Being a successful Food Blogger or Restaurant Blogger requires traffic – lots of traffic!
In this article Food Blogger Andrei Silva discusses some of the strategies needed for success as a food blogger.
Instead of using the latest gimmicks and tricks to make money as a food blogger, there are some fundamental principles that you need to master first, in order get more readers, followers, shoppers and consumers.
Drive More Visitors To Your Website As A Food Blogger
1) Set up Google Analytics to Watch Your Stats.
To be able to monitor your stats, the first thing you need to do is set up an account with Google Analytics. Start by obtaining your tracking code, also known as your JavaScript tracking snippet or tracking code snippet. Your tracking ID give you plenty of important information, including the following data:
- Unique visitors
- Amount of time spent on your site, including time spent on each page;
- Which of your internal links were clicked by the visitor to your website;
- Geographic location of the visitor;
- What web browser and operating system the visitor was using;
- Traffic sources to your website, including search engine and referral sites.
- Once you’ve installed Analytics, you will have 24 hours before you have the first bits of data to analyze.
2) Check the Traffic of Your Website Religiously.
In order to know what areas need improvement, or what things need to be removed, you need to know your starting point, or baseline. Measure your traffic often, such as on a daily basis, taking note of the variations and fluctuations of traffic occur within the span of a single day. Do you notice any patterns?
By checking the traffic to your website, you can assess the performance of your content. You’ll notice the pages that get the most attention from your visitors. Are there pages or links that your visitors don’t click on at all? Maybe it’s time to trim the fat. Or cook with it.
3) Improve Your Current Content Marketing Strategy.
After a few days’ worth of monitoring, you’ll have an idea of how well your website is performing, and how individual pages perform in comparison with the others. If you see any weak links (see what I did there?), beef up your content.
Consider the goals of your website and your content. What are the areas that need improvement? Also, think about your audience and their pain points, and think about how your content can address those issues. This will help you to monetize your website.
Also, keep in mind your competition. What are other producers in your niche doing for their customers? Think about what they’re doing right, and how you can outshine them in the areas they’re struggling with.
Your content marketing strategy should have a good mix of blogging, eBooks and tutorials, relevant infographics, and informative videos such as podcasts. The content you produce should have as much information as possible.
Strategic use of SEO such as email campaigns, guest posting, and landing pages can bring more visitors to your website. It’s important to have pages that give your readers information about your company in addition to the pages process your orders.
Let your “About” page reveal something about your personality and what you stand for.
Your website must have a blog, and its headlines should make your visitors take notice. Write content that grabs and maintains their attention, keeping them interested.
4) Don’t Underestimate the Power of Internal Linking.
Create more quality content. This follows directly from your content strategy. High quality content links well with each other, and mediocre content is a dead end.
Make sure you use anchor text correctly. Your anchor text should entice your reader to click on the links you come up with. And the links should point to content that is as meaningful and interesting as your writing may suggest. Linking to useless or spammy content can undermine your efforts.
Keep your links down to less than ten (but at least more than 5) links per 1000-word article you post.
5) Perform a Content Audit to See What Works.
A content audit allows you to see which pieces of content you’ve posted are actually getting traction. It helps to expose irrelevant, outdated and useless articles, or material that you can revise for the benefit of your website.
Use a spreadsheet to categorize your entire archive of content into meaningful groups. This allows you to rank the content according to quality. Then you know which ones to improve, consolidate, remove, or simply leave alone.
- For the content that you feel is worth keeping, or needs slight improvement, check the writing quality, formatting, images, ease of scanning, and links.
- Content that needs more substance, material or all-around improvement, see if there’s an opportunity for consolidation. Group the related articles, and choose the one that best represents the group. Then implement a 301 redirect so you maintain the integrity of your SEO rankings.
6) Share your online content the right way, without being spammy.
Optimize your content for each platform, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even Pinterest. Your posts and updates on these different social media platforms should all appear different and unique. Different people use different platforms to varying degrees, and you don’t want to appear lazy by simply copy/pasting from one platform to the next.
7) Create a Sharing Schedule that is Consistent…
…And make sure you can stick to it. This schedule is meant to keep you organized and not over-sharing or under-sharing your material.
According to websitesetup.org, the following table illustrates the best times to share your content:
8) Add Sharing Buttons to Your Website.
It’s one thing to have good content, and another to have great content that your readers would want to share. However, not every reader will want to go through a tedious process of copying and pasting just to do it. Placing social sharing buttons on your website makes it easy for your visitors to share your content automatically with their friends and colleagues, using the social media platform of choice.
Social media share buttons are available on WordPress, and many of them are free to download and use. Be sure that the sharing buttons are placed right below your articles. Test the buttons to make sure that each of them is working correctly.
9) Use Quora to Become an Industry Authority.
Simply put, Quora is a Q&A platform, where anyone can post a question, and anyone can post an answer. Credibility is key here, and answers from people with actual professional expertise and credentials are the ones that get read and gain community support. This is a good way to interact with your readers and develop a following.
Once you’ve opened up a Quora account, create your Bio and be sure to link to your website. Choose categories that are relevant to your website and its related fields. Then search for questions that new and allow you to give very informative and helpful answers.
Of course, your answers should be very strong and well written. Anecdotes and experiences resonate well with your audience on a personal level. Be sure to add links to your website to boost traffic. That’s the whole point, right?
10) Post Your Content to Reddit.
Reddit has been around for a while, but it’s never too late to get in on the action. Your content doesn’t need to hit the Reddit front page in order to generate traffic, either.
Start by searching for subreddits that are relevant to your business. For instance, if you’re selling the latest fashions online, you’ll find a number of subreddits that will do the trick. Subscribe to the ones you like the most, go over the community guidelines, and start voting and commenting on the content that’s already there.
Before you start posting your original content, go over the rules. Your content should add value, with good, working and timely links.
11) Learn About and Respect the Power of Republishing.
This is one of the most underrated tricks to make money with your website. Once you’ve optimized your web content and shared it on social media for promotion, you’ll want to get your content in front of a larger audience.
To do this, you want to start by getting your content republished on large. It’s similar to guest blogging, but on a larger scale and with a far broader outreach. Some publications include Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, and Lifehacker.
12) Find Publications in Your Industry or Niche that Allow Republishing.
The thing about large publications is that they need content, and they might not always have someone to provide it all the time. This is where you come in.
Search the various large-scale publications within your industry for words such as “guest post,” “writers wanted,” and “contribute” on their various pages. This will give you clues as to whether they’ll accept your work to begin with.
13) Review Your Existing Content for Publication.
Once you’ve found the right publication, analyze the style the publication uses. Do your content pieces sound like theirs? If not, edit your content accordingly to match their style. If you don’t have a copy of their publishing guidelines just yet, you may still be able to assimilate your content for their site, earning you plus points.
14) Pitch Your Content to the Publication.
Use a strong subject line, and drop the names of your strongest references. Explain to the publisher how your content will add value to their publication and how it will benefit their readers. You will also need to add a link to the actual content.
Once you’re approved, prepare your content by matching it with the style of the publisher. Make sure that you go over their guidelines for writing style and linking. Change the title of your article as well, so as not to confuse search engines.
15) Write Guest Posts and Engage in Outreach.
Once you’ve gotten your foot in the door with republishing, continue to write two or three guest posts every month. This helps your SEO rank to improve, bringing new content to your audiences, and driving traffic to your site.
Seek out more posts from other websites and reach out to them, detailing specific content that they have published that you find helpful. Let them know what you can do for them, and send them some of your ideas.
Some of these tips can be done independently, but your best bet is to follow them in sequence.
Recommended Reading: Turn your humble foodie blog into a Foodie Authority Website.
