We know we have written quite a bit of material on why Cucumbertown is THE destination for food bloggers. But while it’s often easy to preach, practising is a whole different ball game, right? So we decided to show you just how Cucumbertown makes a difference in a bloggers life. Here’s the first of our brand new series:
Saffron Trail: A Case Study
This is the first in a lineup of case studies where we show you what has happened to bloggers since they have migrated, what impact Cucumbertown has in their lives and so on.
The first blog that we are looking at is Nandita Iyer’s Saffron Trail. She has been blogging for well over a decade and was complacent in her comfort zone of Blogger before she made the move to Cucumbertown. She is quick to admit that it was because of our focus on food blogs that she decided she wanted to come on board.
“After a few conversations with Cherian, I realised that you guys know and understand the needs of a food blogger. And with the cooking, photography, promotion and dealing with brands and so on, I did not have the time to give my blog the technical attention it needed.”
That’s the big reason she decided to pack her blogging bags and move to Cucumbertown, which was still in it’s nascent stages as a platform. But to her surprise and frankly ours too, the growth was almost immediate.
“I had people contact me from everywhere congratulating me on the new look and wanting to know all about Cucumbertown.”
And in just a matter of three months, her organic traffic had gone up by 25%. That’s some sweet, sweet news in the food blogging world.
But of course, it was too early to make assumptions. It could be a lot of factors that caused the change, so we monitored the performance, and now a year later , look at what has happened to her traffic:
The page views have almost doubled since her move. And it doesn't stop there!
Organic traffic has increased dramatically. One big reason for this is the SEO inbuilt RecipeWriter that Cucumbertown provides. With no extra effort on the part of the blogger, the SEO aspect of content creation is taken care.
Another big factor is that Nandita’s rate of content creation has increased dramatically. Because of the ease of using the editor and through the knowledge gained from the articles in the Cucumbertown magazine, Nandita now creates an average of 14–15 posts a month as opposed to the 5–8 posts she was doing on Blogger.
“Despite blogging for such a long time, I never looked at things like keywords or SEO or any of that. It was only after talking to the team here and reading all the articles about SEO on the magazine that I even began paying attention to keywords. Now it’s reached a point where I can’t plan a blogpost without looking at the keyword planner! So that guidance was key, I think.”
Besides these two factors, one big part was also played by Cucumbertown’s decision to focus on things like minimising page load times, making sure that there are no broken links and generally optimising the site for the best performance. This has gone a long way in making the performance of the blog what it is now.
Another big plus for Saffron Trail, is that the direct traffic has improved considerably. This means her returning, loyal audience is constantly going up.
“One reason could be that I’m putting up more content. And also my visibility on social media has gone up considerably. Before the migration I used to mainly use Twitter and Instagram. Now I’m active on Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat and so on. And half the reason for that is because it’s so easy to share content from the blog on social media. For instance, hiding pins is a breeze.”
We have also noticed that having a professional looking, fast loading blog can have a huge impact on returning audience. It’s always a turn off if things are difficult to find and it takes forever to get to the information you want.
Besides these two big ones, if you notice from the first graph, pretty much every metric is going up. And cumulatively this is going to bring so much more traffic to the blog and also help the earnings grow.
“I never had the patience to manage ads on Saffron Trail. But because Cucumbertown takes care of it, there’s a neat little passive income that I’m also earning now.”
So all in all, Saffron Trail’s growth has been a personal triumph for Cucumbertown. And with the changes that are being effected to make everything crisper and more efficient, the rise will only be meteoric from here on forward.
“I honestly think that any food blogger who is not on Cucumbertown is losing out. I will be completely lost without the platform, so it’s a no brainer for me whenever anyone asks.”
