, Pinch of Yum.
And all of that content (both your new blog posts and the ones that already exist on your blog) takes a lot of time and effort to create. You put in the work; now it’s time to make that content work for you for the long run.
When you think about SEO, how do you feel?
A. 😬
B. 😭
C. 😱
D. All of the above
It’s 100% okay and normal to pick any of these options (especially the last one). But it really doesn’t have to be that way.
As you probably know, “SEO” stands for search engine optimization. That means that there are things you can be doing to your posts to optimize them for search results. So if a post is optimized better, there’s a greater chance for it to show up higher in search results.
SEO isn’t a one-and-done kind of thing though; there are a ton of different tips and tweaks that you can apply to your blog posts to help you get more traffic (and in turn more email subscribers, higher revenue, additional social media followers, and all of the other positive outcomes that can result from more people visiting your site).
And I’m not just talking about new posts; you can actually improve the existing posts on your site. We like to call this “juicing the low-hanging fruit” because you’re addressing content you’ve already created and just making it a tiny bit better. And that’s what we’re focusing on today.
I just got off the phone with my dad. I often use the commute to the office to call home and check-in with my mom and dad. We usually chat about the news or things that we have planned for the day, which is exactly how the conversation went today.
Dad: “What do you have planned for today?”
Bjork: “I’m writing a post about SEO for food blogs.”
Dad: “SEO?”
Bjork: “Yeah, it stands for search engine optimization…”
…commence Bjork oversharing with dad about what SEO is and how it works, why it’s beneficial to bloggers, and how we go about doing it for our two sites, Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro.
That little SEO soapbox moment made me realize how excited I get when I talk about SEO.
It makes sense, as search engine traffic is one of the most common ways that people discover Pinch of Yum and/or Food Blogger Pro. As the screenshots below show, SEO is an important part of our businesses.
Have you ever Googled one of your recipes and been disappointed with how the result is displayed in Google (if it even displays at all)? This happens for one of two reasons:
You can’t do much about #1. Even if your blog is perfectly formatted Google might still decide that they’re going to leave out certain information from a search result. Google does as Google pleases. There’s not much you can do about it except make sure that you’re not falling victim to #2.
There is something that you can do about #2, as there are multiple components that factor into the ideal, rich search result for food bloggers. None of them are complicated, but they do require some time to set them up properly.
Schema. It’s a tough word to say, isn’t it?
It’s kind of like Bjork. You think you know how to pronounce it, but the first time you speak it out loud you find yourself doing the ole’ name + mumble combo in an effort to conceal the fact that you’re not 100% sure how to say it.
For a long time I felt the same way with my general understanding of schema. I felt like I kind of understood it, but I wasn’t 100% sure. After realizing that I wasn’t 100% sure how schema markup worked I decided to go on a schema research frenzy (like I do…).
This post is a condensed review of that research, written from a food blogging perspective.
That being said, if you’re not a food blogger you should still keep reading. Schema markup is a concept that all bloggers and website owners should understand (and implement)!
I know that a lot of you read the words “schema” and “markup” and you think “really complicated.” Thankfully that’s not the case. The good news with running a food blog is that there usually isn’t any manual coding you have to do to use schema markup on your blog.
The meta description is an often overlooked SEO element.
In this post we’ll discuss what the meta description is, why it’s important, how to find the meta description, how to change your meta description, and some basic advice for optimizing the meta description for your food blog.
Side note: Isn’t all of this internet marketing/web optimization/SEO/online business stuff so cool? I’m so incredibly grateful to be able to learn, write, and share this with you guys. Thanks for checking out this post and for being a part of Food Blogger Pro (in whatever way that might be).
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important concept to understand as you grow your food blog. Many people understand the basic concept of SEO and are applying those basic ideas to their blog, so the challenge for bloggers is finding tips and tricks that are specific to their niche that other people aren't already doing. These niche specific SEO tips are what help give one blog an edge over another blog when it comes to ranking high in search engines.
Today I'd like to share one of those niche specific, high impact SEO tips with you. The content that I'm writing about today will be specific to food blogs, but the general process could be used by other types of blogs.
The screenshot below shows the point where we started using this SEO tip with Pinch of Yum (August 15th, 2013) and the growth of organic search traffic that has happened since that date.
The direct effect from one SEO change is hard to track, but I’m confident that the tip I’ll share today will positively impact the overall SEO of your food blog.
Before I share the tip I want to talk about a general business concept. In order to do so we’ll need to reflect back to the music scene in the year 2000.