Just created a great blog post, but frustrated with the crawling population of readers coming to your blog? Read on to find out how to master the numbers game and increase the traffic to your food blog!
The Dummies Guide to Building Traffic On Your Food Blog
First things first. Make sure your content is great and original. That is going to be your biggest asset in the numbers game. So take feedback from people and work on your content. Once you have that sorted, you can focus on the traffic.
Food blogs have a staggering reach and demand in today’s Google loving generation.
Some blogs have traffic numbers that are in the millions every month, which obviously translates into good money. But this traffic does not simply come overnight, it can only be built with a sustained approach to marketing and engagement. Now it is harder than before to build and increase one’s traffic as the competition is increasing every day. But, on the bright side, there are more ways to increase your traffic as well.
Focus on the Images
One of the best ways to build traffic for a food blogger is through the images of the food they are making. Now that Pinterest has beaten Google Image Search as THE place to search for images, one of the best places to start promoting your food blog is Pinterest.
The primary thing, that one needs to keep in mind while using Pinterest to promote the blog, is to make sure you have evocative images. Without an image that looks delicious and inviting, there is very little one can do with Pinterest. But if you do have good images, and you use Pinterest intelligently, you could see a significant increase in traffic. Look at the image below to really understand the difference in how people may perceive your recipe, simply based on the image.
Some bloggers attribute almost 50% of their traffic to Pinterest alone. It’s therefore very important to learn how to use Pinterest effectively to drive traffic to your food blog.
A lot of people use Pinterest without understanding what Pinterest is for. This, unfortunately, leads to exploiting Pinterest for the wrong reason. So it’s important people get to know the fundamentals.
The first thing to do while using Pinterest, is to create a board specifically for your blog. With every recipe/ post that you create, you must then pin the images to this board. But don’t simply pin the images, include these things along with it:
A brief summary, or quote, from the article
A link directly to your blog article (this is done automatically, but make sure your are pinning from the right link. For eaxmple, don’t pin from the home page, pin from the recipe page.)
Once you have created a board, and start pinning regularly. But it doesn’t end there. You have to start engaging on Pinterest. Use Pinterest like you would any other social media outlet, so follow the people who are following you, make sure you pin regularly so that the content appears in their feed, repin pins from other boards of influence, if possible run a contest board which redirects to your blog etc.
Another thing to be kept in mind while using Pinterest is the image itself.
It has been found that longer images work better on Pinterest.
So in the below example, the longer Image on the left, will work better than the wider image on the right.
Similarly images with text work better than those without, especially on an informative post.
And lastly on the Pinterest front, make your pins easy to find, aka, take care of SEO. Even though you wouldn’t have to go into the in-depth understanding of SEO with this, as you would when you are writing a blog post, some simple things to do to make your pins search friendly are given below:
Use your Blog Name as your Board Name
Include keywords in the description
Save the images with appropriate names, not auto-generated ones.
Use hashtags if you can't fit in a keyword, because Twitter hashtags are once again back on Google Search.
Look at these two bloggers for inspiration. Their Pinterest boards are a treasure trove.
Food Porn Websites
Food Porn websites like Foodgawker, TasteSpotting, Tasteologie are a great source for traffic. These websites are particularly useful in gaining returning traffic to your blog. The people who find your blog through these sites are not just casual surfers, they are there looking particularly for food related posts.
These are the more discerning readers, and chances are very high that they will follow your blog, provided the content is good and in most cases will also leave a comment.
It is, however, harder to use these sites as they come with editorial control. Your picture needs to be approved before it is featured on the site. Not only do your photos have to be of a very high quality, you also need to have the tenacity to keep uploading till you start getting approvals. Don’t expect your photos to be approved from the first submission onwards, but once you do get an approval, there will definitely be a surge in traffic. The good news for new food bloggers is that most of these websites have become a lot more lenient in recent times. But on the downside, there are reports that traffic has also reduced from these sources, but it still can get you anything from a 100 to thousands of views per day.
Besides, getting approved on these sites is a sure-shot way of telling that your photography works. Before the only options were FoodGawker and TasteSpotting. However now, there are so many different websites that you can share your photos on, which obviously means more opportunity to build traffic.
While it is safe to say that most food bloggers don’t rely heavily on Instagram for traffic, it is now being used more and more by food bloggers. Unlike Pinterest and Food Porn websites, there is no direct link from the image to your post.
You will have to post the image and then leave the link in the comments. Chances for someone to click through to your website are fairly low with Instagram, but Instagram is more about social capital. Food bloggers use this as a channel to showcase whatever they eat, farmers market visits etc.
Look at Jenny McGruther of Nourished Kitchen and her Instagram account.
It gives us a sneak peek into her life with the traditional food movement which is what her blog about. Meal planning, photography, fresh produce and a lot of other ideas become clear with her page.
This gives her an opportunity to network with similar minded people and build her network of fans.
So while it may not bring you direct traffic, it’s definitely useful for increasing your visibility and building the brand of your blog, which essentially is you.
The Social Network
We live in a time when news comes to us from our Twitter and Facebook pages.
So just like newspapers used to be a sort-after medium for advertising in the past, now social networking sites are the go-to place for talking about your blog.
Undeniably, facebook is one of the most potent social networks out there. Gathering enough followers on Facebook should be high on your list of priorities. There are several things that you can do with Facebook.
The first step is to create a page/ group for your blog on Facebook. The latter is the better option as there is more engagement on a group. Then invite all your existing friends to like the page/ group. Share all your posts on this page so people have the ability to like them, and discuss them. If people respond to your posts, acknowledge them or thank them. This way you are engaging with your audience. Smitten Kitchen is a great example of this.
Besides your own page, join other popular food blogging or recipe sharing groups and communities. Here you will find a lot of like-minded people and can build a network. Again, acknowledge and thank the people that are interacting on a post.
Another important thing to keep in mind while posting on Facebook is to make sure that you are respecting the guidelines of the community/group.
You cannot post a beef dish in a group about vegan dishes.
Similarly, if you face any sort of negativity in the comments, you cannot reciprocate in kind. You will have to try and diffuse any unpleasantness instead of escalating it.
One more thing to be careful while using Facebook is to not rely on widgets to do these promotions. They are quite pointless. Your own active engagement will make all the different. Simply having a plug in is not going to help.
Most food bloggers record a lesser success rate with Twitter for direct traffic to the blog. The clicks to your blog via Twitter may be less, but Twitter is a great place to network. You can build up your credibility as a food blogger and your repute amongst the food blogging community will increase. The more people retweet your tweets or favourite them, the more visibility your food blog gains.
There are several apps which you can use to schedule future tweets. This way you can live without the worry of having to tweet frequently. Most food bloggers will schedule anything between 10–20 tweets per day.
This is also a great way to bring attention to older posts. CTR is much lower with Twitter in comparison to Facebook, but it is still a great way to network and market your blog. And if a celebrity or a reputed food blogger tweets about you or retweets one of your tweets, the reach of your content could be massive.
This is why, despite the fact, that most food bloggers say Twitter ranks fairly low in traffic sources, it is still something that cannot be ignored.
While one can’t call Reddit a simple social networking site, it’s social networking angle can certainly be used by food bloggers. With Reddit things are not as simple as Facebook or Twitter. You can’t simply post links to your recipes and expect people to come to the website. In fact, this kind of behaviour is heavily discouraged on Reddit.
It takes more effort to build a following on Reddit. Most often a post on Reddit will lead to some form of discussion. So your engagement skills need to be far greater than with Facebook or Twitter. At the end of the day, Reddit does call itself the ‘front page of the internet’, so the reach is massive.
It has proven it can be a huge boon for entrepreneurs and businesses — boasting website traffic referrals increases of up to 12,000 per cent.- Chris Morrisson
But like the Food Porn websites, Reddit too will get you a dedicated set of followers. Once you have built up enough Karma on Reddit, your repertoire as a food blogger will increase. But in order to do this, it is important to strictly follow ‘reddiquette’ and also choose the right sub-Reddits.
Here are a few unwritten rules when it comes to Reddit.
Choose the right subreddit.
Do not post ONLY your links
Delete posts that haven’t worked well
Comment on other posts and build up Karma
Do not try and manipulate the ‘upvotes’.
Some of the most popular options for food bloggers would be r/Cooking, r/Food, and r/Recipes. Since Reddit works more on the basis of points, the aim should be to gain more points so that your post is more visible.
Recipe Sharing Websites
Another great source of traffic is through recipe sharing websites like Yummly, Chef This Up, and Tasty Kitchen are great places to post your recipe, with link backs to your blog.
With Yummly, the best way to do this is by having the Yummly button on your blog. The more ‘Yums’ a recipe gets, the more traffic it will help you to build. You can also achieve accomplishment levels like ‘certified Yummly’ based on the popularity of your recipe. Once again the traffic you get through Yummly will most likely not be a floating population. They will return for more.
With Chef This Up, the concept is very similar to Yummly. But instead of using the Yum button, you can post the recipe link directly on the website. If it has enough likes, then it may come on to their feed and hence your traffic could increase.
For Tasty Kitchen, one has to enter most of the information of the recipe. In the instructions section, you can add a link to the post, and that way you can direct traffic to your post. But this is more manual effort and the traffic is not exactly all that significant.
Bookmarking Sites
While Reddit was earlier discussed in the social networking section, the other use that Reddit can serve is as a bookmarking site. Basically bookmarking sites offer a collection of great content. So if your posts are featured on StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg, besides Reddit, there is a high likelihood of getting traffic.
But with this, most food bloggers say that it takes time. And it has less to do with what you do and more to do with what your readers do.
But if there are buttons for these bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit on your blog, there is a potential for more people to find it. But whether this will guarantee a consistent returning traffic is debatable.
Blogging Communities and Networks
One of the best sources of traffic for bloggers, especially the new, budding bloggers, is the interaction with other bloggers. Familiarise yourself with more and more food blogs, interact with the writers, leave comments and generally build a relationship with your fellow food bloggers.
Not only will this help with traffic, it will also give you an insight into how these bloggers function. There is a lot of positive learning you can gain from this.
You can find communities of food bloggers on spaces like Google Plus. The G+ Food Bloggers Community, is one of the most active and prolific online groups specifically for food bloggers. Here the understanding is that there is no direct promotion of the blog with pictures and links, but slowly through your presence on the group you can build your traffic. Google Plus has several other communities like this, which are dedicated to bloggers.
Another thing to do is to post a link on general blogging communities. Indian Food Bloggers are reportedly using sites like IndiBlogger to showcase their links.
Having your blog associated with Bloglovin is another good thing to do. Here again you will have a chance to be found by other bloggers. The important thing to keep in mind with getting through other bloggers is that everything is more or less reciprocal. If they follow you, 9 times out of 10 you will follow them too.
There are two ways one can look at how to approach these methods; What you can do if you are a new blogger and what you can do if you are someone who has been blogging for some time.
For new bloggers, the initial focus needs to be more on engagement, than outright marketing. They need to work on creating a loyal audience first, before trying to win over new pastures. So for such people, the priority should be Facebook, Twitter and forums where fellow food bloggers are congregating. Of course, one should start the process of using images early on with food blogs. So it’s never too soon to begin using FoodGawker and Pinterest. Pinterest in particular because there is no editorial control there and it’s the perfect place to network with like-minded people too. FoodGawker is helpful for making you understand what is wrong with the images, so you can address your photography issues early on. .
For more seasoned bloggers, it is important to step up the game. Pinterest should become a top priority. They can also start focussing more on things like SEO, and sharing on websites like Yummly. But it is important to keep engagement as a priority at all times.
These are some of the many ways that one can increase the traffic to their blog. But the most important thing for any blogger, food or otherwise is most definitely, love from Google.
And for that the only thing that can help, is SEO. Without content, that Google loves, the future of your blog won’t ever be bright. When you are online, there is no better way to get noticed than on Google.
So apart from the suggestions above, make sure that you are also following these SEO guidelines.
All the best to all the budding Food Bloggers, and if you are hesitating because you think all of this sounds like a lot of work, get in touch with us Cucumbertown. We will be happy to help you out with any queries.
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